DNA Edit: Empowering women

The Harvey Weinstein scandal rocked Hollywood and, by extension, the world, and continues to produce aftershocks with more damning revelations.

In the wake of the furore, actor Alyssa Jayne Milano birthed a movement on Sunday with a simple but powerful tweet: If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet. It opened a floodgate of pent-up emotions, revealing heart-wrenching and brutal stories of exploitation, mostly from women, who have had to put up with sexual harassment and assault from people in positions of power.

The dominant emotion was that of rage, an acute feeling of frustration at not being able to stand up to perpetrators and hold them accountable for actions punishable by law. These accusations are as old as civilisation, because patriarchal societies, across geographies, have always forced women into silence.

The normalisation of sexual violence has attained such a degree that rarely does it trigger a popular discourse. #MeToo is trying to change that. In just 24 hours, the hashtag had been tweeted nearly half a million times. Facebook, too, saw a remarkable surge in posts, uniting victims against a common injustice. #MeToo was unusually cathartic because silence has exploded into a rallying cry.

Men, who are sympathetic to the cause, have now realised how widespread the scourge is, and how they, in myriad ways contributed to it. Now #SoDoneChilling, with men coming out in support of women and acknowledging their crime, is trending alongside #MeToo. Though #MeToo has spread like wildfire, it is confined to a population which has access to technology. Imagine the plight of those helpless women who do not have the means to reach out and express their anguish. Their numbers run into millions, if not crores.