A TALE OF TWO ME TOOS

What is #MeToo's legacy? The conventional account currently being indelibly forged into our collective memory is that #MeToo was an uncon-ditional progressive victory. It was a reckoning of the disempowered against the powerful that profoundly challenged sexist culture. This Article complicates and even counters that narrative by shining a light on #Me-Too's dark side, namely, its carceral and neoliberal messages and policy reforms. Although today's George-Floyd-mindful feminists often describe #MeToo as having nothing to do with criminal law, the reality is that the movement featured familiar tough-on-crime discourses, passionately called for more criminal law and prosecutorial power, and, in fact, produced sev-eral new carceral laws and policies. Yet, just hours after famous actor Alyssa Milano sent the tweet heard around the world, Black Twitter re-vealed that Me Too already existed: Tarana Burke's "me too movement." This Me Too centered on survivors' material and emotional needs, focused on young women of color living in socioeconomic precarity, and embraced noncriminal "transformative justice." Milano's #MeToo, by contrast, in-corporated popular narratives of criminality, bolstered the legitimacy of the penal state, and relied on traditional notions of sex and gender. And it was Milano's that became the Me Too. This Article contrasts the two Me Toos to critique the individualistic and punitive #MeToo movement that is and mourn the intersectional and restorative Me Too movement that could have been. #MeToo's emphasis on sensational stories and social media -derived evidence of "epidemics" effectively cut off debate, enabling car-ceral reforms to pass at a dizzying pace. This Article is the first to cata-logue, describe, and examine the actual criminal laws and policies erected in #MeToo's name. Even a surface analysis of these reforms reveals that, contrary to advocates' claims, they do not just close "loopholes." Instead, each new or broadened criminal law raises troubling issues of civil liber-ties, defendants' rights, and state power, and each portends to sweep in people-including women-who bear little resemblance to the unrepentant monstrous offenders featured in #MeToo discourse.