The ‘Me too’ campaign is an initiative that reveals the seriousness of sexual assault by putting a hashtag ‘Me Too’ on social network services such as Facebook. It had helped people confide to others about the sexual assault they have experienced and that it’s not something to hide. The ‘Me too’ campaign was launched when actress Alyssa Milano started tweeting on social network services in October 15, 2017, after Harvey Weinstein, a famous Hollywood producer, was accused of sexual assault. About half a milion people re-tweeted and upported ‘Me too’ campaign and 80,000 people hashtagged ‘Me too’ and reveal their sexual assault experience.
In Korea, Seo ji hyeon, a prosecutor at Changwun-Tongyeong local police center, appeared in JTBC broadcasting room on January 29, 2018 and revealed that eight years ago Ahn tae geun, the former head prosecutor from the law department, had sexually abused her for a long time. Though he denied the charges, Ahn made the situation worse. Because of that incident a lot of people paid attention to the ‘Me too’ campaign, criticized the sexual predator and asked for their names and photos to be released.
The ‘Me too’ campaign started of with good intentions and produced good results. But since ‘Me too’ campaign went live on SNS, some people used the anonymity offered by SNS and that raised many problems. The objective of the “Me too’ campaign is to help the victims who have suffered from sexual harassment by helping them overcome their wounds and reveal the seriousness of sexual harrassment. But, despite these good intentions, a few people obscure the purpose of the ‘Me too’ campaign.
There as examples of people using the ‘Me too’ campaign to take revenge on other people by accusing them of sexual crimes. And some genuine victims started to be judged harshly, accused of lying in order the extract money from alleged attackers. Isn’t it terrible to accuse a victim that may suffer from a deficient memory or who muster the courage to speak up? Shouldn’t we rather encourage the victims to speak up and help them reveal their pain without hurting their memories? I think the ‘Me too’ campaign still needs a lot of work to become a truly good campaign which can help the victims. We also need to think about the reality of Korea today where people have a lot of prejudice against the victims.
Related to the ‘Me too’ campaign, there has been another so-called campaign going on in Korea called the ‘Fence rule’. It was created by people who pointed out that the ‘Me too’
campaign is the reason why men and women are separating. ‘Fence rule’ was designed not to involve women because men do not want to be misunderstood as sexual predators by
marking a boundary with women. Many people mistake the ‘Me too’ campaign as a campaign only for women. In reality, ‘Me too’ is not only for women, but also for allowing men to
reveal their sexual harrassment experiences. So, women and men should not be fighting against each other. The ‘Me too’ campaign needs men to participate in it too, and men who have suffered from sexual assault also need to be part of this campaign.
The ‘Me too’ campaign started off with good intentions, but attracted a lot of worries and prejudices. We all need to put aside these worries and prejudices and work to find the true victims and also punish the people who have posted false information. We also need to provide effective psychological support to the victims who have suffered for a long time. If
we succeed in rehabilitating victims we will surely build a better world.
