Me Too is a movement not a moment Tarana Burke
I’ve been trying to figure out
what I was going to say here for months.
Because there’s no bigger stage than TED,
it felt like getting my message right
in this moment
was more important than anything.
And so I searched and searched
for days on end,
trying to find the right
configuration of words.
And although intellectually,
I could bullet point the big ideas
that I wanted to share about Me Too
and this movement that I founded,
I kept finding myself
falling short of finding the heart.
I wanted to pour myself into this moment
and tell you why even the possibility
of healing or interrupting sexual violence
was worth standing and fighting for.
I wanted to rally you to your feet
with an uplifting speech
about the important work of fighting
for the dignity and humanity of survivors.
But I don’t know if I have it.
The reality is,
after soldiering through
the Supreme Court nomination process
and attacks from the White House,
gross mischaracterizations,
internet trolls
and the rallies and marches
and heart-wrenching testimonies,
I’m faced with my own hard truth.
I’m numb.
And I’m not surprised.
I’ve traveled all across
the world giving talks,
and like clockwork, after every event,
more than one person approaches me
so that they can
say their piece in private.
And I always tried to reassure them.
You know, I’d give them local resources
and a soft reassurance
that they’re not alone
and this is their movement, too.
I’d tell them that we’re stronger together
and that this is a movement
of survivors and advocates
doing things big and small every day.
And more and more people
are joining this movement
every single day.
That part is clear.
People are putting
their bodies on the line
and raising their voices to say,
“Enough is enough.”
So why do I feel this way?
Well …
Someone with credible accusations
of sexual violence against him
was confirmed to the Supreme Court
of the United States of America,
again.
The US President,
who was caught on tape talking
about how he can grab women’s body parts
wherever he wants, however he wants,
can call a survivor a liar
at one of his rallies,
and the crowds will roar.
And all across the world,
where Me Too has taken off,
Australia and France,
Sweden, China and now India,
survivors of sexual violence
are all at once being heard
and then vilified.
And I’ve read article
after article bemoaning …
wealthy white men
who have landed softly
with their golden parachutes,
following the disclosure
of their terrible behavior.
And we’re asked to consider their futures.
But what of survivors?
This movement is constantly
being called a watershed moment,
or even a reckoning,
but I wake up some days feeling
like all evidence points to the contrary.
It’s hard not to feel numb.
I suspect some of you may feel numb, too.
But let me tell you what else I know.
Sometimes when you hear the word “numb,”
you think of a void,
an absence of feelings,
or even the inability to feel.
But that’s not always true.
Numbness can come from those memories
that creep up in your mind
that you can’t fight off
in the middle of the night.
They can come from the tears
that are locked behind your eyes
that you won’t give yourself
permission to cry.
For me, numbness comes
from looking in the face of survivors
and knowing everything to say
but having nothing left to give.
It’s measuring the magnitude
of this task ahead of you
versus your own wavering fortitude.
Numbness is not always
the absence of feeling.
Sometimes it’s
an accumulation of feelings.
And as survivors,
we often have to hold
the truth of what we experience.
But now, we’re all holding something,
whether we want to or not.
Our colleagues are speaking up
and speaking out,
industries across the board
are reexamining workplace culture,
and families and friends
are having hard conversations
about closely held truths.
Everybody is impacted.
And then, there’s the backlash.
We’ve all heard it.
“The Me Too Movement is a witch hunt.”
Right?
“Me Too is dismantling due process.”
Or, “Me Too has created a gender war.”
The media has been consistent
with headline after headline
that frames this movement in ways
that make it difficult
to move our work forward,
and right-wing pundits and other critics
have these talking points
that shift the focus away from survivors.
So suddenly, a movement
that was started to support
all survivors of sexual violence
is being talked about
like it’s a vindictive plot against men.
And I’m like, “Huh?”
(Laughter)
How did we get here?
We have moved so far away
from the origins of this movement
that started a decade ago,
or even the intentions of the hashtag
that started just a year ago,
that sometimes, the Me Too movement
that I hear some people talk about
is unrecognizable to me.
But be clear:
This is a movement
about the one in four girls
and the one in six boys
who are sexually assaulted every year
and carry those wounds into adulthood.
It’s about the 84 percent of trans women
who will be sexually assaulted this year
and the indigenous women
who are three-and-a-half times
more likely to be sexually assaulted
than any other group.
Or people with disabilities,
who are seven times more likely
to be sexually abused.
It’s about the 60 percent
of black girls like me
who will be experiencing
sexual violence before they turn 18,
and the thousands and thousands
of low-wage workers
who are being sexually harassed right now
on jobs that they can’t afford to quit.
This is a movement about
the far-reaching power of empathy.
And so it’s about the millions
and millions of people
who, one year ago,
raised their hands to say, “Me too,”
and their hands are still raised
while the media
that they consume erases them
and politicians who they elected
to represent them
pivot away from solutions.
It’s understandable that the push-pull
of this unique, historical moment
feels like an emotional roller-coaster
that has rendered many of us numb.
This accumulation of feelings
that so many of us are experiencing
together, across the globe,
is collective trauma.
But …
it is also the first step
towards actively building a world
that we want right now.
What we do with this thing
that we’re all holding
is the evidence that this
is bigger than a moment.
It’s the confirmation
that we are in a movement.
And the most powerful movements
have always been built
around what’s possible,
not just claiming what is right now.
Trauma halts possibility.
Movement activates it.
Dr. King famously quoted
Theodore Parker saying,
“The arc of the moral universe is long,
and it bends toward justice.”
We’ve all heard this quote.
But somebody has to bend it.
The possibility that we create
in this movement and others
is the weight leaning that arc
in the right direction.
Movements create possibility,
and they are built on vision.
My vision for the Me Too Movement
is a part of a collective vision
to see a world free of sexual violence,
and I believe we can build that world.
Full stop.
But in order to get there,
we have to dramatically shift
a culture that propagates the idea
that vulnerability
is synonymous with permission
and that bodily autonomy
is not a basic human right.
In other words, we have to dismantle
the building blocks of sexual violence:
power and privilege.
So much of what we hear
about the Me Too Movement
is about individual bad actors
or depraved, isolated behavior,
and it fails to recognize
that anybody in a position of power
comes with privilege,
and it renders those without that power
more vulnerable.
Teachers and students,
coaches and athletes,
law enforcement and citizen,
parent and child:
these are all relationships that can have
an incredible imbalance of power.
But we reshape that imbalance
by speaking out against it in unison
and by creating spaces
to speak truth to power.
We have to reeducate ourselves
and our children
to understand that power and privilege
doesn’t always have to destroy and take –
it can be used to serve and build.
And we have to reeducate ourselves
to understand that, unequivocally,
every human being has the right
to walk through this life
with their full humanity intact.
Part of the work of the Me Too Movement
is about the restoration
of that humanity for survivors,
because the violence
doesn’t end with the act.
The violence is also the trauma
that we hold after the act.
Remember, trauma halts possibility.
It serves to impede,
stagnate, confuse and kill.
So our work rethinks
how we deal with trauma.
For instance, we don’t believe
that survivors should tell the details
of their stories all the time.
We shouldn’t have to perform
our pain over and over again
for the sake of your awareness.
We also try to teach survivors
to not lean into their trauma,
but to lean into the joy
that they curate in their lives instead.
And if you don’t find it,
create it and lean into that.
But when your life
has been touched by trauma,
sometimes trying to find joy
feels like an insurmountable task.
Now imagine trying to complete that task
while world leaders
are discrediting your memories
or the news media
keeps erasing your experience,
or people continuously
reduce you to your pain.
Movement activates possibility.
There’s folklore in my family,
like most black folks,
about my great-great-grandaddy,
Lawrence Ware.
He was born enslaved,
his parents were enslaved,
and he had no reason to believe
that a black man in America
wouldn’t die a slave.
And yet,
legend has it that when he was freed
by his enslavers,
he walked from Georgia to South Carolina
so that he could find the wife and child
that he was separated from.
And every time I hear this story,
I think to myself,
“How could he do this?
Wasn’t he afraid that he would be captured
and killed by white vigilantes,
or he would get there
and they would be gone?”
And so I asked my grandmother once
why she thought
that he took this journey up,
and she said,
“I guess he had to believe
it was possible.”
I have been propelled by possibility
for most of my life.
I am here because somebody,
starting with my ancestors,
believed I was possible.
In 2006, 12 years ago,
I laid across a mattress on my floor
in my one-bedroom apartment,
frustrated with all the sexual violence
that I saw in my community.
I pulled out a piece of paper,
and I wrote “Me Too” on the top of it,
and I proceeded
to write out an action plan
for building a movement
based on empathy between survivors
that would help us feel like we can heal,
that we weren’t the sum total
of the things that happened to us.
Possibility is a gift, y’all.
It births new worlds,
and it births visions.
I know some of y’all are tired,
because I’m tired.
I’m exhausted,
and I’m numb.
Those who came before us
didn’t win every fight,
but they didn’t let it kill their vision.
It fueled it.
So I can’t stop,
and I’m asking you not to stop either.
We owe future generations
a world free of sexual violence.
I believe we can build that world.
Do you?
Thank you.
(Applause)