Joyce Fegan: Our acceptance of misogyny five years on from #MeToo

A woman walks past a mural painted for Women's Aid by the artist Emmalene Blake in Dublin. 

In the writing of this column, there are legal landmines everywhere, court cases pending, investigations ongoing.

Simultaneously, there are also women everywhere trying to rear children in the midst of domestic abuse, women who have already died as a result of male violence, and women and girls who are being trafficked and abused for someone else’s financial gain.

We are always caught in the balance of protecting someone’s good name, while trying to seek justice for someone else’s life.

We hope this delicate dance is about serving the victim, protecting legal trials from prejudice, and therefore reducing violence in our homes, workplaces, schools, and communities.

Carey Mulligan as Megan Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor in the film 'She Said'. Picture: PA Photo/Universal Studios

Currently running in our cinemas is a great movie making little noise called She Said. It stars Carey Mulligan as one of two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story of sexual harassment on October 5, 2017.

After decades of abuse, and years of trying to get the story over the line, the movie mogul’s crimes, for which he is now serving 23 years, were fully out in the public domain.

On October 10, The New Yorker, in a rush to publish the same story they had been working on, published accounts of 13 more women alleging abuse, and three accusing Weinstein of rape.

The publications caused a flurry of activism, 11 years after Tarana Burke had coined the phrase #MeToo in 2006, it became part of the lexicon and turned into a movement.

In Ireland, we even saw it morph into #IBelieveHer. It felt as if real social change was afoot. Conversations on national radio saw men in positions of power who queried why it “took these women so long to come forward”, receive robust information about the nature and impact of rape and abuse.

Also their very question provided the answer — their allegation will be met with doubt at best, and ridicule at worst.

“Only about 14% of rape cases reported to gardaí are going forward for trial,” estimates the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, and this statistic sits in the context of only one out of 10 victims reporting a crime of rape or abuse here.

So back in 2017, when social media was full of #MeToo and traditional media was giving it lots of airtime and print space, it felt like progress might just get made when it came to ending male violence against women.

In 2022, 11 women died as a result of male violence in Ireland — the worst year in a decade, the most dangerous year in a decade to be a woman here.

And yet all around us, this distorted narrative seems to be emerging where dangerous men are accruing millions of followers, and lots of money, publishing vile content and sentiments about girls and women: namely how feminism is subjugating men.

In Britain, before Christmas, one such man with a large following, who had a video securely displayed on his mainstream social media feed of him sexually dominating a woman, was convicted on revenge porn charges. Every day he would arrive in court in pageantry-style clothing and transport.

The video on his social media feed was not the centre of the trial, in fact, it had nothing to do with it, it was just a sample of some of his video content you could pay for.

The trial was about him disclosing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress, after he illegally filmed him and his ex partner having consensual sex. The sex was consensual, the filming and its global sharing were not.

He was convicted on two counts, found unanimously guilty, and will be sentenced later this month.

There are now accounts online calling for justice for the man.

Similarly, the internet was alive with accounts of another male influencer over Christmas, known for his championing of “toxic masculinity”.

“It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch,” this man said in one of his many online videos about how he’d attack a woman if she accused him of cheating.

Again, his rise to fame has been wholly facilitated by mainstream social media platforms, and he is routinely described in the media as a “star” of “insert huge platform name here”.

This man is currently being detained on suspicion of human trafficking, forming an organised crime group, and rape. Meanwhile, his Twitter is still active. With millions and millions of followers across multiple popular platforms, parents are shocked to find out their children, as young as nine, are following this man and his teachings.

Misogyny meets technology and capitalism

But such is the world of social media, where misogyny meets technology meets capitalism.

And five years on from a global movement trying to stem the tide of intimate violence, we seem OK with this.

Just this week, another video emerged of UFC president Dana White hitting his wife Anne. Though the narrative is that she hit him first. In fact, he grabbed her fist, she retaliates by slapping him on the face with her free hand. He then proceeds to slap her once, she turns and cowers, and he goes again.

Both have since publicly apologised about the incident.

Before this, we had Jeremy Clarkson send out a vitriolic tweet about Meghan Markle, and the toxic trial of Amber Heard on defamation charges against Johnny Depp, where aggrieved men seemed to salivate at her public humiliation and where #JusticeforJohnny sprang to life.

In less than five years how did we go from #MeToo trending online to this?

Misogyny never went away. Male violence was never addressed at a root and branch level. Systems didn’t change. Attitudes haven’t shifted. Misogyny is often internalised, we all carry it unconsciously, men, women, young and old. It doesn’t discriminate, although it is mostly women who pay with their lives at the furthest end of the fatal spectrum.

Five years after #MeToo and black worn on global red carpets, it’s hard to believe we’re here, especially in Ireland, and it’s also not surprising.

When are we all going to get serious about tackling male violence?