The Year of #MeToo
A scoop, a tweet, and a reckoning
NEW YORK — It began with a news story, and then a tweet. 2017 will forever be known as the Year of the Reckoning. Or the year of the beginning of the reckoning. The phenomenon of powerful men being knocked off their perches by allegations of sexual misconduct — in Hollywood, on morning television, in chic restaurant kitchens, in the U.S. Senate — show no signs of slowing.
Is this the cultural earthquake many have called it?
“We can’t be sure,” says Gloria Steinem. “But what I CAN be sure of is that this is the first time I’ve seen women being believed.” And that, says the feminist author, “is profoundly different.”
It all burst into the open with an October scoop in the New York Times, a story alleging shocking misconduct by Harvey Weinstein. The powerful producer’s misbehaviour had long been the subject of whispers, but it was actress Ashley Judd who finally gave a wellknown name to the allegations. Her account of a hotel-room encounter in which Weinstein asked her to give him a massage or watch him shower inspired many others to come forward with their own allegations against Weinstein, from harassment to assault to rape. To date, some 80 women have come forward; Weinstein still denies all nonconsensual sex.
Then came the tweet heard round the world.
“If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status,” actress/ activist Alyssa Milano tweeted on Oct. 15, “we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” Then she went to bed.
When she awoke, tens of thousands had taken up the #MeToo hashtag (a phrase introduced 10 years ago by social activist Tarana Burke.) Less than 10 days later, Milano tweeted that more than 1.7 million people in 85 countries had used the hashtag.
She feels conditions had been ripe for a good year.
It began, she says, with the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who had bragged openly about groping women. Then came some aggressive investigative reporting — she cites Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker — and the domino effect of women emboldening each other to come forward. “For this to have taken off the way it did, it had to be a perfect storm and we had to be ready,” she says.
Even before #MeToo happened, and shortly after the Weinstein story broke, Anita Hill was sure something significant was happening. “I think we need something to push the needle and I think this has done it,” said Hill, a symbol of the fight against sexual harassment ever since her 1991 Senate testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Still, she noted, it was a lot easier for Hollywood stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie to speak out than it was for ordinary women experiencing harassment from their bosses.
But Hill, who for years has been living a quiet academic life at Brandeis University, stressed the next step is significant: “We now have to start putting into place measures at schools and workplaces and the military ... about how people should be treated, and we have to enforce them.” Hill has been named to a new commission on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.
As the weeks went on, the accusers multiplied, and so did the accused, from Hollywood (Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Brett Ratner, Dustin Hoffman), to the news business (top morning hosts Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer), to the music world (Russell Simmons), to politics (Sen. Al Franken, Alabama candidate Roy Moore), to the food world (Mario Batali). The accused lost jobs, TV shows, book deals, a Senate seat — with dizzying speed (Spacey was even erased from a completed movie.) Some simply apologized, while others fought back — like Simmons, with his hashtag #NotMe.
When Matt Damon said “I just think we have to start delineating between what these behaviours are,” Milano replied on Twitter that there are various stages of cancer, “but it’s still cancer.”
Not to be forgotten were the accusers who decided not to come forward with their names, many out of fear of retaliation. Attorney Gloria Allred, who held news conferences with some Weinstein accusers, said there were many more she’d spoken to who have not yet gone public.
And what about the alleged abusers we’ve never heard of, because they’re not famous? “There have been stunning accounts of farm workers harassed in the field, factory workers on lines, restaurant workers,” says law professor Catharine MacKinnon. And to those who might still doubt there is tangible change, MacKinnon points out the remarkable sight of “white upper-class men deserting white upper-class men, in droves. We’ve never seen that before, ever. They feel they can no longer afford to be associated with this. THIS is cultural change. THIS is real social change.”