Metoo Movement Quotes

“Never let anyone touch your private parts, they’d say. But I wasn’t told why I had to protect my private parts, just that it was imperative that I did. Because of this, when I thought of my experience, I didn’t hold my abusers accountable—I held myself to blame. In my mind, they didn’t abuse me. I broke the rules. I was the one who did something wrong.”
― Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

“The women of Juarez, and women across the world, do not want to have to take revenge, any more than Procne and Philomela did. What they want is to be able to rely on the modern gods -- the police, the courts, and the media -- for justice.”
― Helen Morales, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

“Everything is a product of its time, and the whole point of progress is to make the future better than the present. People make mistakes, and people grow, and culture grows along with them.”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming

“One of the most astounding and telling features of the Women's March and the #MeToo movement is that they both illustrate how many angry women it takes to generate public response.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Women have been using their ‘womanly wiles’ to influence male’s behavior for thousands of years. Why are they suddenly crying foul after they receive favor from those same men, some even decades before? They knew what they were doing from the start but had no problem accepting the benefits from those influential men. Why do women feel like they have the right to make outrageous claims of sexual harassment against men while destroying careers, businesses, and families with no repercussions?”
― Jane Whitaker

“It’s long overdue that we expose this behavior and create environments where everyone feels safe and can be productive at work.”
― Mikaela Kiner, Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace

“We want Harvey Weinstein in prison. We want Brock Turner to have a longer sentence. We want Judge Aquilina to sign Nassar’s death warrant. We rely on a third party to take these ‘bad men’ away, usually in the form of an institution or the state. And this White Knight or Angry Dad is patriarchy personified. This is how our outraged activism fails to dismantle the intersecting systems of heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism that produce sexual violence – and strengthens them instead.”
― Alison Phipps

“A LITTLE SONG AND A RECEIPT.

Doe: a deer, a female deer—
Often chased by sonneteers of old.
Caught, and killed, and bathed in fear,
turned to human blazons to be sold—

Eyes—$twin models of the stars.
Skin—$fine tissue wrought from gold.
Lips—$your favorite kind of flower.
Sex—$a secret still untold/ a Silk Road to unfold/ a thing for you to mold/ a source by you controlled.

Total: $—————.—”
― Seo-Young Chu, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018

“Our daily routines influence the lives of people and animals halfway across the world, and some personal gestures can unexpectedly set the entire world ablaze, as happened with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring, and with the women who shared their stories of sexual harassment and sparked the #MeToo movement.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Maybe community creates courage. What if courage creates community? Maybe empathy creates courage. How can you express empathy towards others if you can’t empathize with your own self? Is the core of healing empathy and courage?”
― Tarana Burke, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

“以不变应万变。不变的是我的 honesty，decency，integrity；万变的是小人们的变化多端的谎言，狡诈，诡计。”
― Qizhi Chen, Biomaterials: A Basic Introduction

“The response to naming and shaming is often what I call ‘institutional airbrushing’: neoliberal institutions and organisations obsessed with how things look rather than how they are merely remove the ‘blemish’ that has been exposed.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“This is mainstream sexual violence activism in a capitalist context. We ‘invest’ our trauma in networked media markets, to generate outrage and the visibility we need to further our cause. Cynical media corporations exploit this outrage, building visibility for their brands through clicks, likes and shares by encouraging audiences to consume our pain. Meanwhile the threat of damage, through widespread outrage, to the brands of exposed institutions and organisations leads to a purging of ‘bad men’ from high-profile sectors. These individuals may well move on to start all over again, while dysfunctional systems are left intact. Although this is not our intention, this seems more like NIMBYism to me than radical political action. Although this is not our intention, I’m afraid this is the ‘Me, Not You’ of political whiteness.”
― Alison Phipps, Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

“Sometimes I dream that his rare book collection
Is made of all “his” women turned to fiction.”
― Seo-Young Chu, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018

“MUTANT BLAZON

My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
To look at them will mean that I go blind.
His mouth beside my ear—they form a gun.
Each breath: a bullet targeting my mind.

My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
His throat: a fist to silence mine designed.
His reason: a ventriloquist’s illusion.
No tenor in the end could hearing find.

My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Too close for any vessel with a mind.
Survive or get to die—that is the question.
No longer have I any will to mind.

My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Not dead, not living, neither keen nor blind;
A daily haunting; memory rebegun;
Disaster in some future undivined.

I write, rewrite, a “sonnet” about rape
To hunt that voice I wish I could escape.”
― Seo-Young Chu, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018

“.. I want you to be scared of being alone with strange women like I'm scared of being alone with strange men.”
― Amy Gentry, Last Woman Standing

“In October 2017, bombshell reporting from the New York Times and The New Yorker revealed that dozens of women, including high-profile actresses, had accused top film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The number of Weinstein accusers would eventually total more than eighty, with accusations that stretched back thirty years. Ten days after the story broke, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Within twenty-four hours, more than 12 million social-media posts referenced #MeToo, and the viral social feminism campaign soon spread across eighty-five countries. Alyssa Milano quickly credited the phrase “#MeToo” to its originator, the activist Tarana Burke, who coined the phrase in 2006 as a way to raise awareness and promote solidarity among women of color who’d suffered sexual assault.”
― Kelly Loudenberg, Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine

“As more brands and corporations hurried to hop on the #MeToo train, they changed their messaging to raise awareness about issues concerning women. Nike launched the “Until We All Win” campaign to promote gender equality and empowerment. The condom brands Durex and Trojan focused their ad campaigns on sexual consent and sexual assault. Twitter bought its first-ever television ad during the 2018 Oscars, a sixty-second black-and-white spot focused on female empowerment and promoting a newly minted hashtag: #HereWeAre. Now these corporate brands could be concerned and “active,” without directly and materially addressing the systemic issues plaguing women, like poverty and healthcare.”
― Kelly Loudenberg, Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine

“The first draft of the op-ed was generated by ACLU Communications Strategist Robin Shulman, who sent it to Amber and her team for review. Robin wrote Amber in an email, “I tried to gather your fire and rage and interesting analysis and shape that into op-ed form—with mentions of a few policies and a growing movement. I hope it sounds true to you.” She continued, “Your lawyer should review this for the way I skirted around talking about your marriage.” Earlier drafts included the words “restraining order,” “marriage,” and “divorce,” which were later scrapped. Eventually, the team settled on these eleven fateful words: “Two years ago I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
― Kelly Loudenberg, Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine