#MeToo was never a push to lock up men

Rose McGowan (left) and Tarana Burke. Photo / AP

On October 15 last year, Tarana Burke went to sleep unaware her life was about to change. At 9.21 that night, actor Alyssa Milano reacted to allegations of sexual assault that had surfaced against Harvey Weinstein, tweeting: "If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet." By the time the Bronx-born civil-rights activist awoke the phrase and movement she had started 11 years earlier had a hashtag - and gone viral.

Thirty thousand women (and some men) had shared their stories, with thousands more posting the words on Facebook and Instagram. "And a year on," says 45-year-old Burke, who set up activism group Me Too for victims of sexual violence in 2006, almost nothing is the same.

Given the time she's spent in Hollywood in the past 12 months - hanging out with Meryl Streep at last year's Oscars and attending the Golden Globes as Michelle Williams's guest - her friendship circle certainly looks different.

But a year of #MeToo later, the movement is in trouble. Men have been tried on social media without due process. There is public in-fighting within celebrity cliques, with two of the women who spearheaded the allegations against Weinstein - Rose McGowan and Asia Argento - embroiled in Twitter spats, and there are accusations of hypocrisy, with Argento herself recently accused of sexually assaulting a minor.

Many men feel they have collectively been branded predators - and suspicion is growing that some women attached to the movement have cynical motivations. Add to that the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh - amid allegations of sexual assault - and the difference in climate to that of last October is palpable.

"How can we live in a world where 12 million people engage with a single hashtag representing their experience with sexual violence in 24 hours - and we're still here?" laments Burke, whose concern about the speed of a tweet, versus the slow building of a movement, was clear all along. "How did everything not just stop at that point? How did everyone not just say: 'Wait ... we knew sexual violence was a problem, but not on this scale?'"

I suggest the answer to that lies in the Hollywood birthing of that hashtag - that as A-listers took ownership of the movement, ordinary people began to feel it was an elitist cause. "Yes, that's true," Burke nods, sadly. "And now #MeToo seems to have been defined as the public naming and taking down of powerful men. And the people who a year ago were brave enough to come out and say 'me too' have been virtually ignored - forgotten. Well, not by me: because my work isn't just the movement I founded 12 years ago but supporting the people who said those two words over the past 12 months."

Last week, Burke, Amanda de Cadenet, Glennon Doyle, Tracee Ellis Ross and America Ferrera voiced support to Professor Christine Blasey Ford by writing her an open "love letter".

A crowd marches in solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Photo / AP

"It's so depressing!" she says of Kavanaugh's confirmation. "If you look at Kavanaugh, he was a privileged kid, he went to a good school, he had exclusive circles of friends - very few people probably said 'no' to him. And the lack of that 'no' is where the power and privilege starts to build.

"So I feel like you can draw a line between Kavanaugh the teenager, who is drinking heavily and accused of sexual assault, to the older Kavanaugh, who thinks that he can make decisions about women's bodies for them."

When asked about the kind of a precedent Kavanaugh's "non-trial" could set, given how little evidence there would ever be of such an incident 36 years on, she says we need to stop thinking of everything "in terms of crime and punishment. This was not an effort to have him arrested. This was an effort to shed light on the character of an individual.

"And Me Too has never had a massive push to lock people up for what they did years ago - unless, like Bill Cosby, you're a serial rapist. Even in those first Weinstein articles, there was nothing in there about taking him down."

That "ordinary" men can feel aggrieved for any high-profile man denounced for his alleged treatment of women baffles her. "And my question to the men who think Me Too is garbage would be this: 'How many men who have been "falsely accused" in this past year do you know personally?' Because it's one of those things that becomes halfway true if you say it enough."

For Me Too - both the hashtag and the movement - to live up to its promise, we have "a lot of unlearning to do," insists Burke.

"People still don't understand sexual violence ... I'm just going to make sure the second year of #MeToo is about the survivors - not the perpetrators."