Stay Wary Of Public Shaming, Even If It's #MeToo

Without a doubt, #MeToo has empowered, connected and helped many victims of sexual harassment and assault. In less than 24 hours, 4.7 million people around the world used it in more than 12 million posts, comments and reactions on Facebook only. The trending hashtag has been shared by millions of people, including celebrities, who spoke out about their personal experiences, increasing awareness of the scale of abuse and ousting perpetrators who so far enjoyed impunity. But the vigilante justice, even if carried out in good faith, also has elements of public shaming and vengeance, which we should be wary of, writes Emma Brockes for the Guardian.

"I’m talking about 'public shaming', whereby individual transgressors are rounded on by potentially huge numbers of people online, in some cases on the basis of scant evidence, and for recreational as well as legitimate reasons. The dissemination of spreadsheets aggregating unsubstantiated allegations against scores of men – which inevitably get leaked – is strongly cathartic given the total lack of interest most institutions have shown over the years in rooting out sexual harassers," writes Brockes.

The Guardian's op-ed is a rare bit of constructive criticism for #MeToo, which has been so far mostly applauded. You may agree or disagree with the author's perspective, but you definitely won't be bored reading this 1,000-word text.

"If we hold it to be true that social media, and the idea of public shaming, is a dangerous dynamic that cuts both ways, the more we should hesitate to use it. You could say that in the Weinstein case, all that is happening is that the power of social media is finally being harnessed to a just cause (...) But this isn’t adequate. If the mechanism itself is faulty, then we should surely retain some scintilla of scepticism about it, irrespective of the cause it promotes," concludes the article.