Off a social movement

“When so many people are speaking out day after day after day, you can’t ignore that.”

The fire that seemed to burst into flames all at once may have been smouldering for many years. The 2016 election — pitting a man accused by multiple women of harassment against a woman whose husband had been accused of the same thing — helped prime women and the popular culture at large for a conflagration, said Nikki Usher, an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

“Trump is Teflon, but it doesn’t mean that people weren’t disgusted by his comments on the [ Access Hollywood] tape,” she said.

An important precedent for the reaction to Weinstein was the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration, she said. The event, whose symbolic “pussy hats” explicitly linked to Trump’s vulgar reference on the tape, drew hundreds of thousands not just to Washington, but to marches all over the world.

Given all that preceded Weinstein, Usher says Anita Hill really deserves to be known as the godmother of the cultural moment.

“Much of our modern sexualharassment legislation and training all come in response to her,” she said. “She also was the case study for ‘blame the victim’, and as a result, there was much more of a conversation about how survivors matter.”

Still, it’s been Weinstein and his accusers who have helped propel the wave that has washed away so many men whose careers soared in the years after Hill. And those accusers may have succeeded in institutionalising new standards of conduct, a change that eluded Hill and many women who followed her.

“We won’t go back to business as usual,” said the Ms Foundation’s Younger. “This is a pivotal time for change.”