The Global #MeToo Movement

Welcome back everyone! I ended up taking a little hiatus from blog writing during the summer months, as I was traveling, enjoying the summer, and very busy with my investigative work. Now that I’m back and refreshed, I’m ready to kick start a new series (that I’m very excited about) on the global #MeToo movement and its impact on sexual harassment laws around the world.

I started this series back in June with my post on gossip (“On Gossip and Hearsay”); and my post on The Whisper Network (“Whisper Networks and #MeToo: Sexual Harassment Investigations in the U.S. & California”), a novel discussing themes of sexual harassment in the workplace. In the latter post I also introduced the #MeToo movement and its impact on California sexual harassment laws, and the implications of these changes in conducting sexual harassment investigations. These two earlier posts were meant to introduce this topic from a more abstract, generalized perspective, while today’s post is meant to introduce the concrete, global impact of the #MeToo movement.

Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke is the memoire of famed U.S. activist Tarana Burke, known most notably for her work in creating the #MeToo movement as a grassroots initiative in the U.S. south, decades before it became a viral social media hashtag. Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights (“Awakening”) by Rachel B. Vogelstein and Meighan Stone analyzes the #MeToo experience in seven different countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, and Tunisia, and includes a forward written by Burke.

Unbound by Tarana Burke

In Unbound, Burke’s memoir about the birth of the #MeToo movement, Burke starts the book recounting an experience of first being alerted to the viral #MeToo proliferation online, and being instantly seized with panic. Burke, an American activist who started the #MeToo movement over a decade earlier, focusing her activism on helping mostly Black and Brown victims of sexual assault in Selma, Alabama, was shocked to see her hashtag slogan being co-opted on the internet by White Hollywood actresses. She instantly became anxious, thinking that all her life’s work would soon be reappropriated (without giving her credit) and reused in a way that undermined her initial motive.

Burke then explains how eventually, reading through various #MeToo accounts of women sharing their personal stories of assault, she felt moved by these women’s bravery and vulnerability, and her earlier anxiety and apprehension started to dissipate. This anecdote seems to encapsulate Burke’s overall perspective of the #MeToo movement in the U.S. as a powerful movement giving voice to women across the country, but also as a movement that can at times reinforce race and class divisions in a harmful way: “Sexual violence doesn’t discriminate, but the response to it does. In some ways, it is the great equalizer—no demographic or group is exempt—but the reactions to different people telling their stories are for from equal.”

While Burke’s memoire starts and ends with her modern-day experience with the #MeToo movement, much of the book focuses on her earlier life, growing up in the Bronx, New York, and then moving to Selma, Alabama to work as a grassroots activist and organizer. In one especially moving chapter towards the beginning of the book titled “me too,” Burke tells readers about her own “me too” story of sexual assault at the age of seven. As Burke takes the reader through her childhood and adolescence, we see that this first incident of assault was not the last.

Burke explains to the reader her feelings of shame after her assault(s), a heavy burden that she carried with her throughout her childhood. While her outward personality was rambunctious, confident, intellectual, and even “radical” (as she described herself), internally she felt shame and vulnerability. Through these confusing and overwhelming feelings, young Burke found solace and comfort in literature, especially when the authors and characters were people she could relate to.

Throughout grade school, Burke had a deep love of reading, something which was actively encouraged by her mother. Burke recounts her feelings when she first read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou:

I understand now why my mother might have been wary of my reading this book too soon. Maya Angelou wrote of being molested and raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was eight years old. My mom, who had no idea that my life was being mirrored in this book, likely didn’t want me to read it in an attempt to protect me from an ugly reality I had unfortunately already experienced. Instead of being horrified and compelled to ask incessant questions, I was being introduced to a truth that would forever alter my life. My twelve-year-old mind had not understood that this was a thing that happened to other girls who were innocent. I thought I was just me, or at least girls like me. I thought I was the kind of girl who bad things happened to. When I read about what happened to a young Maya Angelou, I was able to read her as innocent in a way I didn’t allow of myself. Maya was decent and nice, and it seemed egregious that God would have allowed something so horrible to happen to her. It was the first time I ever realized a little girl like her could have gone through what I went through.

I finished the book and kept what was now, in my mind, our secret. To my twelve-year-old self, Maya Angelou was just another name on my mother’s bookshelf. She wasn’t Dr. Maya Angelou, the esteemed poet, author, activist, and all-around legend – she was a lady who wrote a book that shared my secrets. She was my confidant. I no longer felt alone.

Here, we see the early origins of the “me too” refrain – a way of connecting survivors in their shared experiences, creating a web of “confidants,” and easing the sense of isolation and shame. In other words, the process of sharing one’s story is a way of relating to other survivors, of responding “me too” to their call for connection, and centering other survivors in the dialogue. Indeed, as Burke writes in her foreword to Awakening, “me too” is a “shared language between survivors.”

When Burke entered high school, she began attending the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement (“21C”) in Selma, Alabama, a camp dedicated to community-oriented social activism and youth empowerment. Through this camp, she found her passion and her community. Burke decided to later join the camp as an employee upon graduation, and ultimately spent over a decade working and living in this community.

Throughout her years with 21C, Burke shared countless joys and successes with her peers and the camp’s children; however, the pressure from her unresolved past also started to mount.  Many of the young girls she worked with had similar experiences, and were desperate for confidence and connection on the subject. Burke held informal sessions with these girls to create a space for connection and vulnerability. However, Burke also felt ill-equipped to handle the responsibility and magnitude of these issues: “It is wildly irresponsible to make people feel comfortable enough to open up without being prepared with the resources to help them process their experiences and receive continued support. We were doing our best with the limited knowledge and resources we had at the time, but even then I wished we were doing more.”

In one especially foundational experience, a young girl named Heaven – who Burke had formed a unique connection with, partially because she reminded her of herself – approached Burke wanting to confide in Burke about the abuse she was suffering at home. Given Burke’s own past, she froze and dismissed Heaven, telling her to speak to another counselor. Burke recalled the wounded look in Heaven’s eye upon Burke’s dismissal of her; and came to deeply regret and even fixate on this interaction later in life: “Now the question remained: What would I do next time?” 

As Burke’s story progresses, she becomes a mother to a baby girl of her own; and becomes more deeply rooted in her 21C community, building relationships with esteemed lawyers, politicians, and activists who have all dedicated themselves to a similar mission.[1] She also becomes disillusioned; and starts learning of whispers of abuse in her own community, from the very leaders who she so admired. Marking a turning point in her personal life and her professional activism, Burke describes a scene of inner turmoil, with memories of Heaven, and frenzied realizations about her community’s secrets: “I searched around for a blank piece of paper. I wanted to capture this while it was coming. I found a steno pad that hadn’t been used and picked up a pen. I opened the pad and at the top of the page I wrote two words. me too.”

Fast forwarding several years into the future (beyond the scope of Unbound), the Harvey Weinstein story would break, first by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at the New York Times, in their story published on October 5, 2017, and then by Ronan Farrow in his New Yorker story published on October 10, 2017. On October 15, 2027, actress Alyssa Milano invited survivors to share their stories on social media with the hashtag #MeToo, channeling Burke’s activism from years before.

Burke founded the “me too.” movement in 2006. She later founded ‘me too.’ International, and, in 2020, along with other activists, Burke’s organization created the Survivors’ Agenda, an international collective designed to provide resources, support and connection to survivors of sexual abuse. Burke has continued her “me too.” activism to this day, nationally and internationally.

Awakening by Rachel B. Vogelstein and Meighan Stone

Awakening starts with a forward by Burke reflecting on the proliferation of the #MeToo movement across the globe. The chapters in Awakening then focus on seven different countries – Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, and Tunisia – and their #MeToo movement. As Burke reflects in her Foreword, “In parts of the globe where #MeToo is seen as a form of treason, where legal systems fail women over and over again, where ‘sex for grades’ is accepted as part of life, where standing up for women’s rights is dangerous, where survivors face crushing stigma, and even in places the world views as feminist utopias, the activists in this book are expanding the definition of courage.”

In Brazil – where women face the highest risk of femicide in the region, and one of the highest in the world – famed activist Marielle Franco bravely advocated for justice and reform throughout the country (on a variety of topics) and helped launch the #MeuPrimeroAssedio (“My First Harassment”) movement before her tragic assassination in 2018. The authors note: “Marielle’s brazen assassination was meant to send a message. Although the crime remains unsolved as of this writing, investigators suspect that the shooters were militia members linked to right-wing political leaders who opposed her platform. Her killing was intended to silence her – and other progressive women assuming political power and demanding reform across Brazil.”

In Tunisia and Egypt, #MeToo activists navigated a sociopolitical climate largely impacted by the 2010 Arab Spring pro-democracy protests, looking to one another for momentum and inspiration. In Tunisia, a thirty-three-year-old PhD student became a moderator for the #EnaZeda (#MeToo) Facebook page, where writers would publicly accuse famed École Normale Supérieure professor Aymen Hacen before filing a formal complaint against him with the Ministry of Education. In Egypt, a lawyer named Mozn Hassan was repeatedly targeted and surveilled by an authoritarian regime because of feminist advocacy and her support of the #AnaKaman (#MeToo) movement: “Mozn joined a coalition of women’s groups to change Egypt’s penal code and successfully helped lobby for the first law ever to allow Egyptian women to charge their harassers and face them in court.”

In Nigeria – where one in four girls will experience sexual violence before turning 20 – freelance journalist and survivor Kiki Mordi created a documentary Sex for Grades (which aired on BBC African in 2019), interviewing scores of women who had experienced quid pro quo harassment at various universities across the country. Mordi focused on investigating a specific phenomenon in universities, while also capturing Nigeria’s larger “ArewaMeToo” movement. In a 2020 interview with the authors, Mordi said, “The first push may not necessarily jolt everyone to go out and do something, but one of these stories will definitely touch one more person. And one day, it will be enough.”

In China, in response to proliferation of the #MeToo movement online, former doctoral candidate Luo Xixi named her former professor and harasser, famed academic Chen Xiaowu, online after 13 years of silence. Xixi became the first Chinese woman to out herself publicly by name while also naming her assailant, an incredible landmark in a system in which the media had long refused to report on anonymous allegations. This connected Xixi to other feminist activists who worked together (navigating China’s complicated laws on technology, free expression, and censorship) to encourage other women to come forward with their stories. To escape censorship, women used a picture of a bowl of rice (pronounced “mi”) and a bunny (pronounced “tu”) to represent the #MeToo hashtag, which had already been banned. In response to this movement, China announced in November 2018 proposed changes to its civil code that would, for the very first time, define and prohibit sexual harassment in the workplace. At the same time, the Ministry of Education issued new guidelines for teachers and professors, with harsh consequences for sexual harassment.

In Sweden, actress Cissi Wallen, upon reading the various #MeToo stories in October 2017, went public with her own story of harassment and abuse at the hands of famed Swedish journalist Fredrik Virtanen. Shortly thereafter, Caroline Snellman, a top Stockholm lawyer, encouraged members of the legal community to post their stories anonymously, to emphasize the systemic nature of this problem in Sweden’s legal industry. Social media became an indispensable tool for #MeToo activists and survivors in Sweden: at the time, Sweden – a country often thought of as a feminist utopia – had stringent journalistic guidelines prohibiting the media from naming alleged perpetrators prior to a legal conviction. In December 2019, two years after Wallen went public with her accusations, she was found guilty of defamation by the Swedish courts. Schellman, too, has continued to receive hate mail and threats. The authors note, “The progress that women in Sweden have made is substantial… But the personal costs for those who put their physical safety, professional reputations, families, and mental health at risk are substantial as well… Despite the consequences that Cissi faced, she paved the way for women across Sweden to raise their voices.”

In Pakistan, singer and actress Meesha Shafi accused actor Ali Zafar of harassment: “Meesha was the first famous Pakistani woman to make public allegations against another leading celebrity.” After Shafi’s tweet, several other women quickly came forward with their own allegations against Zafar. As with the activists in Sweden (and everywhere across the globe), Shafi soon after begun facing death threats, and ultimately a defamation suit by Zafar.

In the Afterword of the book, the authors also discuss the contemporaneous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the women’s movement, showcasing an image of an Argentinian woman wearing a face mask while protesting at the height of Argentina’s “NiUnaMenos (“Not One Less”) movement; and at the very end of the book, the authors include several pages listing organizations across the world that readers can contribute to in support of the global #MeToo movement.

Ultimately, this book gives readers a small glimpse into the astounding proliferation of the #MeToo movement across the globe, while encouraging readers and activists to persist, even in the face of backlash. Indeed, throughout the book, the authors argue that the strong backlash to the movement that many countries have experienced, including the U.S., is evidence of the movement’s impact and the changing cultural norms with regards to women’s rights across the globe.

Conclusion

Over the course of the next several months, I will be focusing on #MeToo books from around the world, including Japan, South Korea, England, the U.S., Argentina, Mexico, The Gambia, Nigeria, New Zealand, France, Iran, and more. As discussed above, my posts from June 2025 introduced this topic from a generalized perspective, connecting more abstract themes of gossip to the issue of sexual harassment, and analyzing a fictional representation of sexual harassment in the workplace. The books that follow in this series will focus more heavily on the nonfiction impact of the global #MeToo movement in different countries across the globe.

In my subsequent posts, I will feature some novels (as with my next two posts on English novels); however, I will also incorporate significant nonfiction references particular to each country’s #MeToo movement. Many of the books I’ve selected are memoires (such as Rose McGowan’s Brave; and Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life), nonfiction accounts of investigative journalism (such as Virginia Trioli’s Generation F; and Olusegun Adeniyi’s Naked Abuse: Sex for Grades in African Universities), a combination of the two (such as Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries; and Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill), or novels that ultimately came to represent (or interrogate) their country’s #MeToo movement (such as Kim Jiyougn, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo; and Cher Connard by Virginie Despentes).

[1] Burke’s daughter Kaia Naadira is non-binary and uses they/them pronounces. Throughout the book, Burke uses “they/them” when referring to her child in the present, and refers to them as a girl (she/her) when talking about the past, especially as she discusses the anxieties of raising a daughter in the context of her work combatting sexual violence.