POWERED BY THE HASHTAG
Time’s Person of the Year was brought to you in part by the hashtag, which also helped the movement #MeToo, creating a groundswell of change
It’s been quite a year for Twitter’s hashtag. It turned 10 over the summer. Now the women — helped along by a hashtag — who have set off a cultural reckoning over sexual harassment have been named Time’s person of the year.
The magazine on Wednesday named “The Silence Breakers” 2017’s person of the year. They’re the women who have spoken up and brought about the downfall of powerful men, from tech executives to politicians, journalists, movie stars and moguls. The hashtag that helped the movement, #MeToo, has put sexual harassment and assault front and center — online and offline.
The Silence Breakers beat other high-profile newsmakers such as President Donald Trump, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for the honor, which dates back to 1927 and started with a different name: “Man of the Year.”
One of the women Silence Breakers on Time magazine’s cover is well known in Silicon Valley: Susan Fowler, the former Uber engineer, published a blog post in February that touched off a series of events culminating in Uber CEO Travis Kalanick being forced out over the summer. She complained in the blog post that Uber had done nothing when she reported an allegation of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Fowler’s post went viral and helped other women realize “there are other ways to effect change than through the legal process or HR,” said Deborah Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland professor of law at Stanford University, Wednesday. “It signaled to the watching world that women have other ways to make their voices heard.”
Twitter said Wednesday that there have been more than 3.2 million tweets about #MeToo, which began to trend in mid-October after reports about sexual harassment and assault accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
At the time, Facebook said 4.7 million of its users took part in the “me too” conversation on the social network in 24 hours.
“It signaled to the watching world that women have other ways to make their voices heard.” — Deborah Rhode, Ernest W. McFarland professor of law at Stanford University
The #MeToo hashtag was popularized in October by actress Alyssa Milano, who encouraged women to reply “me, too” if they had been sexually harassed or assaulted. The phrase was coined more than a decade ago by activist Tarana Burke, a survivor of sexual assault who has long worked on the issue, especially with young girls. Burke is now reportedly working on a documentary titled “Me Too.”
“What the viral campaign did is, it creates hope. It creates inspiration,” Burke said in an interview with the Washington Post in October.
Milano reacted to Time magazine’s recognition of the movement Wednesday on Twitter, adding another hashtag: “#BreakTheSilence.”
Hashtag activism — sometimes known as “clicktivism” — gets its share of criticism for being too easy for people to do online and not really bringing about any real change. But hashtags such as #ArabSpring, #BringBackOurGirls and #BlackLivesMatter have sparked revolutions or prompted widespread discussions about tough and controversial issues.
The #MeToo movement tells
women they have both an opportunity to tell journalists their tales or just to post about the topic themselves, Stanford’s Rhode said.
Still, Rhode said, “I worry somewhat about trial by internet. We need to worry about due process.”
Recent developments in the wake of #MeToo include the ousters or resignations of journalists Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey and longtime Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan.
The latest issue of Time magazine features five women, including Fowler, actress Ashley Judd, singer Taylor Swift, lobbyist Adama Iwu and Isabel Pascual, a strawberry picker and Mexican immigrant whose name was changed to protect her identity. The arm of a sixth woman is on the cover, too, but her face isn’t shown in the frame. Time said she represents “those who are not yet able to come forward and reveal their identities.”
Prior to this year, only a handful of women had been chosen as the magazine’s person of the year, including Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, Germany’s Angela Merkel and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino.