Was the whole #metoo a waste of time?

[Apocketfulofposies]

I have been thinking about this while following the Harvey Weinstein trial. I am not sure anything is going to have been achieved from the whole #metoo thing. Or am I missing something?

It is important for women and girls to keep telling about the things that are done to them, about their experiences, even if it seems pointless.

The alternative is keeping quiet which is where it used to be (and still is most of the time) and that's not great.

The fact that the reaction is not what we might hope for is not a reason to stop talking.

For Weinstein himself, his sudden disability is pretty 🙄

It is important for women and girls to keep telling about the things that are done to them, about their experiences, even if it seems pointless

Agree
You should always be able to feel like you can speak out about being abused, if you have it might make others feel like they can speak up too whereas before they might have thought they wouldn't be believed or too scared to say anything.

It hasn't stopped me being sexually assaulted. It has made me more willing to talk about it.

I think it’s been very beneficial in raising awareness about just how common sexual assault is and also in illustrating the gender imbalance. I didn’t realise just how many of my friends had been assaulted (I’ve never been physically assaulted myself) before me too. When all the hashtags started appearing it made me realise just how prevalent it was despite my experience being very different. It also made me realise that I was far more vulnerable than I thought I was.

I think there has been a backlash and now we hear lots of chat about how confusing it is for men

I do contract work and I definitely sense better, more careful behaviour in a range of offices of regular clients.

I think it’s been fantastic and I thank everyone for speaking up.

Not always in a good way, but has made the media report on women reporting anything from inappropriate remarks through to assaults.

I hope it has made some if not all work places better. Or at least provided women with the feeling they can report men.

But I doubt that it has shifted social attitudes as a whole. And that includes among women where all too often they may express shock or horror on hearing about a rape of sexual assault but if it was a man they knew or were related to, would doubt the accusations. One of the biggest problems on the few occasions rape cases come to trial, is that juries are reluctant to convict a man based on the evidence of a woman.

So we still have a sort of high profile acceptance that women are under threat of male violence, but in practice it seems men haven't really changed their behaviour and there is still that lingering idea that women cant be believed.

I've just read about another male celebrity who is going to be accused, apparently his terrible behaviour has been known about for a while. Yes I think it made a difference.

AutumnRose1

That's really good to hear from the ground so to say.
Apocketfulofposies I do understand what you mean though, something silly but I started to watch a film in netflix, Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler. Half way through they show Adams character being a voyeur (he is in. Wardrobe I think) and watching his love interest and texting her and she is txting him.
She is in her underware and she starts to masturbate.
I stopped watching it. Why did they have this scene?There ws no need for this scene at all.They seem to include the txting as if that is consent to him watching her.

I also think companies might be giving out guidance about not trying to be all kissy at networking events, or to do less bantz.

The place I worked when MeToo broke, you could feel a change from men who managed to stay just the right side of appropriate before....they pretty much shut up.

We’ve actually had a poster complain about this sort of change but most replies disagreed with her. Men feel less able to pass personal remarks or ask you out at work? Great. Long overdue.

The backlash is, I think, just a variation of the same old default.

I work with students and they recognise #MeToo as a shorthand for speaking out and challenging the objectification of women/sexual harassment and violence.

That must be good.

'I think there has been a backlash and now we hear lots of chat about how confusing it is for men'

Yes this is also true, but again I'd say it's better that women and girls talk even if some people don't like it, than keep quiet.

The men at my work, lots of them, were saying stuff like 'men don't even know if they can talk to women any more' etc which is a ludicrous reaction.

It was interesting how quickly the general reaction to metoo went so quickly from (mainly men) along

Oh dear that's terrible
Hmm I think a lot of these reports are made up or exaggerated
Stop making a fuss about nothing

Women and girls know they are not alone.
Isolation is the tool of the abuser.
We may not know for years what the long term effect of the MeToo movement will be.

now we hear lots of chat about how confusing it is for men

I had a long exchange with my FIL about this. I said: “it’s really simple, if you wouldn’t do it to a male colleague, whether its resting your hand on their arm, putting an arm around a shoulder, don't do it to your female colleagues.” He argued with me so much, I think he was uncomfortable about having to review past behaviour.

In fairness, I’m not likely to be friends with anyone who is part of a backlash so I’d be blissfully unaware.

I was watching weightlifting with my father once and all the coaches kissed the female competitors after a lift but not the men...after a while I said to dad, “um, are you seeing what I’m seeing” and before I’d finished the sentence he said “yes”. If we can get rid of the culture of men pawing at women, I will be so pleased.

boatyard “ He argued with me so much”

What was the basis for his arguments?

I think metoo go lost in the weeds. Some of the cases near the beginning, Weinstein in particular, were clearly wrong and almost everyone agreed, and for a while it looked like there was going to be some real discussion about how we structure workplaces to prevent abuses, what kinds of things lead to a climate where that can happen and so on.

Then it kind of went into a flurry of accusations of people in the public eye, some of which seemed entirely different in nature but they still saw themselves as part of the same discussion. At that point, I think metoo lost a lot of it's force because there was a lot of disagreement on those elements. I also thought that there were a lot of people who wanted solutions but weren't really willing to live with all of the things those solutions would have entailed.

'I also thought that there were a lot of people who wanted solutions but weren't really willing to live with all of the things those solutions would have entailed.'

Can you elaborate?

Can you elaborate?

Sure. Probably the clearest example applies directly to the Weinstein case. Hollywood is a really extreme version of the problem than most places for a few reasos - the money, the endless stream of ambitious people willing to give anything to become famous, the way getting a break is as much about connections and luck as anything more objective. But I also think a real factor is that for many actors performing sexually is already part of their job description. Everyone is used to the idea that sex is a commodity, and those who want roles are more likely to get them if they are willing to accept that. It isn't that much of a step to go farther and see sex off-screen as another part of the job.

I think to fix this there really needs to be a rethinking of sexual content in films and television, because frankly it's a workplace. People need to become re-sensitised to the fact that it is a person in a job on the screen, and concern about that is not prudishness. I don't think we are really willing to do that on a cultural level though, despite the stuff I've seen recently about "intimacy coordinators."

More generally, I don't think people have been very willing to talk about how we draw lines in the workplace, in part because I think there are significant differences of opinion. But unless we have general agreement, or at least everyone is working from the same playbook even if they don't like it, acceptable standards will remain unclear and that leaves gaps that can be exploited by the unprincipled.
For example, I've talked to people who want to ban all relationships of any kind in workplaces, as leading to problems. Others think that is a bad idea, it will drive them underground because it goes against human nature, people will form relationships with people they interact with regularly, and that will cause worse problems. Others object because they see it as the workplace intruding into people's private lives in an unacceptable way. All of which are reasonable points, but I can't say I've seen much appetite to really tackle them. Maybe there isn't much of a starting place to do so.

If it were a more limited goal, I think there would be a better chance, but once Metoo opened up into accounts of like the Ansari story, that possibility kind of evaporated.

No way, it's brought so much attention to powerful men's actions. I'm sure many now think twice before they act inappropriately

I'm reading the book 'She Said' at the moment by the two women who broke the Harvey Weinstein story. I highly recommend it. The struggle the journalisists had to persuade anyone to go on the record shows what a sea-change it was. I think it has made a difference, but there is the inevitable backlash.

No. It wakes society up to what men are really like. Awareness is good.

Similar to AutumnRose1 I've noticed changes in my workplace. It's increased awareness/people are taking about the issues, and we now have a "Respect" at work policy.