Public and Personal Outcomes of Me Too Movement

Many women are sexually harassed in their day to day lives and the chances of a woman actually reporting such an act is slim to none. This is due to the number of women who think being harrassed either in the workplace or on the streets is normal for men to do. They begin to think it is a norm to have others say/do these things to them. Not many people have been brought into account for their actions, this is also as a result of women being so used to it they have learnt over the decades to deal with the men who treat them differently. The #metoo movement has brought some publicity to the problem. The movement did not actually start in 2017 as it was first seen in 2006 by Tarana Burke. It has gotten more prominent in 2017 by Alyssa Milano, therefore explaining why most may think this movement is new. However, #metoo has brought new problems into the picture, such as some women using the movement to gain publicity and abusing the power of the movement. Does the #metoo movement really deliver a positive outcome?

There has been some success with the #metoo movement in ways that men are being more aware of what they are doing in their environments around women as well as the number of individuals being sexually harassed decreasing. In the workplace and the working conditions have improved within the years, and the number of people that have reported the sexual harassment claims have increased during the few years that the movement has been going on. The recent logos in the news can now allow women to be more confident with what they are going through in the workplace. An article on the Bloomberg law states that the number of harassment claims since 2016 has increased by 100 per cent this shows the effect of the me too movement over the past few years since the popularity of the movement. Although the movement has been beneficial, there are some cases where very prominent people in sports entertainment and the government are able to get away with certain actions. They do not get penalized for something they have done. Some cases of this is Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and R.Kelly. This allows those prominent people to think that they can get away with these things. Although many powerful people have managed to abuse their power the movement has managed to let powerful people get away with these things it has also managed to have most of these crimes reported because of how big the movement is. It has also managed to bring forward many people who have rightly accused many men because it gave them confident an example of someone who was reported for sexual misconduct years after the act is Jeffrey Epstein.

While some may attempt to discredit the movement by asserting that the movement is dominated by white, wealthy women, when in reality, the occurrence of sexual violence is more predominant amongst poor women, women of colour and LGBTQ people, that is to deny its holistic power to bring attention to the world-wide problem that women are facing day today. This campaign is so powerful in the way in which social media is giving the victims a platform, a voice, to shed light not only on them as victims of harassment and assault, but also to shed light upon the perpetrators of assault. #MeToo has affirmed for survivors that they are not alone, that they are part of something bigger than their individual traumas.

Although the movement has brought forward many people who have been sexually harassed, many people have managed to bring forward women who have been scared to report their crimes. The popularity of the movement also means that many women have made false accusations to gain attention and to exploit many men out of money and has ruined their reputation. 

In conclusion, this gives the general public to assume that the #metoo movement isn’t for genuine reasons/purpose and so the movement can receive bad publicity, leading to the various women who need help not wanting to seek as the movement is falsely used and abused. Some women have not reported their crimes because they do want to be called out as crying wolf, on the other hand, some women who want to gain popularity within either the workplace or online