MeToo? More like the Me Me Me movement
TIME will tell whether the allegations that Me Too campaign figurehead Asia Argento sexually assaulted a 17-year-old actor, before paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money, will destroy the movement. Initially Argento denied having relations with the young man who she knew since he was a little boy, claiming that her late boyfriend, chef Anthony Bourdain, came up with the idea to buy his silence. She only changed her tune when her text messages admitting to having sex with the youngster emerged.
Discrediting the victim, while laying the blame at the feet of a dead man, are moves that come straight from Harvey Weinstein’s playbook and they certainly don’t show Argento in a savoury light.
Of course there’s nothing to say that victims of sexual harassment or abuse should be whiter than white or that victims themselves don’t turn into the predators at the scent of untrammelled power.
The MeToo movement, started 12 years ago in Brooklyn by civil rights activist Tarana Burke, made sluggish progress until it was hijacked by Hollywood celebrities. The public perception of sexual harassment as a grey area and doubts about the complicity and behaviour of alleged victims, which this latest incident legitimises, made for widespread resistance to the cause until the scandal of Harvey Weinstein’s reign of terror in Hollywood lit the flame of protest.
When Asia crowned herself its leader after being one of the first of the 70 actresses to allege rape or molestation at the hands of Weinstein, she knew well that her own sordid history could return to haunt her and discredit the movement while betraying its supporters.
She knew that potentially she was handing detractors a powerful gift to bolster the criticism of Me Too as a divisive campaign that dishonestly pitted the sexes against one another to create a narrative where women were always victims and deserving of automatic credibility and men were violent aggressors and accountable.
After her rousing speeches against Weinstein at Cannes, at the EU and the various women’s marches, the suspicion bubbled under the surface that Asia and her partner-in-crime Rose McGowan were opportunists, exploiting Me Too to promote themselves in the same way that celebrities visit war-torn regions to burnish their humanitarian credentials. At times, it appeared that the campaign should be renamed Me Me Me.
Not surprisingly, MeToo founder Tarana Burke was concerned at how the movement she started and watched grow slowly and organically could be upended if it became synonymous with celebrity activists.
Human beings are fallible and even the best-intentioned leaders can fall foul of double standards, hypocrisy and croneyism. As for celebrities, their fierce ambition and hankering for attention makes them easily compromised.
IDEAS however don’t have to be fallible; the worst that can happen to an idea is that it falls out of fashion. In any movement the best scenario is that the leaders are interchangeable and irrelevant compared to its message. The idea or message behind MeToo, that sexual violence is the result of power and privilege exercised by the holder, whatever their gender, against their prey was almost lost in a hysterical bandwagon created around a cult of personalities.
Pretty soon a mob mentality emerged which allowed no room for natural justice or nuance and even decried Catherine Deneuve who remarked that the campaign allowed no room for flirtation or other time-honoured mating rituals between the sexes.
As Asia Argento falls from grace, not unlike the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, another paragon beloved by luvvies and liberals alike, MeToo supporters can hope that the job of highlighting sexual harassment can continue to hold to account those who are normally protected by their status or power.
With luck, the loss of its dodgy torchbearer may force MeToo’s coming of age into a mass movement of men and women who don’t need egotistical celebrities to lead them towards equality.
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Rumours of the Royal newly weds enjoying downtime at George Clooney’s splendid hideaway on Lake Como, where Meghan Markle amused the twins and Prince Harry played basketball with the AList actor, seem unlikely. Recent photographs of George show him hobbling on to his private jet with the help of an army of assistants.
Basketball looked like the very last thing on his mind.