The “me too” hashtag has been sweeping the world for the past couple of days, and oxygen.ie are here to tell you everything you need to know about it.
The aim of the hashtag has been to encourage women to speak up if they have been sexually harassed, and it has come about after the sexual harrasment allegations of Harvey Weinstein. It all started with a tweet on Sunday night by “charmed” actress Alyssa Milano, who said “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet”.
Within 20 minutes, the tweet had gotten 10,000 replies, and that has risen to 67K, as of today.
Milano has described the whole thing as “overwhelming”. She told told reporters “I feel like the time was right for this to happen and the fact that I could be a vessel to create change is really special”.
Men have also been using the hashtag to show support to women and to reveal their own incidents of abuse too.
A long list of celebrities have shown their support to the tweet, including:
- Lady Gaga
- Monica Lewinsky
- Debra Messing
- Gabrielle Union
- Anna Paquin
- Patricia Arquette
- Rosario Dawson
- Rachel Wood
- America Ferrea
- Bjork
- Sheryl Crow
- Gillian Anderson
- Rosario Dawson
- Selma Blair
- Labour MP Stella Creasy
The point of the tweet was to get numbers to a point where sexual assault could no longer be ignored, and Milano has said she “wanted to take the focus off the predator and put it back on the victim”.
Bestselling Irish author, Louise O’Neill, also posted on instagram to show her support for the hashtag. She wrote “The Me Too movement has shown how devastatingly common sexual assault and harassment is.”
At oxygen.ie, we feel this kind of social media campaign can be a powerful way to draw attention to an issue, and we hopes to see concrete change as a result.