It began on October 5, when the New York Times reported the first allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. But it became a juggernaut 10 days later, when the actress Alyssa Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment or assault to tweet the words “me too.”
A collective raising of hands across social media quickly snowballed into a viral, global hashtag, as #MeToo appeared in more than 500,o00 tweets and 12 million Facebook posts within the first 24 hours. Harrowing, first-person accounts of being sexually abused clogged Instagram feeds, too.
The numbers of the accused post-Weinstein are staggering: 97 prominent men have been accused of sexual misconduct by hundreds of alleged victims, plus thousands of stories containing infinite variations of sexual sleaziness. The connective thread is abuse of power–men in high castles demanding varying degrees of sexual adulation from female underlings in their kingdoms.
