• Archiving #MeToo:Past, Present, and Future
• Judith Rosenbaum (bio)

Some say it began in October 2017, when an invitation to share experience of sexual harassment or assault with the hashtag #MeToo unleashed a social media tsunami, as well as revealing the ubiquity of sexual violation. Others point out that #MeToo was not new, that it had been more than a decade since Tarana Burke had created this hashtag and movement, specifically to connect women of color who had experienced abuse. Still others recall earlier campaigns to gather the collective power of women's voices—through #YesAllWomen in 2014, Take Back the Night rallies in the 1990s, and speak outs in the 1970s.

Of course, these claims are all both true and false. In nearly every historical period, women have found ways to give voice to their experiences (though they were not always heard), and such experiences are also finding new expression and attention today. The eyes and ears through which we in 2019 see, hear, and try to make sense of the reality of women's experiences need not only be trained on our contemporary context. Rather, one of the illuminating insights of #MeToo is recognition of the extent to which historic sexual violence has been so normalized as to go often unnoticed—and the need to offer new tellings of women's lives.

This is, in part, what the Jewish Women's Archive (JWA) set out to do when we launched our Archiving #MeToo project. In January 2018, JWA put out a call to collect the #MeToo stories of Jews, both within the Jewish community and outside of it.¹ With five simple prompts on a webform on JWA's site and in JWA's Story Aperture story-collecting mobile app, JWA aims to capture and preserve these stories in their breadth and diversity.² Though we're still in the early stages of this project, the [End Page 251] 100+ testimonies we've collected thus far speak to the prevalence of harassment and abuse across generations, decades, and communities.

JWA initiated this collection to ensure that Jewish #MeToo accounts would outlive fleeting social media by being preserved in the permanent records of a historical organization, available to researchers and for future curation in public history initiatives.³ We also aimed to create a space separate from investigative or litigious efforts, where women could speak up (anonymously or not) and have their diverse experiences recorded for posterity, to know that their story was heard, counted, and preserved as part of the larger Jewish historical record.⁴

We knew that the stories of the Archiving #MeToo collection, taken together, would not only allow for witness of individual experiences but would illuminate the systems and structures that shape women's lives. Furthermore, as an archive collected in response to #MeToo, they exemplify not only women's victimization but also women's resilience and their collective power to make change. In other words, the #MeToo collection captures within it both the problem and the seeds of its solution.

While many submissions, for example, emphasize that "It's a mistake to think you're safer in a Jewish environment" (more on this below), others articulated a sense of newfound safety and confirmation found in #MeToo.⁵ "The MeToo movement means we're safer than we thought we could be. That what we feel is wrong IS wrong. And that we have the power to make it right."⁶

Another narrator explained the transformative impact of the #MeToo experience on her self-conception, framing her submission to JWA as if to a community of other women:

Sixteen years later, the Harvey Weinstein story broke, a flood of sexual harassment stories followed, and, finally, I understood. What happened to me…was not my fault. It. Wasn't. My. Fault…I repeated this statement to myself. It wasn't my fault. Because until #MeToo, until I heard the stories of so many other women, until I grasped that there were still so many women like me with their stories untold, I didn't understand how a smart, capable woman like me could have let a boss and a board member talk to and treat me that...

• 存档#MeToo：过去，现在和将来
• 朱迪思·罗森鲍姆（Judith Rosenbaum）（生物）

有人说这始于2017年10月，当时邀请与#MeToo标签分享性骚扰或性侵犯的经历引发了社交媒体海啸，并揭示了普遍存在性侵犯行为。其他人指出，＃MeToo并不是新事物，自塔拉娜·伯克（Tarana Burke）创建这个主题标签和运动（已经专门用于联系遭受虐待的有色女人）以来已经有十多年了。还有一些人回忆起早些时候的运动，以收集女性声音的集体力量，这些运动是通过2014年的＃YesAllWomen，1990年代的《夺回夜晚》集会以及1970年代的大声疾呼。

当然，这些主张都是正确的和错误的。在几乎每个历史时期，妇女都找到了表达自己经历的声音的方法（尽管并不总是被听到），并且这种经历在今天也正在得到新的表达和关注。我们在2019年看到，听到并试图理解女性经历的现实的耳目不仅需要在我们的当代背景下进行训练。相反，＃MeToo的启发性见解之一是认识到历史性性暴力已被规范化到通常不被注意到的程度，并且需要提供有关妇女生活的新故事。

这部分是我们启动存档#MeToo项目时犹太妇女档案馆（JWA）打算做的事情。在2018年1月，JWA发出了一个电话，要求收集犹太人社区内外的#MeToo犹太人故事。¹ JWA网站上的Web表单上以及JWA的Story Aperture故事收集移动应用程序中有五个简单提示，JWA旨在捕获并保留这些故事的广度和多样性。²尽管我们仍处于该项目的早期阶段，但到目前为止，我们已收集的[End Page 251] 100多个证词表明，骚扰和虐待在几代人，数十年和整个社区中都盛行。

JWA发起此收集工作是为了确保犹太人的#MeToo帐户能够保存在历史组织的永久记录中，以使其能够在短暂的社交媒体中生存，供研究人员使用，并在未来的公共历史活动中进行策展。³我们还旨在创建一个与调查或诉讼工作分开的空间，让妇女可以大声疾呼（匿名或不匿名），并记录她们的后代经历，以使她们的故事得到聆听，计数和保存，从而成为妇女的一部分。更大的犹太历史记录。⁴

我们知道，存档#MeToo系列的故事结合在一起，不仅可以见证个人经历，而且可以阐明塑造女性生活的系统和结构。此外，作为为回应#MeToo而收集的档案，它们不仅体现了妇女的受害情况，还体现了妇女的应变能力以及她们做出改变的集体力量。换句话说，＃MeToo集合在其中捕获了问题及其解决方案的种子。

例如，尽管许多意见书都强调“认为您在犹太人的环境中更安全是一个错误”（以下更多信息），但其他人则表达了#MeToo中发现的新发现的安全性和确认感。⁵ “ MeToo运动意味着我们比我们想象的要安全。我们认为错是错。而且我们有能力做到正确。” ⁶

另一位叙述者解释了#MeToo经历对她的自我观念的变革性影响，将她对JWA的投稿框架化为对其他女性社区的看法：

十六年后，哈维·温斯坦（Harvey Weinstein）的故事破裂了，随之而来的是性骚扰故事的泛滥，最后，我明白了。我发生了什么……不是我的错。它。不是。我的。错…我对自己重复了这句话。不是我的错 因为直到#MeToo，直到我听到其他许多女人的故事，直到我意识到仍然有如此多的女人像我这样讲故事，我才不明白像我这样的聪明，有能力的女人如何让一个老板和董事会成员与我交谈并请我...