#Metoo - How A Hashtag Changed The World

It’s been a year since #MeToo exploded on Twitter – but what has changed? After 12 months of worldwide fallout, we look at what’s next in the fight against sexual harassment.

- Alley Pascoe

It all started with two words: me too. On October 15 last year, actress Alyssa Milano shared a simple idea on Twitter in support of her friend Rose McGowan’s allegations of sexual abuse against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

The response was overwhelming; the post was retweeted 24,000 times and it received 67,000 comments. Women from around the world united in solidarity and shared their personal experiences in 140 characters or less. The stories were devastating and painfully relatable: “Me too, I never told anyone because I thought it was my fault for sending the wrong signals”; “Me too, he was my stepfather”; and “Me too, you never get over it. You just learn to live with it.” Celebrities including Lady Gaga, Debra Messing and Evan Rachel Wood were among the first stars to add their voices to the Me Too movement.

The outpouring flowed from social media into the real world; women swapped stories over coffee, HR departments reviewed their sexual harassment policies and inquiries were launched. Both online and off, the world is a very different place to what it was a year ago. Here’s how…

WEINSTEIN’S DOWNFALL

On October 5, The New York Times published an article in which actress Ashley Judd recounted an incident she’d had with Harvey Weinstein. Two decades before, the film producer had invited Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what she thought was a business breakfast meeting. Instead, she was ushered to Weinstein’s hotel room where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked her to watch him shower.