MeToo

Also #MeToo
Or Me Too

[mee-too]

noun

1. a social media hashtag of solidarity used by survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault in a public disclosure of a past or current personal experience in order to demonstrate the prevalence of abuse.

   I never reported my boss because I couldn’t afford to lose my job. #MeToo

2. a social movement drawing attention to sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other abuses of authority, especially those resulting from gendered power imbalances in social institutions.

   MeToo is revealing the tragic common thread in the lives of Hollywood stars, short-order cooks, soldiers, prisoners, students, etc.—no corner of society is immune to this epidemic of abuse.

adjective

1. relating to or noting this social movement: a powerful #MeToo spokesperson;

   the MeToo era;

   a powerful #MeToo spokesperson;

   the Me Too backlash.

verb (used with object)

MeToo’d, MeTooed, MeTooing. 

1. to identify or accuse (one’s abuser) publicly in a claim of sexual harassment or sexual assault: Everyone warned her that MeTooing the chair of her dissertation committee would ruin her academic career.

   How should celebrities who’ve been MeToo’d make amends and start over?

   Everyone warned her that MeTooing the chair of her dissertation committee would ruin her academic career.

Word History and Origins

Origin of MeToo¹

Coined in 2006 by Tarana Burke, African American civil rights activist (born 1973)

Example Sentences

This narrative is false and distressing, but Johnson’s actions tell the uglier truth: The backlash to #MeToo was never about male innocence.

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This narrative is false and distressing, but Johnson’s actions tell the uglier truth: The backlash to #MeToo was never about male innocence.

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“After the Hunt” is an attempt to use fiction to conjure what reality kept failing to provide critics of #MeToo: A genuine example of a male victim of overzealous feminists.

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Those two cases laid bare the ugly truth about the backlash to #MeToo.

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The GOP’s shameful actions are just the most blatant example of how the #MeToo backlash has nothing to do with innocence, and everything to do with shielding men from the consequences of bad behavior.

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