Photo: Lauren St Clair/The Phoenix

Brie Welton, Editor in Chief of the student newspaper The Phoenix at UBC Okanagan, had the opportunity to interview Me Too movement founder Tarana Burke. Here is an edited version of their conversation.

The original Me Too movement began, not with the hashtag, but 12 years ago as a grassroots campaign founded by activist Tarana Burke. The campaign was borne out of a need in underprivileged communities for sexual assault support for survivors, particularly African American women and girls. 

The phrase went viral in 2017, in the wake of sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, when actor Alyssa Milano tweeted an invitation for survivors to comment “#metoo.” 

Time named Burke Person of the Year in 2017 for her efforts. 

Burke spoke at UBCO on Thursday and also at Kelowna Community Theatre.

Where is the Me Too movement going from here? 

It’s a movement to support survivors. It is a movement to make sure survivors have resources... Make sure that people recognize, survivors mostly, recognize that they have the power to do the work to end sexual violence. And a lot of that is around cultural shift, a different understanding of our role to end sexual violence, and also our role in relating to each other in that work. And that’s a big order. That can’t happen from just the internet… That takes different kinds of people, working together… That’s what we’re doing in a big way. Our work is really about shifting the narrative… it’s around providing resources and connecting individual survivors to resources they may or may not have known existed – and if they did know existed, didn’t know how to access them. 

There is a plan being made to work with Hollywood writers to address how they handle sexual abuse on screen. What does this plan entail?

Being a part of productions, whether their scripted or unscripted... all conversations around sexual violence. It’s shaping how they talk about it. Whether it’s changing the language from victim to survivor, or it is having depictions of sexual violence or telling stories that haven’t been told, Surviving R. Kelly is an example of that, it’s a story that we couldn’t get told for 20 years, until now.... I think folks have only just scratched the surface of what the reality of sexual violence is. So that’s why that work is important. Pop culture is everywhere, people are consumed by it. So using it to our advantage as a way to broaden our message.

If you could give advice to a survivor of sexual assault who isn’t comfortable coming forward yet, what would that be?  

Don’t be pressured into doing it. The timing around saying me too or telling your story is your own, and there’s nobody who can advise you better than your own instincts. And I think that’s an important message for survivors, because a lot times what happens as a result of the violence is that you don’t trust your instincts, and you don’t trust your decision making. But when you lose the right to make a decision about your own body, every decision you make after that becomes that much more important. And that decision includes whether you tell your story or not.... Don't feel like you have to tell your story in order for it to be valid, and telling your story also can look a lot of different ways. It doesn’t mean doing it publicly, it doesn’t mean doing it on social media. It could mean writing it in your journal, telling a family friend. But do it in your own time, be incredibly gentle with yourself, and know that the resources are here for you when the time comes.