Expanding Our Frame: Deepening Our Demands For Safety And Healing For Black Survivors of Sexual Violence

Despite the specific origins of “me too.” in conversations among Black women and girls, Black women and girls’ stories, narratives, and experiences remain largely at the margins of mainstream #MeToo conversations. When Black women like Lupita Nyongo have come forward to say #MeToo, their credibility is often questioned, the harm they experienced minimized, and accountability far harder to come by. Tiffany Haddish’s #MeToo experience of sexual assault by a police cadet when she was 17 received little mainstream news coverage or attention despite the fact that she raised it during an interview for a Glamour magazine cover story.

Black trans, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people’s experiences of sexual violence, as well as those of Black women and girls with disabilities, have remained even more invisible in mainstream #MeToo discourses, despite the fact that both populations experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence.