Rewriting History: How women no longer can be silenced through cultural movements such as #MeToo and OBOS when cultivating community and creating a shared experience through the power of language in the media

Source: Bangor Daily News
http://bangordailynews.com/all/page/10/

In the year of 2007 Tarana Burke began sharing the phrase “Me too” as a catchphrase for those who have been sexually assaulted and/or abused as a form of reaching out to other women that can relate to this traumatic experience and stand in solidarity as survivors, while speaking out about their own personal yet collective experiences (Vagianos, A. (2017, October 17)). A decade later in October of 2017, Alyssa Milano posted this slogan on her own social media platform in hopes to spread resistance against the social and political systems of power that continuously leave women without protection and justice (Vagianos, A. (2017, October 17)). From the moment this slogan was spoken, power was embedded in each word. The power behind this language: #MeToo, created a space for a large global community of women to speak out on social media by just posting #MeToo on one’s own page, thus taking back the power that was taken from them the moment they were sexually assaulted and silenced. A collective of feminist-queer women in the 70’s created a book named Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS)  used a similar language with the same agenda but rather in response to the “capitalist healthcare system” (p.23). The cultural movements: OBOS and #MeToo created space in the media for women to cultivate community through shared experiences of sexual assault, thus allowing women to use the power of language in their shared history to no longer be silenced.

Source: “Our Bodies, Ourselves” (1973)
Published by Simon & Schuster
https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/our-story/

Within the United States, language is controlled by a white, educated, patriarchal, capitalist system thus controlling the language we hear, see, and ourselves use daily; but the collective of women who wrote Our Bodies, Ourselves  beginning in the 1970’s thus reclaiming the power from the medical discussion being had about women’s bodies. This reclaiming of power through language and shared histories started with a group of women that no longer wanted to be held “at the mercy of ‘these’ doctors they would just have to get information about their bodies themselves” (p.21). No longer did these women want the discourse of women’s personal experience such as sexual assault, abortion, masturbation, sexuality, etc. to be discussed solely by doctors. Later on, they found neither did other women across the country. After the first published edition of the book, letters flooded into the collective in response to this reclaiming of power surrounding women’s experience (Davis, K., 2007, p.24). Such excitement is a result that women finally were able to use their power to describe their experience, which was then found to be shared by many other women. As a result, women were able to control the conversation and no longer be silenced about their own experience(s), for they had the power to create a shared history as a community across domestic and international borders not only through a shared book but now through social media.

As OBOS gave women a safe space for those assaulted to share their story about sexual assault/abuse by opening a forum for women to reclaim their power. The #MeToo movement through social media offered a similar space where one can take back the power by naming the silence and fear experienced, all while knowing a community of women are listening.  Just by posting the phrase #MeToo fosters a community atmosphere on social media by listening and supporting women’s embodied experience. Thus allowing these politically and socially charged movements to gain a following because each time a woman reads one’s individual experience, one realizes they connect on a deeper level with this movement through the shared experience.  

Using the politics of knowledge and awareness from a shared experience, allows women to build upon a shared history as well. The politics of knowledge “invited individual women to use their own embodied experiences to engage critically with dominant practices of knowledge” (Davis, K.,2007,p. 199). Such political engagement through social media allows for women to call out the dominant patriarchal power that thrives within our culture. This stripping of power enables women to rewrite history in their own words, rather than being silenced. The statement that Estelle Freedman makes in the article: “How American women's growing power finally turned #metoo into a cultural moment” best explains this power of language that is stripped from men when women band together to share an individual yet shared an experience: “She’s lying. I didn’t do it’ or ‘We did it. She consented.’ Those men are losing a long legacy of privilege right now.”. This stripping of a historical privilege is all due in part to empowered women realizing their power individually and collectively as a feminist-queer community.

On the contrary, other’s may state that although both OBOS and the #MeToo movement were intended to be open to global women’s perspectives and embodied experiences, both movements were “power-laden” with colonialist privilege and thought (Davis, K.,2007, p.123). This is due to the fact that women of color domestically and internationally are faced with historically- rooted power structures that silence their experience and contributions. For example, when the #MeToo gained popularity, Tarana Burke, the founder, was not given recognition or a platform, instead, it was celebrity Alyssa Milano who took credit, until it was brought to her attention (Vagianos, A. (2017, October 17)). As for OBOS, institutionally they struggled with including women of color’s experiences and perspectives throughout the making and publishing multiple editions of the book OBOS (Davis, K., 2007, p 85-119). Although all this information is true, it gives yet another opportunity to call out and attempt to strip these power-laden structures, giving these movements “a location which feminists can recognize the inequalities that separate them yet can also join forces, forming alliances around common concerns.” (Davis, K., 2007, p.10) Thus giving these movements the opportunity to acknowledge their inter-institutional injustices and give women of color domestically and internationally the space to speak to the embodied experiences they are experiencing at a much higher rate.

The movement of #MeToo created a global community of women, that gained power through the shared experience of sexual assault. This cultivated community through social media motivated women who were no longer accepting being at the mercy of a man’s word through their own silence. Forced silence in part motivated the collective of women who wrote OBOS, to create a book that spoke about women’s experiences in their own words. Such a community that was fostered through shared experience in the cultural movements of OBOS and #MeToo stripped the power of language that has been used to the benefit of the patriarchy surrounding women’s health, specifically sexual assault, thus enabling women to rewrite their own history through shared embodied experiences.

References (citations and links):

Cottrell, C. (2018, April 09). How Social Media Has Empowered Women To Rewrite The Rules. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-social-media-has-empowered-women-to-rewrite-the_uk_5acb3d2fe4b04ec4b549c1a9?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=eRFRzBkljxDiFzLqMegdBQ

Davis, K. (2007). The making of Our bodies, ourselves: How feminism travels across borders. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Me Too. (n.d.). You Are Not Alone. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://metoomvmt.org/

Rock, L. (2017, December 04). How American women's growing power finally turned #metoo into a cultural moment. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/04/how-american-womens-growing-power-finally-turned-metoo-a-cultural-moment

Stanford, Department of History. (2018, August 27). Estelle B. Freedman. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://history.stanford.edu/people/estelle-b-freedman

Vagianos, A. (2017, October 17). The 'Me Too' Campaign Was Created By A Black Woman 10 Years Ago. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-me-too-campaign-was-created-by-a-black-woman-10-years-ago_us_59e61a7fe4b02a215b336fee