#Metoo: calling out the predators
It is now more than three weeks since The New York Times published its sensational exposé of Harvey Weinstein, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Observer, “and the repercussions show no sign of ending”. Women are still coming forward with allegations about the Hollywood mogul (he now has more than 50 accusers). And the scandal has spread, as millions of women in other walks of life have shared their own experiences of sexual harassment via the hashtag #Metoo. There is “a sense of citadels crumbling” as alleged abusers in various industries are flushed out. Magician David Blaine and Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford professor of Islamic studies, have been accused of rape; Condé Nast says it will no longer be using the photographer Terry Richardson, after he was alleged to be a serial predator (all deny the claims). A spreadsheet of “shitty media men” is circulating among female journalists in the US, gathering names as it goes. GQ sacked its political correspondent, Rupert Myers, after he was accused online of sexual harassment; and Vice magazine has dumped the far-left activist Sam Kriss for the same reason.
The #Metoo hashtag has unleashed a flood of powerful testimony, said Katie Glass in The Sunday Times. “Some of the things friends shared were more upsetting because I had never heard them.” But while I have been moved by many of the stories, and welcome the spotlight being shone on “the shadowy world of sexual harassment”, I also feel a bit “cynical” about #Metoo. By conflating the gravest forms of sexual abuse with what, in some cases, sound more like “hamfisted passes or dysfunctional dates”, it risks undermining the most serious allegations. There’s also a “lynch-mob mentality” on Twitter that rides roughshod over nuance – and the presumption that people are innocent until proved otherwise.
I too had reservations about #Metoo, said Rowan Pelling in The Sunday Telegraph. I dislike the trend for reducing complex issues to glib hashtags, and, having been lucky enough never to have experienced a serious sexual assault, I didn’t want to feel pressured into recounting incidents that seemed trivial by comparison. But as my Facebook feed filled with stories, my attitude changed. I was not only appalled at the abuse my friends described: I was amazed “how many men had no idea” that for women, having to “elbow away unwanted advances, and ignore lewd comments” is part and parcel of ordinary life. Thanks to the Weinstein affair, the Western world has finally admitted that, “for all its pretence of equality”, sexual harassment is “as endemic as cockroaches”.