WILLIAMS AND LEBSOCK
sexually abused another daughter. “Sexual assault was an issue that
had touched my family,” said Farrow, who noted that this experience
was instrumental in driving his reporting.
To repeat: This is not a fi ght between men and women. It’s a fi ght
over whether a small subgroup of predatory men should be allowed
to interfere with people’s ability to show up and do what they signed
up for: work.
Several changes in the past decade have brought us to this star-
tling moment. Some were technological: The internet enables
women to go public with accusations, bypassing the gatekeepers
who traditionally buried their stories. Other changes were cultural:
A centuries- old stereotype— the Vengeful Lying Slut— was drained
of its power by feminists who coined the term “slut shaming” and
reverse- shamed those who did it. Just as important, women have
made enough inroads into positions of power in the press, corpo-
rations, Congress, and Hollywood that they no longer have to play
along with the boys’ club; instead they can, say, lead the charge
to force Al Franken’s resignation or break the story on Harvey
Weinstein.
The result of all these changes is what social scientists call a
norms cascade: a series of long- term trends that produce a sudden
shift in social mores. There’s no going back. The work environment
now is much diff erent from what it was a year ago. To put things
plainly, if you sexually harass or assault a colleague, employee, boss,
or business contact today, your job will be at risk.
How the #MeToo Movement Changes Work
As commonplace as these dismissals have come to seem, we know
that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of the harassment
culture. In “You Can’t Change What You Can’t See: Interrupting
Racial & Gender Bias in the Legal Profession,” a forthcoming study
of lawyers conducted by the Center for WorkLife Law (which Joan
directs) for the American Bar Association, researchers found sexual
harassment to be pervasive. Eighty- two percent of women and 74%
of men reported hearing sexist comments at work. Twenty- eight