Praise for the Silence Breakers
As you’ve probably seen, TIME’s Person of the Year was released last week. I am immensely proud of these “Silence Breakers.”
The #MeToo movement has erupted at a pivotal time in my life. I am a female college student living in an environment highly susceptible to sexual assault. Unfortunately, once I graduate, the risk does not and probably will not end. The “Silence Breakers” article focused mostly on sexual harassment in the workplace, another risk I may potentially face as I enter the workforce.
One of the critiques of #MeToo is that if it took famous white women this long to speak up, how long will it take everyone else? Luckily, the TIME article doesn’t only focus on white female celebrities, but also on women (and men) of color from all walks of life. Hispanic, African-American, Native American, and Asian women spoke about their difficult experiences reporting sexual assault as farmers, dishwashers, writers, maids, engineers, teachers, and nurses–but several remained anonymous in fear of backlash and risk of their families’ lives. Everyone’s stories, celebrity or not, has given me confidence that if this ever happens to me, I can speak out, too.
“Like all of the dozens, then hundreds, then millions of women who came forward,” the article says, “with their own stories of harassment, she was done feeling intimidated. Actors and writers and journalists and dishwashers and fruit pickers alike: they’d had enough. What had manifested as shame exploded into outrage. Fear became fury.”
I remember, almost a year ago, watching the Inauguration in the living room of a family member’s house. I was angrily listening to my extended family complain about the Women’s March and ask “what are these women possibly upset about?”
Yes, though sexual harassment may not be genital mutilation, or human trafficking, or the inability to go to school, I am equally as passionate about fighting those issues, too. I can be just as “upset” about damaging workplace culture, among many other things, in the United States as I can be about gender inequality in the third world. Women deserve to have it all, everywhere.
I’m furious that some people, however, including some I know personally, still feel like they can pick and choose who they support or condemn for sexual harassment or assault, particularly when it’s partisan. I’m annoyed about various media backlash of the TIME piece where “some women don’t deserve to be on that cover” or “#notallmen” again. I’m frustrated by studies that say men may now be avoiding contact with women at work in fear of “being accused” of things such as hugging and asking about female colleagues’ lives.
Sometimes I feel like we still can’t win–but then I read the Person of the Year article again, or scroll through the millions of #MeToos on Twitter, and get reminded that women are fucking badass and we can persevere.
Although preventative measures still need to be successfully implemented, I’m sad for women who’ve had to face sexual harassment forty years ago before remedial policies existed. I think about my grandmas and great-grandmas, entering the workforce at a time when their worth was devalued; but also for the moms, grandmas, and greats who aren’t white and middle class and have had to face worse. Regardless, I’m also sad for women and men in the decades since, when still no one believed them or they had nowhere to turn. And today, we still have a long way to go. Our president’s pardoned behavior, among other things, is evidence of that.
Here’s to the moms, the grandmas, the future children, and especially to us — I hope we continue to break the whispered warnings and, in my case, the red-cheeked silence by being masturbated in front of on the street. The #MeToo movement has been a wakeup call for many. Let’s all be allies.
