The MeToo movement has given rise to many questions; for starters, is anyone else wondering what it was about the Weinstein story that triggered a global social reckoning? And why the hell the likes of R. Kelly haven’t been arrested yet? The following verdicts of four incredibly intelligent women at the forefront of the modern feminist debate have some answers.
Washington Post writer Irin Carmon, who broke the Charlie Rose story, spoke at this year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival during the headline event: ‘This is Not a Moment, It’s a Movement.’ When asked by Sophie Black, the event’s moderator and former Crikey editor, why the MeToo hashtag (first launched in 2007 by civil rights activist Tarana Burke) took so long to really take off, she replied:
There was Donald Trump, there was Bill Cosby, and there were the men at Fox news, they were reported before Weinstein but didn’t get the same response.
Philosopher Kate Manne coined the phrase; ‘himpathy’: the disproportionate empathy that we extend to men.So many of these [abusive] men we’re talking about are men that we have an emotional relationship with – from reading them, from watching them on TV … but with the Harvey Weinstein story, the women who were coming forward were women that we also had that relationship with.
And all the victim-blaming-playbook mechanisms that would normally happen – like, ‘well maybe she’s just mad that her career didn’t work out’ or ‘she wants attention’ – didn’t apply. Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t need attention. Angelina Jolie’s life was pretty good before she decided to go on the record.
What made the Weinstein story different to those before was the encouragement it gave the public to extend empathy to the victims, rather than look for ways to blame and shame them. But does this empathy only extend to certain victims?
It’s been suggested the fame and subsequent power of many of Weinstein’s accusors made their testimonies not only newsworthy, but more credible. A major criticism of the MeToo movement is its use of celebrities as models of feminism, as seen in the Time’s Up campaign, and the lack of inclusivity that ensues as a result.
In relation to this criticism, another member of the event’s panel, New York Times journalist and co-host of the podcast Still Processing Jenna Wortham added;
We’re still predominantly talking about a certain type of woman, an archetype of a woman. And it feels really outrageous to think about Harvey Weinstein’s [attacks] against these certain types of women: mostly white women, mostly famous women, women who we think have a certain type of power. I’m curious to see if we keep talking about these cases when they aren’t marquee names.
Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard also expressed her concern over MeToo’s narrow framework in her conversation at the festival: ‘Julia Gillard: On Power and Gender,’ with ABC 7.30’s chief political correspondent Laura Tingle, stating;
MeToo points to the huge power imbalances in work places and the way that can be used for sexual abuse, exploitation and harassment– the Weinstein example absolutely– the studio boss who can make or break a women’s career, he knows it, she knows it and in that moment he’s going to use that power for an exploitative purpose.
We need to broaden the landscape, so MeToo is not just about famous people, but actually ends up having meaning for regular people, such as migrant workers without inherent labour market power. Men and women need to feel they can speak up and don’t just have a voice because they have two million Twitter followers.
Aminatou Sow, co-creator of Tech LadyMafia and co-host of podcast Call Your Girlfriend, also spoke of the issue of inclusivity within the MeToo movement during the festival’s ‘My Feminism Will Be Intersectional Or It Will Be Bullshit.’ She says:
There’s a criteria society applies to who is the perfect victim, that victim is currently the beautiful Hollywood woman who fell out of work. Yet there are women of colour who have come out about there experience with MeToo and they have not been received with open arms and there are women who for decades have talked about the abuse that R Kelly has subjected them to and his music still gets played at parties, he still gets to go on tour, be played on the radio and have this career with all this violence towards women behind it. The Metoo movement is revolutionary as women, by simply telling their stories, are changing the world but it doesn’t seem to apply to all women.
What ultimately seems to have been lost in society’s treatment of a sexual harassment claim is the need to address it as a crime, rather than a piece of private gossip or a celeb scandal. Who the victim is shouldn’t dictate how the accusation is dealt with. Cases of abuse should not be commodified but seen for what they are – an issue of health and safety. Challenging criminality (what a sexual harassment claim is, lest we forget) goes beyond the individual and personal cost. It’s a service to society: a way of protecting the wider community. All complainants should be able to report anonymously and their allegations treated objectively. If all victims had access to equal levels of legal protection, privacy, and support all perpetrators would face justice, not just the Weinsteins of the world.
