TikTok

Women Are Playing “Never Have I Ever” On TikTok To Share Their Traumatizing “Female Realities”

A woman in Atlanta named Sarah Biggers-Stewart has gone viral on TikTok under the handle @thebiggersthebetter after creating a “put a finger down” (“Never Have I Ever”) game that really touched a nerve for thousands of women, and quite a few men. The Put a Finger Down trope is popular on TikTok as a way of telling a story, and also as a funny way to list common experiences under an identity category. 

Well, sometimes they’re funny. Biggers-Stewart used the same format to share something extremely serious: her experiences with harassment and danger living as a woman. If you’ve lived as a woman for any length of time, you’ll probably put most of your fingers down as she goes through her list, because that’s life. Biggers-Stewart makes a lot of content about what it’s like to be a woman and she told Buzzfeed News that this was not what she expected to take off.

“I posted it and immediately a few duets popped up. I figured it would end there. But the next day I saw it had been duetted over a thousand times and I was shocked,” she said. 

@thebiggersthebetterThis is crazy 😳 DUET THIS AND SHARE, I want to follow along ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾 ##feminism ##girltalk ##realtalk ##alwayslearning ##fyp♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

In her video, she does ask for people to duet or use the audio to “play” along. Here’s the list of experiences she gives:

—Put a finger down if you’ve been drugged.

– Put a finger down if your friends have been drugged.

– Put a finger down if you’ve been followed.

– Put a finger down if you walk to your car with your keys or pepper spray as a weapon.

– Put a finger down if you check your backseat and lock your doors the second you get inside your car.

– Put a finger down if you’ve been sexually touched inappropriately.

– Put a finger down if you did something with a man that you didn’t want to do because you were scared to say no for your own safety.

– Put a finger down if you’ve experienced something really scary or even illegal and you were scared to report it because you didn’t think anybody would listen.

– Put a finger down if when you hear or see a man running behind you, you freak out.

– Put a finger down if something bad happened to you and the men who were around that you thought would protect you didn’t.

Phew! All too familiar and frightening. Many of the young woman listening along got very emotional as they went down the list, remembering the moments when these violating things have happened to them, or just the ever-present need for vigilance:

@pbjmatchI didn’t listen to the audio and Josh felt sick by the end ##ratethings ##TheHighNote ##femaleproblems ##metoomovement ##timesup ##shareyourstory♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

@greatvalueamberrose#####♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

@50shadesof_chaeNever be afraid to share your truth, you’re not alone!💜 ##duet with @thebiggersthebetter ##storytime ##speakyourtruth ##speakyourmind ##speakup ##feminism♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

@ga69y##duet with @pricyyyj♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

Biggers-Stewart told BuzzFeed that she also saw men sharing her audio, and many of them have had similar experiences and also felt they couldn’t come forward.

@aussiefukfestSaw this, just wanted to point out that these things don’t only happen to girls, men deal with this too @romaarmy ##metoo♬ original sound – thebiggersthebetter

“My content is made for women, and I feel I can only speak for myself as a woman, but lots of men were frustrated because they are often teased for opening up about their own traumas,” she said. “Their pain and frustration really underscored the need for reform on how we talk about male trauma and support male victims.”

Men and women and non-binary people have a lot in common in ways we don’t always talk about, and the common denominator here is silence around these issues, and the way harassment is perceived as something to be dealt with alone or forgotten. Sharing these experiences is the first step for many people who have been unable to speak up for too long.

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