#Metoo Movement: Socially Progressive Movement?

For those who have heard #Metoo for the first time or have no clue about it, #Metoo is basically a movement against sexual harassment and assault. It became viral in October 2017 globally as a hashtag (on social media) to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual harassment and assault at workplace. The purpose of the movement is to help people come up and confidently vocal about if they have ever been harassed or assaulted.

After Millions of people started using this hashtag, it was translated into dozens of languages, reached majority of countries and cultures and once again people started generating different meaning of #Metoo, sometimes different or sometimes opposite of what the movement already started over. Recently it had a wave in Pakistan especially when Misha Shafi spoke about Ali Zafar under the hashtag #Metoo.

Several people gave different opinions over every #Metoo expression. Some supported them for being confident enough to finally be able to speak about it where as there were people who went totally against the expression and some chose to remain neutral. I was asked occasionally about my opinion as a person, as a female and then as a psychologist. Recently, while submitting my research proposal to my professor for Domestic Violence, i read several theories which shed light on this perspective. Then finally, Saad my dear young friend made sure i express my opinion about it. I, in the following article is not taking anyone's side but rather putting up different paradigms to view about the movement holistically around the globe.

Why the #Metoo movement spread like a wildfire globally?

#Metoo is deeply rooted with an explosive expression to "Stop it" (It: harassment/assault). Any explosive material may it be a linguistic expression is not supposed to remain silent or can not be silenced. The movement encouraged and activated the suppressed voices of sexually harassed or assaulted. Every #Metoo kept on strengthening its own platform as "someone telling story of someone". The expression expressed everything which did not actually include everything for instance the details of what happened, what could not or should have happened, conclusively hiding the other side of the coin. 

It made #Metoo movement seems rather reckless, and seems not to go ahead till "me" become "we" and "too" become "twos" as #Wetwos- because wetwos gave the expression the intensity, making it evolving immensely. It took people like me in awe of its evolving power including its social aspect, existential aspect as well as political and ethical. Little bit of Sociology i studied and it took me back to feminism movement when it started. Shall we conclude #Metoo movement as progressive social movement or re-enabling the political abuse of power or unethical means of speaking, defending, attacking, counter attacking? There are people who are trying to stop the movement under the reason that its plainly irrational since it provides a room for simple bargaining or bullying their way out of problems.

And then my mind wanders over the question of its lasting duration and durability. The collectivism which is igniting every corner of the earth, how do we go about it? Supporting those who are expressive about their previously suppressed harassment or assault and contribute to the movement? And how to contribute to movement by being vocal ourself and stuffing words and words? Remember, when wave of terrorism hit us as aftermath of US-Afghan war how conscious we were and later on became so numb that if one part of the city has a suicide attack, the rest of the city goes about in its routine. What if stuffing words and words to this movement end up numbing us? What if this kind of contribution which is the only contribution i can see right now end up in putting fire out?

#Metoo as "Me" and "Too"?

The word "me" holds a one way perspective where it universally represents person in context and ignoring the environment. This structure of power which attempts to voice interpersonal injustice, intimate or impersonal, ranging from apparently debatable expression to simply shocking. Where as too in #Metoo is the affirmation supplementing a vocal position and associative identification. However, the question is rather simple why is it me and not I? If the movement targets which seems likely that it does target the self-awakening among the harassed and assaulted then where is the "I" that responds in them? The "I" of those who are genuine victims of abuse, rape and violence, where "Me" re-silence their nameless voices, which makes me wonder about this majority that still remain to chose silent actively or passively. Is it the duplicated minority which speaks in #Metoo as "me" and "I" demands an attention to such "darker" sides of another "me".

The Hollywood and The other Media Stars

When Ashley Judd, Jennifer Lawrence and now Misha Shafi (and the rest thousand others) spoke up, I had few questions myself. What accounts for sexual difference? what a sexual relationship is? what do two people do with one another behind closed doors? If for instance, Sigmund Freud is right that search for origins of these questions will end up in the middle of sexual research with nothing but grief then, answer to these questions is basically a ladder of grief, with more grief when it comes to sexual violation. Freud in his attempt to answer these questions concludes that every sexual violation which shock us, and in an attempt to know more about it: we give ourselves the space to have the answer on its own, in our own time, in our lives where we ourselves play with wishes and encounter our own selfishly pleasant desires. If we relate selfish pleasant desires of violation and power to this #Metoo movement, it haunts me to the fact that there might be people bullying the other in an attempt to escape their problems, abusing power of their own gender-commonality. 

The powerful figures of media may it be artists, singers, actors, actresses, news anchor, hosts etc who spoke under #Metoo movement lead me to another question of sexual violation. It is the media, It is the stage, it is the theatre itself where we get first exposure of the body, of sexual passion, and tell the tales of infatuation and love between men and women. This media becomes more alive, and gets even more rating with the intensity/frequency of the exposed/nudity, forces the response #Metoo, to something we had already joined ourselves to, unwittingly a long time ago. 

May it be morning shows, or a season or a hyped news, all we get is the powerful and painful irony that the media we have subjected to the greatest unveiling, whom we believe we deserve full access to with the crush and harassment or the curse and their taste for invasive rumor, gossip or scandal-Was he cheating on her? Is she raped? Is she pregnant? Are they getting back again? they're definitely not like us? or are they like us?--- This sends the painful reality back to us. This comes from the mouth of those anchor person, hosts or actor/actress who's job is to deceive us because ain't their job a drama? or ain't theatre a drama? The answer to the sexual violation isn't the answer, whatever answer we derive is about the failure of answer which made... Media industry the media industry.

Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Frued) focuses on a world of fantasy that acts as a supplement. The pervasiveness of failure to answer sexual violation highlighted by #Metoo movement as a psychic failure, at the root of anxiety that fuels the backlash that imagines this will be the ruin of men or relationships; the recent suicides of some known men like Robin Williams trends now towards gender segregation? Are not man in ruins too? revolution at what cost? if men are already in ruins, that is where we begin, we not as a me and metoo minus them?

Conclusion:

The movement is about the whole of the difficulties surrounding sex and sexual differences.  It is about the problems of power and power differentials when it comes to any relationship. It's about the dimension of life that invades sexuality and psychology about it and how it deforms, damages them beyond recognition. It is about the most primitive link that can be formed between bodies, voices, between people at differing levels of power and authority along with numerous categories of social identities, social injustices and social inequalities.