The 97 Men (And One Woman) Taken Down By The #MeToo Movement
Author: https://www.thedailybeast.com/authors/lizzie-crocker
Description: The #MeToo hashtag, adopted by women to share their stories of sexual abuse, harassment and abuse, continues to make waves. The question is whether it can also bring change.
Keywords: Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Dustin Hoffman, #metoo
Date: 2017-12-17T05:00:00.000Z

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# The 97 Men (And One Woman) Taken Down By The #MeToo Movement

## The #MeToo hashtag, adopted by women to share their stories of sexual abuse, harassment and abuse, continues to make waves. The question is whether it can also bring change.

Lizzie Crocker

#### 12.17.17 12:00 AM ET

It began on October 5, when the New York Times reported the first allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. But it became a juggernaut 10 days later, when the actress Alyssa Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment or assault to tweet the words “me too.”

A collective raising of hands across social media quickly snowballed into a viral, global hashtag, as #MeToo appeared in more than 500,o00 tweets and 12 million Facebook posts within the first 24 hours. Harrowing, first-person accounts of being sexually abused clogged Instagram feeds, too.

Milano had hoped an online chorus of #MeToos might illustrate the “magnitude of the problem”--and she was right. The hashtag’s virality alone made it seem as if all women (and some men) had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lives.

Milano kicked off a consciousness-raising moment, but it was only the latest iteration of the Me Too campaign. Activist Tarana Burke launched the movement back in 1997, after hearing a 13-year-old girl’s sexual abuse story.

Most of us thought the #MeToo moment would fizzle out of the news cycle after a week or so (hashtag activism tends to have a short shelf life), but the numbers kept climbing. By early November, #MeToo had become a global rallying cry, tweeted over 2.3 million times in 85 countries and shared in over 77 million posts or comments on Facebook.

The French used #balancetonporc, the Spanish used #YoTambien, and countries in the Middle East tweeted Arabic translations. At the end of November, more than 2,000 Swedish women employed in the music industry signed an open letter addressing sexual harassment and assault in the workplace as part of the #MeToo campaign.

#MeToo pierced the culture of silence surrounding sexual assault, galvanizing female celebrities and acquaintances in your Facebook feed to tell their stories for the first time. It made many men reflect on whether they’d been complicit enablers of sexual misconduct, or offenders themselves. And it led to a collective reckoning with systemic sexism in our culture.

Other hashtags like #EverydaySexism and #YesAllWomen have been used to highlight abuse against women in the past. But where those digital campaigns moved out of the news cycle when their viral moment ended, the #MeToo movement continued to make headlines amidst terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and the threat of nuclear war.

Every week brought a fresh batch of accusations against high-profile, powerful men. Top potentates of the entertainment and media worlds were among the first to crash down to earth, followed by a slew of less powerful despots—many of them in those same industries—as well as political leaders. Before long it seemed like half the men in Hollywood, media, and Washington had been accused of sexual misconduct.

Post-Weinstein, each story that tumbled out seemed more sordid than the last: how Kevin Spacey groped and assaulted multiple actors, including a 14-year-old boy; how Amazon Studios chief Roy Price reapeatedly propositioned a producer, assuring her, “You will love my dick;” how Ben Affleck groped an actress in public; how political pundit Mark Halperin rubbed his erect penis against younger female colleagues and propositioned them for sex; how Brett producer Brett Ratner forced a then-teenage Natasha Henstridge to give him oral sex and “furiously” masturbated in front of Olivia Munn. Halperin, comedian Louis CK, and director James Toback were also exposed as self-pleasuring predators-- a common refrain in these stories of abuse.

The seriality of the harassment enterprise has been particularly horrifying: more than 300 women accused Toback of offering them film roles only to get them alone so he could degrade or dry-hump or rape them. 11 young women filed a complaint against public radio’s Tom Ashbrook for delivering unwanted hugs, back rubs, and “creepy” sexual conversation to his employees. And eight women who worked for Charlie Rose accused the longtime TV host of sexual deviance and harassment–groping, exposing himself, and making lewd entreaties over the phone.

A “Shitty Media Men” spreadsheet documented violations ranging from sexual and physical abuse to being a “jerk” and “creepy AF in the DMs.” Mother Jones’ David Corn--accused of making “inappropriate comments about women’s sexuality” at work and “uninvited touching” by female colleagues--was the first of four men on the list who have since been professionally punished.

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The New York Times suspended its star White House correspondent Glenn Thrush after allegations of inappropriate and unwanted advances were levied against him by former colleagues.

Just this week, celebrity chef Mario Batali stepped down from his restaurant management company and was fired from his hosting gig on ABC's The Chew after acknowledging that allegations of groping and inappropriate sexual comments by at least nine women--former employees and strangers alike– “match up with ways I have acted.”

From unwanted bear hugs and crotch-grabbing to smelling his female servers, Batali's behavior was allegedly so gross that women he worked with nicknamed him “the Red Menace.”

At the time of writing, nine women had come forward to accuse Russell Simmons of sexual harassment; former NBC Today show host Matt Lauer was the subject of two more stories in 24 hours–the first that he had had a consensual relationship with a young female production assistant some years ago who nevertheless said that the power imbalance had given the relationship a menacing edge for her.

On Friday morning, on Today itself, the lawyer of Lauer's present unnamed accuser said she was "terrified" of having her identity exposed.

Dustin Hoffman is also now facing multiple claims of sexual misconduct, including exposing himself to a minor, and sexually assaulting two women.

Men continue to be publicly shamed and unseated from positions of power at a relentless pace. And pundits keep having to adjust their narratives because the broader picture is constantly changing: now, many not-so-powerful men (journalists, newscasters) are being accused of murkier offenses (unwanted kisses, come-ons from bosses) and, in some cases, punished arbitrarily.

There’s a lot to process here. In three months, #MeToo has gone from being a viral hashtag to Time magazine’s Person of the Year, a choice that recognizes the widespread calling out of sexual harassment and assault as one of the biggest, most important stories of 2017.

The movement’s power was underscored by the fact that beneath it was Donald Trump, filling the number two slot of Time’s people-of-the-year issue. It’s no mystery that the current frenzy to expose sexual harassers is largely a reaction to Trump’s election.

Here was a man who was caught on the infamous Access Hollywood tape boasting that being famous allowed him to sexually assault women--“When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy”—and then subsequently accused of sexual assault and misconduct by over a dozen women. America put him in the Oval Office anyway. That tape still stands as the spectral avatar to the #MeToo movement.

Evidently, the #MeToo movement has limits, since our groper-in-chief has thus far managed to slither out of a variety of sexual charges, even as they’ve resurfaced in recent weeks.

With Trump accusers speaking out, as three did during an edition of Megyn Kelly Today this week, his own sexual misconduct scandal may not be as consigned to the past as he believes. Trump, like Roy Moore in Alabama, has called his accusers liars.

He suggested at one 2016 rally that one of his accusers wasn't attractive enough for him to consider assaulting: “Take a look. You take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don't think so.”

In contrast, Democrat politicians Al Franken and John Conyers resigned earlier this month after being accused of sexual misconduct. As he resigned, Franken noted the irony of losing his job, while Trump remained in his.

Staying in the political sphere but breaking the familiar gender boundaries of the scandal, Newsweek reported Friday that Andrea Ramsey, a female Democratic congressional candidate in Kansas, had stood down after accusations of sexual misconduct from her past had resurfaced.

The numbers of the accused post-Weinstein are staggering: 97 prominent men have been accused of sexual misconduct by hundreds of alleged victims, plus thousands of stories containing infinite variations of sexual sleaziness. The connective thread is abuse of power–men in high castles demanding varying degrees of sexual adulation from female underlings in their kingdoms.

Requisites for women who worked with these powerful men included ego-stroking, performing sexual favors, being groped and pinched and demeaned. These women were expected not to tell anyone about being forced to watch men masturbate; to be receptacles while some mega-producer or media superstar or comedian ejaculated on their leg and into potted plants; to keep quiet after they were raped.

Weinstein’s preferred tactic was intimidation; he played on women’s fear of standing up to powerful men or making a scene. As Salma Hayek put it in the New York Times this week, saying no meant being subjected to Weinstein’s “Machiavellian rage.” He once threatened to kill her, she wrote.

The #MeToo movement has empowered women to effectively turn the tables on their tormentors for the first time-- to hold them accountable for their abuses.

But for all its power, the #MeToo movement has been a bit confusing, too. Many men have expressed anxiety and confusion about about interacting with women, particularly in the workplace.

Some are wondering if complimenting a female colleague’s outfit is off limits. They’re concerned that women they work with might feel violated by a friendly back-pat, or that a platonic hug might be misinterpreted as a come-on.

Women, in turn, have mostly scoffed at their bewilderment. But some of this seems to be genuine confusion about what is and isn’t OK as we navigate this reckoning with sexual behavior.

It’s an understatement to say there’s been a shift in the culture, and that shift is unquestionably for good. Men like Weinstein and Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and their less famous counterparts deserve to be exiled from society, to be professionally ruined. In some cases, they may even deserve a prison sentence.

The world is finally listening to and believing women’s stories of sexual harassment in the workplace. Some are already filling the powerful roles abandoned by abusers. Robin Wright will replace Kevin Spacey as the star of House of Cards, and Christiane Amanpour has been named as Charlie Rose’s interim replacement. Which raises the question: To what extent will women behind the wheel change the way we report and interpret culture?

There are also signs that some men are not willing to accept the accusations made against them. Tavis Smiley, suspended by PBS after multiple sexual misconduct allegations were made, says he will "fight back," denying the accusations made against him.

The wife of Kentucky state representative Dan Johnson, who committed suicide this week, called the accusations of molesting a teen made against him a "high-tech lynching." Rebecca Johnson also said she planned to replace him in the state legislature.

Matt Damon, not yet accused of anything, caused an inevitable online storm for saying: “I do believe that there’s a spectrum of behavior. And we’re going to have to figure — you know, there’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”

The question for #MeToo going forward is how it retains its force. The public’s nail-biting anticipation over what powerful man will fall next has recently become more of a shoulder shrug. Another day, another dude declared a rapist or a serial harasser or a creep, like a game of whack-a-mole. The seriousness of the accusations somehow feels diluted by their very number.

The other unknown is how long the public mood, and their own calculations, mean that Weinstein, Spacey and co. will stay out of the spotlight and not work. There are many others who are far less well-off in other industries, for whom money is not as plentiful. Are there careers over? What rehabilitation can they expect? What atonement will be seen as acceptable in regaining whatever professional foothold they are aiming for?

Women and their male allies need to put more energy into affecting permanent change through activism and legislation. That’s the only way forward for #MeToo.

Until then the names will continue, the scandals of abuse, harassment, and assault will continue–and after all the exposure and repudiation of exploitative behavior one hopes that something, or many things, may yet emerge that change our workplaces and relationships for the better.

With additional reporting by Tim Teeman