#MeToo: The Perfect Storm Needed to Change Attitudes Toward Sexual Harassment and Violence

Abstract

The #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns have led to calls for a radical change in attitudes to harassment, sexual violence, and abuse. These campaigns have not been uncontroversial—claims that we risk applying today’s standards to yesterday’s behavior have evoked huge antipathy. That sexual harassment is engrained in our social ethos is exposed in surveys of school-aged children, with over one third of girls in mixed-sex schools personally experiencing sexual harassment at school.1 Emerging technologies have enabled new forms of harassment, such as increasingly common and damaging online abuse2 and ‘up-skirting’ – with calls for the latter to be made a criminal offence.3 Sexual violence and abuse are wide-ranging – from sexual abuse and exploitation to rape and modern-day slavery for sexual purposes. Despite the impact on all, sexual violence remains a gendered crime, with more girls and women affected, reflecting misogynistic and patriarchal attitudes inherited from ages past. Recent outcry over the proposal by the Parole Board to release from prison a serial ‘black cab’ rapist led to a judicial review, which overturned the decision,4 raising the complex question of what can be done to protect the public from proven perpetrators who may re-offend.