#MeToo

Protester holds a picture of Jimmy Savile and Margaret Thatcher

Netflix documentary Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story attempts to explain how TV celebrity Jimmy Savile's ties to the British ruling class enabled him to get away with sexual abuse for decades, writes Alex Salmon.

The hysterical backlash from the right against Proctor & Gamble’s latest advertisement for Gillette razors, which urges men to be “The best they can be”, has been nothing short of comical. But there is a serious side, writes Pip Hinman.

McDonald’s workers in 10 cities across the United States walked off the job on September 18 to demand an end to sexual harassment in the workplace, writes Ann Coleman.

United States President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh probably never expected he would become a central target of the #MeToo movement for his misogynist behaviour in his university years.

“La Manada” (The Wolf Pack) is the name of a WhatsApp group chosen by five men to organise a trip to los sanfermines — the running of the bulls — in Pamplona, Navarra. During the festival, in the early hours of July 7, 2016, they gang raped an 18-year-old woman in a small room under the stairwell of a block of flats.

Three hours later, one of them shared a video of the attack in another male-only WhatsApp group with 28 members, called “Danger”. One of the five was an off-duty National Guard officer, another a soldier. During the trial, evidence of another attack committed by four of the five several months earlier was uncovered.

Despite this, although the trial found the men guilty of sexual abuse, it cleared them of rape.

Almost six months after it began, the #MeToo campaign is still having an impact and generating debate — and not just against the right wing, notes Elizabeth Shultz.

Last October, the hashtag #MeToo went viral around the world as women shared their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

When South Korean prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun made a historic televised revelation in January of sexual harassment she had suffered in 2010 by a senior prosecutor, it stirred the rapidly spreading #MeToo movement across South Korea.

Homemade signs and pink pussy hats abounded on January 21 as thousands of women rallied in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne as part of the international Women’s Marches.

As hundreds of thousands marched across Europe and the US, 1500 people — many of them young women — gathered in Sydney’s Hyde Park to form a human chain in a symbol of global solidarity. In Melbourne, protesters marched from Alexandra Gardens and formed a human chain along the banks of the Yarra.

"Last year it felt like a funeral. This year it feels like a resistance."

Those words--from one of the many hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets on January 20 as part of the massive Women's Marches marking the shameful anniversary of US President Donald Trump's first year in office--summed up the political mood.

In two words: Pissed off.

From Los Angeles to New York, tens of thousands of demonstrators are donning pink "pussy" hats and marching as one, demanding equal rights, justice and fair pay in the second annual Women's March.

Supporters swarmed the streets of 250 cities across the United States on January 20 in defence of women's rights as the political crises of the past year rose to the surface in a wave of sleazy politicians, violated immigration rights and families torn asunder.

Don Burke, a television host and “family man”, is the latest celebrity to be outed as a serial sexual harasser. A joint investigation by Fairfax Media and the ABC has uncovered multiple claims of Burke committing indecent assault, sexual harassment and bullying of women in the late 1980s and 1990s. 

As more women come forward with their horrific experiences with this particular monster, we need to ask what more can be done? Do we just expose more perpetrators, or is there something else?

In the weeks since evidence of film producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long pattern of sexual abuse surfaced, millions of women, trans and gender nonconforming people, even men around the world, have exposed the scale of sexual violence in our society, using the #MeToo hashtag to tell their stories.

#MeToo set off a profound moment of collective bravery, which would have been impossible without the broad sense of solidarity and support for those coming forward.