Did #MeToo Change Everything or Nothing?

This is a question I have come to ask myself over and over again these last three years. I always think about one statistic when I think about #MeToo— one in every 15 women report that their first sexual experience is rape! Let that sink in for a minute. Did that sink in? That means there are a LOT of women who carry around this tremendous trauma that they don't have permission to talk about. Then #MeToo happened. Thousands of women gave themselves permission to reveal intimate details of their traumatic experiences — often from DECADES ago. Others just affirmed that they understood and had been there too with a simple "me too." This moment was a call to deep reflection and for a few months it seemed like everything could and would finally change.

While women and #MeToo activists felt embolden and kept talking about all the ways in which women were unfairly treated, there were was the quiet backlash brewing. In private conversations the question became more about what are lines between sexual harassment and assault and when was it fair to accuse people online without due process rather than the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault. The commonness of sexual harassment and assault was an old story, and it became boring fast. Meanwhile, men who may have behaved poorly once or twice felt unfairly clumped in with rapists. Bosses began to worry if they might get implicated over an innocent interaction. The case of Al Franken blurred political lines. The same old narratives took over, and we lost track of the basic statistic that I started with. Remember the one where one in 15 women report that their first sexual experience is rape. Or maybe another that 27% of women report some sort of sexual ASSAULT in their lifetime.

I want to believe that after #MeToo there was at least some change. That perhaps as a society we can have the difficult conversations so that my daughter's generation will not be faced with the same statistics. I just worry that we still can't.