Why we need #MeTooNZ

Husband-and-wife comedians and commentators Michele A’Court and Jeremy Elwood share their views.

It’s quite hard being a lady-person. You can’t tell whether people want you to speak up, or shut up. When news broke in February over alleged shenanigans at Russell McVeagh, one of the questions regularly asked was: “Why don’t women speak up sooner about sexual harassment and assault?”

So I posed that question on social media, and offered my own list of things said to me or to people I know when they’ve raised an issue in the workplace. Responses that range from: “It didn’t happen,” to “It might have happened but you’re wrong to be bothered by it,” to “It definitely happened and that’s the way things are.”

And then I invited people to add their own examples of being diminished and dismissed when they’ve raised the issue. The responses came quickly, and they resonated with many. Broadly, they represented deflection (“Is everything OK at home?”), guilt tripping (“Think of his family”), thinly veiled threats (“Are you sure you want to take this forward? This won’t help your career”), and the horrifying: “We thought he’d stopped doing that.”

So yes, one of the reasons women don’t speak up is that, when they do, they’re actively shushed in a multitude of ways. But that’s not the only thing that happens.

We are also told we’re speaking up The Wrong Way. When #MeToo went viral last October, women the world over (New Zealand included) shared their stories, often with no names used. “Too vague!” they were told. “Name and shame!” Yet when names were included in the avalanche of stories, women were accused of being too specific, conducting “social media witchhunts” via “online lynch mobs”.

Or we tell our stories at The Wrong Time. Too soon, and it is morning-after regret. Years later, when we are older and braver, we are either vengeful or jumping on bandwagons.

And we tell our stories to The Wrong People. If it’s a crime, we must call the police, and commit to a legal process which can be as harmful as the harassment or assault itself. And if it’s not a crime, we should either suck it up, or report it to HR – in which case, see the handy lines for diminishing and dismissing above.

When news arrived last week that investigative journalists want to hear New Zealand women’s #MeToo stories, you’d think people might have been keen to support gathering that kind of data. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, right?

Instead, “women telling their stories” was equated with “dobbing in pervs”. Seriously, I can’t think of another issue – leaky homes, EQC claims, hospital waiting lists – where recording personal experiences would be characterised as rumour, innuendo, hearsay, and gossip. You have to wonder what people are afraid of.

If you want to flush out a whole lot of angry men who are spoiling for a fight, a couple of techniques are pretty much foolproof. Announce a cheap drink special during a local sporting derby. Hold a parade supporting anything that isn’t a sporting success. And start a movement for women.

The response to the #MeToo movement by certain male commentators, internet trolls, cartoonists and columnists has been as predictable as it has been pathetic. Accusations of a witch-hunt, revenge, false claims and more have been flying around this past week or so, and all of them seem to miss one fundamental point. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. If you have, well, maybe it’s time you put your big boy’s pants on and deal with it. It was, after all, taking them off that got you into this mess in the first place.

The most inane call I’ve heard is that this movement doesn’t need to exist. Sorry, but if we’ve learnt anything over the past year from Hollywood, local law firms and a depressingly large number of other sources, it’s that these voices are only now finding their way to the ears that need to hear them – and by that I don’t necessarily mean the men who are having to re-evaluate their behaviour. No, it’s the other women who are finding out that they are not alone. The women who kept quiet for any of the reasons Michele has outlined, who now have a chance to let go of the secrets they’ve been living with for however long.

Society will not change overnight – as with any gradual change, there are too many people who are too comfortable in their own normality to let go without a fight – but, at the risk of sounding like a shampoo ad, it will happen. These incidents will continue to occur, I have no doubt, but the way they are reacted to, and the probability of being called out on them will at least put an element of discomfort and appraisal into the equation that has been sorely missing.

If men are having to rethink the way they speak to or behave around the women they live, work and otherwise interact with, good. The vast majority will find that they are fine. They’ll discover that they can still talk to a woman, maybe ask her out even – you know, the way people have been doing without incident since the dawn of time.

As for the others, if it takes a hashtag to wake you up to the damage you have done, then that’s a revolution worth having.