THE BENEFITS OF TEACHING #METOO IN THE CONTEXT OF WOMEN’S LIBERATION HISTORY

Abstract

This essay acknowledges the importance of examining the #metoo movement in global, cross-cultural, international contexts as scholars. Yet it also argues for teaching the social media (SM) movement in a grounded historical context as growing out of other moments of women’s liberation movement history in which women came together to tell their story, sharing their personal experiences that led to political action, particularly when teaching the hashtag movement in introductory women and gender studies courses. The author shares her efforts to do so online at a south-eastern technical university in the United States in the Spring of 2019. Not as part of evaluations but as part of a teaching unit within the course, she asked her nearly 50 students, both male and female, to compare and contrast the SM movement to consciousness-raising groups in which women had met face-to-face to share their experiences in an earlier time in movement history. All 300 student posts and reflections posted in the week under examination were scrutinized by the instructor, and their thoughts and conclusions analyzed. In this article, a sample of four is explored.