Women share stories of assault with #MeToo hashtag

Hashtag #MeToo is trending on social media since Sunday night. It started after women across the globe were asked to share if they had ever been sexually assaulted or harassed.

Following Harvey Weinstein controversy, the words are being used to show how prevalent sexual abuse against woman is in society. The post on Facebook reads: “Me too… If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste”

“If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet,” the Hollywood star Alyssa Milano wrote.

Several women have tweeted horrifying accounts of sexual assaults. In India, while some spoke about being abused as a child, others spoke about harassment while using public transport and at crowded places. A father wrote about how he keeps an eye on his daughter to ensure that she is safe as such cases are so rampant in our society, while another questioned the patriarchal mindset that blames women for such harassment and protects the predators.

More than 30,000 women, and some men, had replied to the tweet by Monday morning. Thousands of others have posted the words on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles.