Kim Wilson: The #metoo movement has power to help us all
INFLUENTIAL US magazine Time has named its “Person of the Year”, and it’s not what anyone would have expected. In fact, it’s not actually a person but one of the most dramatic movements seen in recent years, writes Kim Wilson.
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INFLUENTIAL US magazine Time has named its “Person of the Year”, and it’s not what anyone would have expected.
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In fact, it’s not actually a person but one of the most dramatic, far-reaching and fast-moving movements seen in recent years.
The 2017 cover features five women — and the elbow of an anonymous sixth woman — labelled “The Silence Breakers”.
Celebrity faces Taylor Swift and Ashley Judd are featured alongside Uber engineer Susan Fowler, lobbyist Adama Iwu, and strawberry picker and Mexican immigrant Isabel Pascual.
The faceless sixth woman is a young hospital worker from Texas who was a victim of sexual harassment and feared that disclosing her identity would affect her family.
They represent the diversity of women who have been brave enough to speak out against sexual harassment and assault in the wake of misconduct revelations against the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, and more locally, Don Burke.
Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal said: “This is the fastest-moving social change we’ve seen in decades, and it began with individual acts of courage by hundreds of women — and some men, too — who came forward to tell their own stories.”
The cover illustrates that it’s not just celebrities being scrutinised over revelations of inappropriate and systemic sexual behaviour towards women. You just have to look at the avalanche of responses to the #metoo movement, in which women were asked to use the hashtag if they had been affected by inappropriate sexual behaviour, to see how far-reaching this is.
Its effects are being felt in every workplace around the First World, and the message is filtering down to sporting clubs, book groups and school gates. I’d go so far as to say there would be few women who have not been touched by this in some way themselves, or who know someone who has been.
These revelations have opened the floodgates to allow women to talk more openly about their own experiences and to begin to see they are not alone.
This could not have been more clearly and dramatically emphasised to me than at a recent dinner with three of my oldest and dearest school friends. We’ve known each other for more than 30 years and we’ve shared stories on everything from boyfriends and babies, to work and families.
I thought I knew everything there was to know.
But at that dinner, we all shared private and long-held stories of our own experiences with inappropriate sexual behaviour towards us or someone close to us.
For more than 30 years, I had kept quiet about my own experience as a 16-year-old girl of being a target of a teacher, and the lasting impact that had on me.
I was embarrassed and upset by what had occurred with someone they all knew, but it felt liberating and cathartic to tell the full story.
Sitting with my treasured friends, the layers came peeling back and each of us revealed raw and private tales, something that is unlikely to ever to have happened had these other brave women not spoken out and inspired us.
By sharing our stories, something shifted, and instead of feeling embarrassed and ashamed, it felt empowering and positive.
Nothing happens overnight, but there is a sufficient groundswell of emotion and information to sense something seismic is occurring.
My girlfriends and I all have daughters, and at the end of our dinner, we all agreed it was our fervent hope that this movement, and the emerging culture of openness, continues so that they will never have to hashtag #metoo.
Kim Wilson is a Herald Sun Fashion and Lifestyle Editor
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