#MeToo founder Tamara Burke speaks at SUNY Broome.
Listening to other girls at summer camp share their stories, Heaven seemed poised to speak but unable to insert herself into the conversation.
Tarana Burke, a camp director, knew what was coming the next day when Heaven – not her real name – asked to speak with her the next day. She dodged her for hours, until she was finally corners and the stories she feared came tumbling forth.
“She started pouring out gory details of what happened to her at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend,” remembered Burke, a Bronx native and lifelong civil rights activist. “I’m 22 at this time, and I’m afraid of doing anything wrong. I didn’t say anything.”
Instead, she sent the girl to another counselor – a move that haunted her. Burke, too, had survived sexual violence as a child, but at the time she didn’t have the courage to speak those two transformative words: “Me too.”
Burke has since made it her life’s work to advocate for the survivors of sexual violence and to connect them to the resources they need. Now a senior director of programs for Girls at Gender Equity, Burke has dedicated more than 25 years of her life to social justice and to laying the groundwork for a movement that was initially created to help young women of color who survived sexual abuse and assault.
SUNY Broome welcomed her to campus May 8 for an empowering and moving talk that packed the Baldwin Gym.
“Sexual harassment and sexual assault is not new, but as a result of Me Too, we have a keener sense of its magnitude and its pervasiveness,” said Professor Margherita Rossi, founding member of the SUNY Broome Women’s Institute, which helped bring Burke to campus.
“For Tarana Burke, it’s not about the accolades, it’s about awareness. It’s about listening. It’s about understanding,” Professor Rossi said.
The start of Me Too
Recently featured on the cover of Time magazine as one of the most influential people of 2018, Burke first became involved in battling injustice when she was 15 years old and organized protests in connection with the Central Park jogger case. She found her mission in activism — and also a way to redirect her own energy as a survivor of sexual violence.
In Selma, Alabama, she helped found the “Just Be” program for teen girls, which aimed to ground them in a sense of self-worth. The program expanded to local middle schools, where she discovered that many young girls had experience of sexual violence and abuse. The resources didn’t exist to deal with the problem at either the school or the local rape crisis center, she found to her dismay.
“If I can’t find these resources, what does that mean? When I was 12 or 13, what did I need someone to say?” she said. “I realized: I was the resource. I didn’t have a lot, but I had experience – and Google.”
The first thing the girls needed was language to talk about and thus frame their experience. “We started with language and we started with the idea that healing is possible, that wholeness is possible,” Burke said.
Me Too hit social media in 2006 with a MySpace page – which led to the discovery that adult women also needed resources to deal with sexual abuse. Fast-forward to 2017, when she watched the Me Too movement explode, as women began sharing their stories with the now famous hashtag in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.
“My work was happening right in front of me,” she said. “There is power in knowing that you are not standing there alone.”
She stepped forward – not to claim ownership of the movement, but to offer her help.
Creating a cultural shift
#MeToo founder Tamara Burke receives a standing ovation after her talk at SUNY Broome.
Me Too has the potential to create a cultural shift, but the shift itself hasn’t happened yet, Burke warned. She addressed a number of misconceptions about the movement, especially in the wake of massive media coverage.
“This is not about taking down powerful men and we have to shift that narrative because that’s a dangerous one,” she cautioned.
The movement isn’t limited to sexual harassment in the workplace, although the national conversation has often ended up here; it encompasses all kinds of sexual violence. It’s not just a women’s movement, but also includes men, trans and genderqueer people – all those who identify as survivors of sexual violence. Survivors also aren’t required to share their stories with others; what they share is their own decision.
And Me Too isn’t going anywhere. Some people have proclaimed that they’re already tired of the movement, Burke recounted – and it’s only been six months. There is still a long way to go to achieve that critical cultural shift.
“We are a global community of survivors committed to healing as individuals and as a community,” she said.
Me Too also has to be about more than sharing stories and words; it’s about collective action. Make sure survivors have the resources they need – and ask them, from a place of power and not pity. Get together with your co-workers and review your workplace’s sexual harassment policy. Work toward comprehensive sex education, and teach children about boundaries, consent and respect from a young age. When you find a gap, don’t just lament its existence – work to fill it.
“There is something everybody can do. Find your lane,” she said.
In addition to the Women’s Institute, event co-sponsors include SUNY Broome President Kevin E. Drumm, SUNY Broome’s Division of Student Development and Diversity, Student Activities, Student Assembly, President’s Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, Counseling Services, the Center for Civic Engagement and the Broome Community College Foundation; Binghamton University President Harvey Stenger, BU’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the Binghamton University Center for Civic Engagement and the Student Association of Binghamton University; the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of Central NY; and Democratic Women of Broome County.
The Women’s Institute of SUNY Broome Community College exists to advance women’s Issues through education, research, and local, state, and national outreach in areas of modern day concerns important to women.
