2021: the Year of Consequences for alpha abusers

Marilyn Manson on stage in 2019. Picture: AFP

Actors Shia LaBeouf and Armie Hammer, musician Marilyn Manson, director Joss Whedon. Know their names. Not for their successes in the entertainment industry but for their alleged treatment of the women around them. In some cases for decades. In which they’ve been quite possibly enabled by creative industries that have turned a blind eye. And the recently disclosed astonishments of grim little allegations will now be their legacy.

2021 is shaping up to be the Year of Consequences for men behaving badly. It now feels like the long game of the #MeToo movement. It’s not just in the worlds of music and film that there’s a reckoning underway but in sporting, business and political realms too. And it’s not just about treating women badly, but people in general; it’s a new world, with new standards. Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo Olympics organising committee, gone after declaring that “talkative women” made meetings “drag on”. Eddie McGuire, president of Collingwood Football Club, gone after a long line of offensive and off-colour comments over the years. Bill Michael, an Australian who’s UK chairman of KPMG, gone after declaring to younger employees to “stop moaning” about the pandemic, and there’s “no such thing as unconscious bias”.

It’s becoming not so easy anymore to brush the behaviour of certain alpha men under the carpet, to just carry on with business as usual. They can no longer rely on the boys’ club to get them through. It’s a necessary generational shift; tolerance is at an all-time low. Just witness the simmering rage from women all around Australia over the government’s appalling enabling of Brittany Higgins’ alleged rapist in the corridors of power. The collective cry: this stinks. Enough. The alleged perpetrator needs to be brought to account. It’s a simple matter of justice.

And we have the splendid example set in a recent town council Zoom meeting in the UK’s Cheshire. Its indomitable host, Jackie Weaver (not ours, theirs, but just as glorious) briskly kicked off all the men behaving badly. If you haven’t seen the video I urge you to. It went viral. The men shouting, screaming, talking over the females were dispatched with the calm, no-nonsense brutality of a woman who’s dealt with jerks all her life and seen them endure. Rise. Progress. And destroy other people’s careers in their wake.

Well, no longer. Perhaps it’s a logical progression from Trump’s cruel era. The acknowledgment that men like this are not infallible; that their era is over and they can be brought down. Hot on the heels of Weaver’s no-nonsense spirit landed Crown Resorts’ reckoning, an inquiry that found evidence of money laundering and possible organised crime links in the casino operation. What came through loud and clear, with this and so many of these recent examples: if a wrong has been done, well, let’s bring it to light. Fix it. Change the culture.

#MeToo is making more and more women unafraid to come forward. To find courage in the examples of their peers. The awarding of Australian of the Year to Grace Tame, the wildly brave advocate for survivors of sexual assault, already feels seismic. Empowering. Women are speaking up about those whom they’ve tolerated for years – who should no longer be tolerated. The power feels contagious. This toppling of various giants feels like the movement’s long-lasting legacy.

And the charming specimens of creative masculinity mentioned at the start of this column, what will they now, perhaps, be known for? This is the slow burn of the #MeToo movement. The real business, the reckoning. Captains of your world, take note. A new order is coming for any toxic abusers in your midst.