From #MeToo to #WeToo: why women are speaking out now

Artwork by Brie Tobias

Along with the evolution of the hashtag has come the progression of women’s rights. Voicing their opinions more than ever, the #MeToo movement has grown at an increasingly rapid pace.

Bill Cosby. Donald Trump. Harvey Weinstein. Brett Kavanaugh.

What do all of these names have in common? Yes, they’re public figures. Yes, they’re influential Americans. And yes, they all have huge reputations. But their even more recent and relevant commonality is that they have all been accused of sexual assault in the past year. There have been more sexual harassment and abuse allegations recently than ever before. From the very beginning of the #MeToo movement, it seems like every time we turn on the news, there is yet another politician, public figure, or pop culture icon whose history of abusing women has been revealed.

The majority of the recent allegations are exposing sexual assaults from over decades ago. Critics of the movement are asking, “why now?” Why are countless victims voicing their concerns now rather than years ago when the assault actually occurred?

Initially, the only reason I could think of that explained this phenomenon is that the atmosphere in the United States for victims of sexual assault of both genders has become increasingly more accepting in the last decade. And this movement isn’t just confined to our nation. Ever since the rape and killing of several teenage girls in rural India over the spring and summer of 2018, crowds have come out protesting different countries’ lack of severity in the repercussions and punishments of sexual offenders across the world.

Maybe women feel that their voices are finally able to be heard in the 21st century, and that people will actually take them seriously. Their desire to be an influence in both America and its politics helps to muster the courage to speak out against public figures who have abused them in the past, whether that was just yesterday or three decades ago.

Now, if I had written this article a week ago, this could be where it ends: on a positive note, leaving you, the reader, with the encouragement that in the midst of the #MeToo era, women want to have an influence in their nation’s happenings and feel that they can make a difference. I truly believed that this was the sole reason that this flood of sexual abuse allegations has come to light within the United States so suddenly. I mean, it is a well known fact that the power of women both politically and socially is constantly increasing through obtaining higher-level professions and increased political representation, right?

Actually, contrary to popular belief, wrong.

Just a few days after I had planned this article, I saw this astonishing statistic. Only 63.3% of women voted in the 2016 presidential election, a small decrease from the 63.7% that did in the 2012 election. This is under two-thirds of women in our nation. Although this percentage has slowly increased over the last century, I was appalled at the low voter turnout in the female population and the slight decrease in the voting population overall. The increase in sexual abuse allegations could not be attributed to increased political representation, at least not entirely.

Slightly discouraged but more motivated now than ever before, I pored back over the dozens of articles about Weinstein and Cosby, and I finally found what I was looking for.

Alexandra Costand was the first woman to speak out against Cosby, followed by actress Janice Dickinson, then over fifty other women began to step out, following in their footsteps.

In the Harvey Weinstein case, actresses Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd accused the offender first, followed by tens of other victims of his harassment as they saw that their cases had a legitimate platform.

So it dawned on me. The key wasn’t the change in the American environment’s acceptance, or even necessarily in the individual woman herself; instead, it was the evolution of the relationship between women. What makes the #MeToo movement so powerful is the fact that their victims banded together. Had it been just one or two victims calling these offenders out, it could hardly be considered a movement, much less the nation and world-wide drive that we see today. Strength comes in numbers, and women have worked together to fight the injustice that has been imposed on them all, rather than facing it alone. All it took was one woman to call out the person who had hurt her, and who gave each and every other woman the inspiration to think, “If she can do it, so can I.”

And she did.