Anyone scrolling through social media recently would have noticed the flood of #MeToo hashtags added to posts, comments or tweets taking over their feeds.
This social media campaign began when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted a message to women, meant to bring awareness to the prevalence of sexual harassment and/or assault facing women in all walks of life. The tweet was in response to the breaking news from The New York Times and The New Yorker that reported dozens of accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape against prominent American film producer Harvey Weinstein.
What followed was even more of Hollywood’s elite stepping forward and saying they too had been a victim of the producer or other men in their past.
While most of the posts have stopped short of actually naming names, the campaign has shed new light on just how prevalent sexual predation is in the progressive bastion known as Hollywood.
Clearly, Harvey Weinstein is far from being the only powerful man in a powerful position who has found himself accused of sexual misconduct, but the sheer number of accusations have made the story hard for the media to ignore. Since the New York Times first published the allegations against Mr. Weinstein, more than 30 additional accusers have stepped forward alleging they were either sexually harassed or assaulted by the mogul.
Actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Ashley Judd are just a few of the many stars who have stepped forward. Producer Gail Berman, who has held top jobs at both the Fox Network and Paramount Pictures called the outpour a “watershed moment.”
On Sunday, October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted the following after learning about the Harvey Weinstein accusations:
“If all women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
The tweet sent seemingly all of social media into an uproar, with #MeToo hashtags seen all over Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter on Sunday. In fact, within the first 24 hours after Milano’s tweet, the hashtag was used over 500,000 times. Some of the more prominent names using the hashtag included poet Najwa Zebian and actresses Evan Rachel Wood, Anna Paquin and Rosario Dawson along with singer Lady Gaga.
“The democratization of the spread of information can finally move faster than a powerful media mogul’s attempts to bury it,” Oscar-Winning director Kathryn Bigelow said of the movement.
“I think it’s upsetting and devastating, all of the stories that have come out,” film producer Nina Jacobson added. “But, I think the floodgates being opened is something that had to happen and that finally brings a subject to the surface that has sort of gone unchecked for countless years.”
On Monday, the Producers Guild of America made a move to terminate Mr. Weinstein’s membership. They issued a statement about their position on the issue:
“Sexual harassment of any type is completely unacceptable. This is a systemic and pervasive problem requiring immediate industry-wide action.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stripped Mr. Weinstein of his academy membership on Saturday and his company The Weinstein Company fired him.
The takeaway from all of this is sadly a mixed one. On one hand, the Hollywood establishment is under more scrutiny than it has ever been in recent memory, calling the industry’s so-called progressive values into question. However, as mentioned above, almost none of the ‘#MeToo’ posts actually go so far as to name names, making it difficult for those who may have an axe to grind with America’s often hostile film industry to stand by them.
Sex offenders belong in prison. This is impossible to accomplish without actual suspects. If Alyssa Milano and other actresses are serious about implementing the cultural change they say they do, they need to single out exactly who these abusers are so they can be prosecuted. Otherwise, this is sadly just another example of celebrity virtue signaling.
~ Conservative Zone
