My sister has recently begun work with an organisation that deals with domestic violence. So, instead of exchanging recipes and family gossip, these days she relates horrific stories of women beaten, abused and locked up. Stories of women who don’t dare to speak up or fight back. Broken women, who at the very end of their tether approach this organisation, which then helps them begin a long and fraught legal journey out of their hells.
When social media reminded me that #MeToo had turned one, I thought of these stories. Because, whether we like it or not, the truth is there has never been a #MeToo movement for women such as these.
There has been some angst about why #MeToo seems to have petered out, and I wondered if it wasn’t perhaps inevitable, given that it was never a movement, just a moment in time. A moment that women seized to highlight a history of entitled men getting away with sexual harassment against which official redress was difficult to get. So the women decided to go public.
It was a good idea, but I believe it was for the moment. And for a rather millennial moment — aggressive, public, and measured by ‘likes’. It was millennial also in how self-absorbed it was, its veracity often overtaken by individual idiosyncrasies, its myopia often failing to see the big picture.
At its best, it made men cautious. You see fewer men today adopting those smug, oily, sexist attitudes that allowed them to take for granted the women in their vicinity. And this might be #MeToo’s biggest victory yet. Second is the sense one got that going public gave some women a measure of closure and others a shot at retribution. These are not small wins.
At its worst, it was a moment exploited by a few women to simply renounce all agency and thus make peace with themselves. For this personal therapy, however, others paid a heavy price.
As for several men, it was a moment to prove to girlfriends and colleagues how “woke” they were, so they preached louder than the bishops. In one amusing episode, a zealous young man breathing fire and brimstone had to retire hurt when he was himself called out for harassment.
For those on the cusp of anonymity, #MeToo was a golden moment to claw into public view. Random people who knew neither victim nor perpetrator built up fine followings on the strength of how irresponsibly they threw stones. Social media has a beguiling way of hailing you the moment it discovers how vicious you can be with how little proof.
It was wonderful also to see how #MeToo made ‘feminists’ of men who are barely conversant with the feminine. One lot converted because they were terrified that some past move of theirs would be exposed in the general bloodbath of those heady days. Others realised it was a perfect moment to get even with colleagues and associates against whom they harboured secret grudges, so overnight they acquired shiny 'feminist’ halos perched all askew.
And I can’t be so lax as to ignore the activists and feminist theorists who showed impeccable integrity by setting themselves up as jury and hangmen without even speaking to both sides. Oh yes, #MeToo was quite a riot.
If now it seeks to become a sustained movement, #MeToo has to be less self-centred, and more inclusive and transparent. It has to be a little less pleased with itself and more open to questioning its own motives and shortcomings. It must study how sexual mores and sexuality, desires and repressions, fear and guilt underpin interactions between the sexes.
Out there is a real world, where the woman who cleans the toilets has to indulge the duty manager or lose her job. Where a salesgirl is daily mauled by the shop clerk. A world where women don’t know they have the right to refuse, don’t know where to complain, haven’t heard of ‘feminism’. The knowledge of this world makes it harder to express undiluted anxiety over the afflictions of a privileged, Foucalt-quoting set that feeds off crowd-fed approbation. Not to mention crowd-funded spa sessions, school fees and self-care kits.
#MeToo thrived by using social media to make hit-and-run raids. One year on, it is worth asking if it has the grit for real battles.
Where the writer tries to make sense of society with seven hundred words and a bit of snark.
