#MeToo but, it's really #HimThough because #N*ggasAintSh*t

Alyssa Milano was invited to Good Morning America on Thursday to discuss her #MeToo social media campaign. About a week ago she tweeted, "If you've been sexually harrassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet." The goal was to show men, everyone, how widespread sexual harassment and abuse is. About 1.4 million women, as of Thursday morning, tweeted out the hashtags along with their own personal stories. Milano added "This is your movement, women. This is your time and if I can be the vessel and hold the bullhorn for you guys to shout as loud as humanly possible then I'm honored to do so."

I've been struggling with wanting to write a #MeToo and it's not like I don't I have an absurd amount of examples to choose from. Simple things like purposely avoiding the bus stop closer to my home because it was at busy intersection. The gestures and things men would say to me when they drove by literally put the fear of God in me. I've rationalized things that were a bigger deal than I made them out to be. When I was in college and I would go to house parties with my friends I was never asked to dance. Someone would grab me from behind me and just hold me there. If I couldn't get away I'd just suffer through a song and then run off to go find my imaginary friend Rachel. I never wanted to make a scene and risk getting called a stuck up b*tch and/or ugly sl*t. I also dial 911 just in case before getting into Ubers and wear my headphones even if I'm not listening to music so I can pretend to ignore what people say to me when I walk down the street. Those are just the PG versions of my #MeToo because my mother reads this blog and I don't want to give her a heart attack.

If I'm being honest I hate the hashtag. It makes me feel dirty and in every case I feel like I could be blamed for something. What were you wearing at the bus stop Janelle? With the way you were dancing are you really surprised that someone took it as an invitation? Is no one allowed to compliment you? You're being dramatic. Be honest, you love the attention. You're not a victim so stop acting like you are. You don't count and you don't matter. You have no one to blame but yourself. You are at fault.

When Liz Plank, @feministabulous flipped the hashtag to #HimThough I realized that even I do not practice what I preach. I realized that I in the back of my mind will ask myself if I could do more to protect myself. I realized that it is beyond #MeToo. #MeToo makes it only a women's issue when it not. "Who decided it was a women's job to fix men." It's so ingrained in society to blame women for things that happen to us. The language and syntax we use to describe assault are passive. The following quote is from an extremely woke dude, Jackson Katz:

We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harrased last year, not about how many boys harrased girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.

So you can see how the use of passive voice has a political effect. It shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term 'violence agaginst women' is problematic. It's a passive construction; there is no active agent in the sentence. It's a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at the term 'violence against women,' nobody is doing it to them... Men aren't even a part of it!

While its so important to speak out when harassment and abuse occur the conversation itself is already flawed. The reason I was struggling so much with #MeToo was because I felt by sharing my story I was also somehow sharing the blame. I was somehow admitting I was also at fault. The truth is it's not up to us to fix what men have done. He did it to me. They did it to us. It's #HimThough.