[2018 feels like
it’s been about ten years in one, but it’s almost done, so this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of the biggest stories from the year that was. I’d love
to hear your year in review thoughts as well!]
On two
historical applications of the contemporary activist movement.
As illustrated
by nearly all of its most prominent cases to date, the #MeToo movement
has focused at least as much on the past as on the present. That is, while of
course disgraced
offenders like Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Louis
C.K., Kevin Spacey, and many others remain very much with us in the present
(often in evolving and particularly
complicated ways), their cases have tended to address actions and assaults
from the past, sometimes indeed the quite
distant past. I’m not suggesting in any way that their timing makes the
allegations any less serious or significant—even if there are at times legal
statutes of limitations on pursuing these accusations through the justice
system, the social and cultural conversations and responses need to occur in
any case—but rather noting that as much as this movement feels specifically illustrative
of our own moment, it has at least as much to tell us about historical periods
and contexts.
If we take that
lesson to heart, we can also extend #MeToo to help us think about other
historical periods and figures as well. I wrote about one such historical
application in
my second piece for my Saturday Evening Post Considering
History column (itself one of my
favorite things about my own 2018), on the #MeToo movement that helped
launch the Montgomery bus boycott and the Civil Rights Movement. (For more, see
this We’re History column and this
great book by historian Danielle McGuire.) This is a bit of a tricky
comparison, as the current #MeToo movement has been frequently and to my mind rightly
accused of minimizing the experiences and voices of women of color. But one
clear way to challenge those narratives would be to note a historical example
like this one, when women of color led their own #MeToo movement to counter
histories of sexual assault and violence, histories in which both race and gender
intersected. Perhaps that example can help us think further about the
intersections (as well as the differences) between race and gender (among
other identity categories) in our own moment’s unfolding #MeToo histories.
As I wrote about
in this
Fall preview post, there’s another thread of #MeToo accusations, the kind directed
at figures like Junot Díaz and (especially) Sherman
Alexie. As far as I know, Alexie isn’t accused of sexual assault or even
harassment exactly, so much as having used his clout to keep Native American
women writers from advancing in their own careers (or to make them dependent on
him for any such advancement). That might seem far less significant than
assault allegations, and of course any and all such situations should be seen
as part of a spectrum, rather than necessarily parallel to one another. But if
we examine the historical cases of women who were never able to advance or
succeed in their chosen careers due to sexism and oppression—women like the groundbreaking
architect Sophia Hayden, for example—we can begin to understand both what
such treatment meant to these women and the broader societal loss effected by
their absence. One more way to think about the historical legacies and lessons
of the 2018 #MeToo movement.
Next reflection
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? 2018 reflections you’d share?
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