In a heartfelt piece last week, Crikey’s Amber Schultz protested against the verdict in the Depp-Heard defamation trial “being used as a test case for the Me Too movement”.
I hear her frustration. As a former women’s rights activist, to me it always seemed that the “time’s up” buzzer on social change rang far earlier than it should have to realise the movement’s aims, little less embed them into the social and cultural life of the nation.
That said, if Amber Heard hadn’t come along to slow the momentum on the most recent feminist uprising against sexual harassment and assault, some other woman would have been found to fill the histrionic liar role.
Because for all the success of the Me Too movement — indeed because of its success — men were always going to start complaining that it had “gone too far” and find a way to slow the pace of change.
Progress is neither one-directional nor linear. Even if you believe that the overall arc of democratic societies is towards justice, the micro-movements for social change that contribute to that arc are best described by the old adage of two steps forward, one step back.
Why is social change so stagger-stepped and tortoise-paced? Because any successful quest for power will meet resistance. Power, as my first-year sociology teacher taught me, is never given freely. It must always be taken. When third-wave Australian feminists demanded changes to ensure women feel as safe and included as men — and had those demands taken seriously and acted upon as we saw with the Jenkins’ report — that was a real win for the women’s movement.
Of course the men, whose invisible privilege to say and do much of what they like when it comes to women, were going to feel discomfited. Not necessarily because they didn’t want to change — some do, and many did. But as women continued to air their grievances and men began losing their jobs or reputations based on allegations on social media but not always tested in court, male anxiety grew about how they were going to avoid falling foul of the new standards for acceptable social behaviour — because as the Me Too movement continued to race ahead, no one was sure what the new standard would be.
No wonder some men were keen to call time. Just as they did decades ago, at the tail end of the debate about sexual harassment inspired by Virginia Trioli’s Generation F and Helen Garner’s The First Stone. Writing op-eds in the mainstream press replete with phrases like “It’s all gone too far” and “Enough is enough”. Because rightly or wrongly, men back then — just like now — felt they’d heard enough about how they had to change for all new demands to stop, so they could implement what they’d learned in their workplaces and lives.
Indeed, Australian men may feel the need for a halt in proceedings, so they can get their ducks in a row, even more strongly than their American counterparts. Why? Because of the very Australian imperative to avoid friction — little less conflict — in all social situations. To achieve this, everyone has to have a firm grip on what the expectations are in every social situation, and how to implement them — something that’s pretty hard to do when some of those expectations are in flux.
Make sense? I think so. Though spare a thought for those women whose life chances depend on the end of sexist harassment and violence at work. Not eventually, when men have caught their breath and one more wave of agitation sweeps through to finish the work Me Too began, but now.
But justified impatience doesn’t make change move any faster. Nor does justified outrage. Which is why the Me Too movement must continue to aspire for full equality between women and men.
But remember that the freedom train we all have to ride on can’t go any faster.
