When we started 2017, we couldn’t possibly have foreseen the Women’s March, the reckoning for men, the #MeToo campaign, and the brave ‘Silence Breakers’ led by Ashley Judd being named the TIME Person of the Year… and we couldn’t have imagined how the world would change as a result. 

As the campaign spreads, men have slowly begun to realise what women don’t want. They have also begun to reassess actions in their own past, which they had written off as everyday interactions, as their own abuse of power. A new vision of flirting, friendships and love between the sexes based on mutual pleasure — welcome sex vs so-called consensual sex — is being explored by all generations and all sexes.

The poorest women of Calcutta, Forbesganj, Bihar, and Delhi from the brothels of Sonagachhi and the caste-ghettos of denotified tribes trapped in inter-generational prostitution in Lalten Bazar and Dharmpura played a significant role in unleashing this movement.

Year after year, at my invitation, Ashley Judd came and sat in circles with the prostituted women of our anti-sex-trafficking organisation, Apne Aap Women Worldwide. They shared stories about the repeated rape and body-invasion that they experienced. They also spoke about the brutal beatings that they were subjected to when they resisted. Some spoke about the shame and stigma imposed on them by their own family members and friends, when they broke their silence.

A decade after the first sit-in circle in Calcutta, Ashley broke her own silence at my dining table in Manhattan. The New York Times correspondent had brought flowers and pastries. I arranged the flowers while Ashley talked. That very night, feminist icon Gloria Steinem gave Ashley The Last Girl award on behalf of Apne Aap at the Cosmopolitan Club.

At that time, we had no way of knowing that Ashley’s interview would unleash an unstoppable campaign cutting across borders and boundaries. But we did know that we women had to keep forming circles of truth and friendship to challenge the structures of power and privilege that oppressed us.

A thread unites the women of Sonagachhi and Lalten Bazar with Ashley, Gloria and I. Ashley put out a Christmas appeal this December for Apne Aap saying that by “breaking their silence, the women of Apne Aap helped me break my silence.”

This is the thread of courage and hope. Courage is Contagious. 2017 was about #Metoo. 2018 is #TimesUp.

Ruchira Gupta is the president and founder of Apne Aap, a journalist and an activist. You can reach her at @Ruchiragupta on Twitter