#MeToo Effect
The #MeToo movement is a worldwide campaign appealing to women to demonstrate the prevalence of sexual harassments/assaults. #MeToo went viral as the article “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades” was published by The New York Times in October 2017. After that, Hollywood stars began to share their experiences from the sexual harassments/assaults of certain figures with the world. Earlier this year, The New York Times announced the “Time’s Up” movement. Jointly founded by 700,000 female farmworkers and Hollywood celebrities, #TimesUp is the response to #MeToo and the Weinstein effect.
PURSUIT
I quote from the Time’s Up website, “Powered by women, TIME’S UP addresses the systemic inequality and injustice in the workplace that have kept underrepresented groups from reaching their full potential.” To be specific, the movement encourages men and women all over the world to stand up and fight against the sexual harassments/assaults in working fields. Unsurprisingly, it is quite a success. More and more people now stand up to share their stories and feelings. However, as #MeToo and #TimesUp take the world by storm, the dark side of them gradually comes to light.
DARK SIDE
A few weeks ago, female actor Jennifer Lawrence visited London to promote her new film Red Sparrow. For the photo shoot, Lawrence wore a beautiful yet flimsy Versace dress, while her male co-stars wore shirts, jumpers, jackets and heavy coats. When the pictures were released, the public went mad. They accused the film company of using her body as an advertising tool.
Nonetheless, the actor claimed that the dress was her choice. To clarify herself, Jennifer wrote on Facebook, “This is sexist, this is ridiculous, this is not feminism. Over-reacting about everything someone says or does, creating controversy over silly innocuous things such as what I choose to wear or not wear, is not moving us forward.” She’s right, isn’t she? The pursuit of #MeToo and #TimesUp is meant to raise awareness of, empathise and seek justice for the oppressed. Sadly, the points of the movements are often misinterpreted or even twisted by some.
There’s more. People may gradually choose not to speak their mind for being afraid of the onslaught coming from the public once they discuss the popular issues with different perspectives.
For example, I wrote a post from a perspective that I don’t believe on a social forum a few weeks ago, “… I hate those women who wear strappy dresses. They are too sexy.” The fact is though, I really love to see women wear strappy dresses. The post was used intentionally as an experiment to observe and analyse people’s reactions.
I was inundated by aggressive comments and hate messages. Even though some people backed me up, I was accused of being sexist and old-fashioned. The backlash was so great that I had to delete the post. Later, I wrote another post to explain the real reason of writing that controversial one. Still, many people chose not to believe me, and they called their relentless commentaries justice. It was hopeless.
JUSTICE
Our trending mindset has become absolute, forming worldwide (especially with social media) white terrors and witch-hunts. If someone says anything slightly disrespectful to a certain gender, race, belief, etc., even just a normally acceptable joke, in the #MeToo era he or she will be judged and punished by the public’s hatred.
It is definitely good that people acknowledge the inequality in our society. Stand up and fight against the injustice we must. But we should know what is the right thing to do rather than feed the world with gibberish wrapped with justice. The world looks forward to what #MeToo and #TimesUp movements may bring about. We just have to use them carefully.
Originally published at taidajournal.tumblr.com.
