What is the #MeToo Movement?

The hashtag MeToo movement is a female populist movement of the early twenty-first century. It originated as a hashtag label on a popular social media platform, Twitter. The #MeToo quickly rose in popularity following wide usage of it to address the issues that women have faced in relation to workplace sexual harassment.

Wide usage of the hashtag movement eventually led to the emboldenment of women in sharing their sexual harassment stories. Women became more courageous and confident in telling others about how they have been harassed, knowing for a fact that they are not alone in the predicament that they were facing. More women began sharing their stories online in hopes of encouraging others to press on in the face of adveristies.

Why is sexual harassment in the workforce particularly bad?

Sexual harassment in the workforce is particularly detrimental in the sense that it impedes the progress of a company. Companies can be impaired economically, when lawsuits are filed and employees have to miss work to attend court hearings as the suspect of sexual harassment. The namesake and reputation of companies would also potentially be at risk if a company is accused of encouraging a culture of sexual harassment in its workforce. Companies are profit-driven, and having a bad representation would be extrememly detriemental to companies through the loss of potential investors and customers.

Hence, many companies tend to do their utmost in silencing cases of sexual harassment in their companies. This can mean silencing the victims into submission by brute force or by bribing them monetarily to prevent them from reporting the case.

Often in times, sexual harassment occurs in the form of a male superior and a female sub-ordinate. The female is often lured into sexual advances by the male predator through supposed benefits to female once she concedes to the male’s requests. Some females who are desperate to advance in their career would inevitably succumb to their male superior’s generous offers. Such was the case of Harvey Weinstein, who had allegedly misused his powers as a reknowned Oscar Award winning film producer to sexually advance Hollywood star actressess such as Angelina Jolie, and model Cara Delevinge.

What are the advantages that the MeToo movement has brought about?

The MeToo movement has been effective as it has resulted in more people coming forward to share their sexual assault stories. Before the MeToo movement, sexual assault was a rarely discussed topic, and it was often regarded as “taboo” to speak about it. This was partly due to the fact that before the MeToo people, people’s awareness of such issues were generally less significant, and there were negligably zero avenues dedicated to tackling such issues of sexual harassment. There also lacked a public sphere for people to discuss these problems openly.

The MeToo movement is a stepping stone that women of the twenty-first century has taken to advance gender equality in the workforce. MeToo originated with a group of women who wanted to spread the important yet crucial message: that women were not just sexual objects of men to be used for their own pleasure. It sends across the vital message that women should be treated with dignity and respect, and that they had the absolute say with regards to their own body. It also apprises men that sexual mistreatment of women would not be a situation treated light-heartedly, and that dire consequences would have to be faced if one was to cross the line.

Who is most served by mainstream feminism?

Feminism, by definition, is supposed to be inclusive of everyone, regardless of race, language, gender or religion. However, in status quo, the MeToo movement is increasingly protrayed as a problem that only white, heterosexual cisgendered women face. The hard reality is that racism and discrimination still exists in the treatment of whether someone is deemed appropriate to be treated as a victim. In such cases, blacks, gays, homosexuals etcetera would obviously be at a disadvantage when they are also in the line with white privileged women, waiting to be granted their rights.

Many deplore and critisize the innate flaw of the MeToo movement, which is often scaled more to benefit the rich white population of women. This is especially evident as statistics have shown that the amount of news coverage that a white women would gain regarding the violation of her rights is disproportionately higher than that of a black women.

Groups of marginalised women felt that the movement had not spoke for them enough and that the feminist movement lacked inclusivity. It did not care about the impacts and the different ways that racism has shaped their lives as women of colour.

An anoymous interview by Middle Ground, a NGO aimed at increasing public awareness

Has the MeToo movement brought about more harm than good?

Although it is undeniable that the MeToo movement has indeed brought about much progress in advancing greater gender equality between the sexes, there are still many harms that are inherent to the movement itself. In every movement, there would inevitably exist people who would benefit from the movement, and others who would be on the losing end.

Men are now afraid to be in the same room with a younger colleague alone as they are afraid of being accused and having their namesake slandered and defamed. This poses a great hindrance to companies as it is necessary for companies to have private meetings to discuss proposals and come up with business strategies etc. Others are apprehensive to have dinner with a female colleague one on one. As a result, some may chose to have only the same sex or only males on their businss research team. This is to reduce the possibility of themselves being accused of being sexual predators, as the new media so often protrays men to be. In the long-term, this may eventually lead to companies only hiring males as they would no longer have to deal with complains of assaults in their companies. Is this neccessarily what women want?

Netflix film crew were reportedly banned from “looking at anyone for longer than five seconds, no lingering hugs, no flirting and no asking for a colleague’s phone number.” in the #metoo crackdown. Netflix’s new anti-harassment training in the wake of the meetoo movement has greatly disrupted production on it’s House of Cards show.

A commentary on the MeToo movement by The Independent magazine

Interaction between workers are innately crucial for progress to be made. The above extract however, shows that we instead coming up with reasons to build walls and barriers between the sexes and limit basic interaction just so that there will be lesser opportunities for potential inappropriate behaviour.

~post by Charlotte 🙂