A victory for MeToo
It wasn’t just Harvey Weinstein on trial in New York. It was the entire MeToo movement, writes Celia Walden.
It took a jury of seven men and five women a little over 26 hours to find Harvey Weinstein guilty on two counts: criminal sexual assault in the first degree, based on the testimony of former Project
Runway production assistant Mimi Haleyi, and rape in the third degree, based on the testimony of aspiring actress Jessica Mann.
That verdict will be heard by many as ‘‘guilty, but not guilty enough’’. But, make no mistake, this is still a victory for the six women brave enough to take the stand over the past month – as well as a victory for MeToo.
There was always a danger of the bigger picture eclipsing the real human cost in what has been called ‘‘the trial of the century’’. The moment actress Alyssa Milano reacted to the first reports of sexual assault by Weinstein on the night of October 15, 2017, with the tweet ‘‘If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ ’’ was the moment the Hollywood producer became an emblem of everything MeToo was fighting to stamp out.
And it was clear that, if this went all the way to court, it wouldn’t just be Weinstein on trial, but the entire MeToo movement.
As, one by one, those six women took the stand, however, we were reminded that this wasn’t about the reparations due to every woman who has suffered in silence at the hands of men, but the horrifying detail of their individual testimonies.
Haleyi hung her head as she recalled the children’s drawings on the walls of the room in which she was assaulted, in Weinstein’s New York apartment in 2006. Mann was urged to ‘‘take a deep breath’’ hours into a cross-examination in which she recounted how the 67-year-old movie mogul had ripped her trousers off when she had tried to end their consensual relationship and screamed: ‘‘You owe me one more time!’’
Giving that evidence will have been harrowing. Add to that the exposure of their private correspondence, and the judgments made by a public quick to question ‘‘what kind of a woman’’ accepts meetings with men in hotel rooms and maintains contact with their aggressors after being assaulted (statistically, a much higher number than you’d think).
Then there’s the awareness that, because of those ‘‘bad choices’’, you may have betrayed not just yourself but a whole movement for which you have become a figurehead. That ‘‘they knew what they were getting into’’ narrative was the reason so many women refused to testify in this trial.
Yet one US legal source tells me the verdict will have a powerful positive impact on victims who have lost faith: ‘‘If this trial proves anything, it’s
that MeToo has opened up the conversation and made people more aware that sexual bullying and assault can be complex issues.’’
A greater understanding of those complexities is just one of the positives to come out of MeToo. Founder Tarana Burke, a civil rights activist, had named the movement MeToo because of a promise she had made herself after a little girl approached her in a youth camp for troubled children in Alabama, and confided ‘‘that her step-daddy was doing things to her’’. That Burke didn’t have the courage to help, or murmur ‘‘Me too’’, had haunted her.
As the full scale of the sexual intimidation and violence taking place in virtually every industry, everywhere, was exposed, MeToo became less about what so many had endured and more of a battle cry.
But it didn’t take long for the movement to start floundering. There was in-fighting within celebrity ‘‘survivor’’ cliques, and Burke worried that ‘‘MeToo seems to have been defined as the public naming and taking down of powerful men’’, often without due process.
Today, as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood has been taken down, many of those who said ‘‘me too’’ are being validated. On Twitter, stars have sent ‘‘love and support to all the women who came forward’’ – although others pointed out that those who kept his open secret for years will never face justice.
‘‘Harvey Weinstein is now a convicted rapist,’’ wrote TV chef Padma Lakshmi, while filmmaker Judd Apatow reminded everyone that, since Weinstein faces four more charges in Los Angeles: ‘‘This is just the beginning . . .’’
English actress Alice Evans, herself harassed by Weinstein, sees the verdict as proof that men like him are no longer untouchable. ‘‘It’s also proof that it’s still worth coming forward, proof that money and influence are no longer enough to get you off a crime,’’ she says.
‘‘Together we brought down a monster. So perhaps from now on it shouldn’t be ‘feminism’ we fight for, but ‘each other-ism’.’’ –