A decade after launching, #MeToo campaign explodes with horror stories.

It’s been impossible for the past few weeks to pick up a newspaper or read an online news site without coming across stories of horrific sexual harassment or assault perpetrated by men prominent and powerful in their respective industries. It’s been a reality forever, but writing and talking about it has grown to epic proportions following the recent New York Times investigation into movie studio chief and producer Harvey Weinstein.

Since the Times story ran on Oct. 5, with stories about Weinstein’s disgusting (and, in some cases, possibly criminal) behavior toward employees and would-be employees, including actress Ashley Judd, more women, some famous and some not, have come forward. They decided it was past time to have the conversation about how Weinstein in particular and some men in general behave toward women in Hollywood.

And from there? The floodgates have opened. Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg described it as a long-delayed reckoning on the cost of silence, as revelation after revelation about men in technology, media, finance, food and even humanities are all in the news. Also in the news: #metoo, a movement started 10 years ago by activist Tarana Burke, now the program director for Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equality, which seeks to empower young women of color. She launched Me Too as a youth camp director after a young girl came to her with a story of being sexually abused in her own home; Burke didn’t know how to handle it, and couldn’t bring herself to tell the girl, “Me too” – and vowed that would never happen again.

So, me too. I wrote that story in the Weekly in 2011, about being attacked in the parking lot of the fast food restaurant where I worked as a teenager, and the fallout from not being believed by the institution that would go on to employ my attacker – the Archdiocese of Chicago. If that’s my most major story, there are dozens of “minor” ones, from men flashing me on public transportation to unwanted touching in the campus cafeteria where I worked in college to men offering to send pictures of their junk.

Guys, to be clear, nobody wants to see your junk. Nobody.

Guys, to be clear, nobody wants to see your junk. Nobody.

I put out a request last week on social media for Monterey County women to share their stories with me, anonymously or not. If I wrote all of those stories, it would take up the entire paper, this week and for weeks to come. Like my own, they range the gamut, from catcalls and whistles from strangers on the street to being followed back to hotel rooms by colleagues on business trips to being propositioned by customers and bosses.

The youngest was a freshman at Salinas High. A senior cornered her, refused to let her leave and began questioning her about a relationship. When she told mutual friends that she no longer wanted to interact with the boy, she was told it was just his awkward behavior and to pay it no mind. The most horrifying (can we quantify horrifying?) is a friend who recounted waking up in a foreign country with a friend of her host on top of her performing a sex act. She shoved him off of her and jumped into the shower, but found she couldn’t scrub hard enough to remove the feeling of disgust. There’s a school board member in Salinas who recounted being propositioned and followed to her room by vendors who wanted to do business with the district, and more. There’s the hospital employee in Salinas, whose married co-worker can’t keep his unwanted hands or unwanted emotions (“if something happens to my wife, we can be together”) to himself.

There’s the friend who was groped by a stranger at a rock concert, then called a “stupid bitch” when she pushed him away. There are women who fled abusive relationships, who stayed in jobs where they were being harassed because they couldn’t afford to leave. There’s a woman who decades ago was raped by an athletic coach in Salinas, an act he told her was revenge against her friend, his ex-girlfriend. There are men who excuse other men’s predation. And yes, there are men who have been victims too.

It’s an ocean of pain.

On Nov. 15, I’ll be facilitating a panel discussion on the “Me Too” phenomenon at the request of my friend, Monterey County Library Director Jayanti Addleman. Come to the community room at the Marina Public Library at 6pm that Wednesday to listen – or to be heard.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com