The first reason is that it has somewhat legitimised the ‘whisper network’ of women.
The second reason involves the arrogance that comes with thinking your reputation could some day be destroyed.
Let me explain.
Unfortunately, right now, it’s the high profile individuals who run the most risk of being outed for bad workplace behaviour and sexual misconduct.
Those who’re the household names. The celebrities (A, B and even C grade). The media personalities. The politicians. The CEOs of large companies. The well-known entrepreneurs and VCs, and the titans of industry. They are the people with names big enough to get people talking about their wrongdoings and the media interested in investigating their shitty behaviour. They’re the people who’ve been ‘successful’ and have achieved some form of ‘greatness’ (even if such so-called greatness is merely a job title).
But what about those who’ve experienced sexual harassment and even assault at work, by an individual who has power to perpetrate, but not the name to make the stories interesting enough to go wider than our own experience?
While there’s certainly a place for industry publications to investigate such behaviour where they have the resources, and there’s definitely a case for such incidents to be reported to HR and higher up the chain, the fact is that the less interesting the individual, the less likely their behaviour will become widespread knowledge.
Still, that doesn’t mean the #MeToo movement won’t hit industries that have fewer high-profile perpetrators — and fewer high-profile victims — than media and entertainment.
It reckoning in other sectors may look a little different to all the headlines we’ve been seeing.
It may happen underground and be less official.
Women are talking. Women are sharing more stories. Women are recounting situations and things that happened to them years ago — events they remember vividly, but may have felt too ashamed or embarrassed to discuss more widely at the time.
This is the whisper network. Women passing stories from colleague to colleague, from industry contact to industry contact, from friend to friend who many know another friend who could do with a warning. Much of this story-telling has occurred in just the past couple of months. These stories may travel down the leadership chain, across it, or even up it.
In many cases action won’t be taken against these stories, but they will be remembered.
There is power in knowledge, even if it’s merely knowledge that remains within your own circles and small part of an industry.
This was a point Moira Donegan made, as she revealed herself as the creator of Shitty Men in Media list following widespread speculation that Harpers magazine was set to reveal her identity (a shitty thing itself for a publication to threaten to do). Moira says she was “incredibly naive” when she started the list inviting women to “share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged”, and she didn’t realise how quickly it would go viral. She wrote that she’s since lost her job, friends, and that she now questions her future prospects.
But she defended the purpose of the list.
With or without anonymous lists that are freely available online, women are sharing stories and naming names within their own circles. Stories that may be remembered and later have unofficial consequences. Especially as more women come into leadership positions and have more say in the promotions and pay rises and future career prospects of others.
Meanwhile, I dare say that those with the arrogance and entitlement to believe they can use a job title or their experience, or even their gender, to take advantage of women they work with, also have the arrogance to believe they may one day be ‘great’ enough to be well-known, at least within their own industry.
They may have the arrogance to believe they’ll be famous enough — even just ‘micro famous’ enough — for such stories to be of interest to audiences wide enough to destroy their reputation. They should at least have the arrogance to believe women will now talk about them. And such conversation won’t be flattering.
That perception of future greatness may just be enough to deter them from such bad behaviour in the first place.
While the whisper networks and the arrogance of perpetrators is not enough to take back any damage that’s already been done, it can at least ensure some prevention and protection for the next generation of women. That makes #MeToo more than just a hashtag.