The #MeToo movement served to raise its voice and call attention to how women were treated in professional settings, about abuses, deliberately uncomfortable situations and other behaviors that turned a blind eye.

The Weinstein case showed that things were wrong - apparently, everyone knew how the producer behaved towards women - and created a precedent that should be exceptional: that the complaint and the trial happen in the media rather than in the courts . Since the Weinstein affair came up, after an article by Ronan Farrow that collected the testimonies of the victims , he began a kind of media career by telling the other Weinstein cases. They wanted to uncover similar issues, in a mixture of heroism and desire to seek the exclusive that had the greatest impact on networks, that is, in a search for increased prestige and visibility (sales). In some cases, that career gave rise to publications that had more humiliation than anything else, such as the story of a failed sexual encounter between a fan and Aziz Ansari , one of the creators and protagonist of Masters of none , which was published on a website to accuse him of inappropriate sexual behavior. Or that credibility was given to what was nothing more than a montage, as happened to Morgan Freeman . In others, as had happened with Weinstein or Bill Cosby , the testimonies in reports or in networks served for the prosecution to act and collect evidence, evidence and assemble cases. Bill Cosby is serving a three to 10 year sentence for sexual assault, and the trial against Weinstein begins in September.

The brands that had contracts with any of those indicated rescinded them regardless of whether they were guilty or not: their reputation was already damaged. Not all cases were the same, and not only abusers were persecuted: Louis CK's last film did not premiere , his series Louie, Louie was removed from HBO after a report accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior for masturbating in front of two girls who had accompanied him to his hotel room at a festival, for asking permission from another to do so and for masturbating while talking on the phone with another. His case is perhaps the most extreme example of the overreaction that arose after #MeToo : his sexual practices may not be the most common, but he is not an abuser.

The public accusations seek to end the prestige of the accused, who has been traditional and considered guilty as accused, he wants to become a social stinker while giving an exemplary lesson . There are at least two errors in that behavior: first, in the media court there are no procedural guarantees. The sentence is usually precipitated and does not attend more than one of the parties. And in addition, the issue usually goes wrong. The report that has revealed the accusations to Placido Domingo of nine women has put the issue back on the table. Beyond the positioning in this cultural battle and the defense of the presumption of innocence, there is a striking detail: the rapidity in the change of attitude in the guild with respect to the aforementioned, which has gone from being everything in the opera to being almost a stinked.

Margaret Atwood explained that "the #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. Too often, institutions, including corporate structures, denied fair trials to women and other sexual abuse reporters, so they used a new one. tool: internet ". The question is why we let this exceptionality become a norm, when we decided that the media and social media court was better than the legal one . The answer, which does not return an overly flattering image, is that what is sought is a kind of account adjustment, not ending an unfair situation. That is, there was something that did not work, we could fix it or do without it. It seems that we are approaching the second option. In an article, Elena Alfaro quoted a phrase from Janet Radcliffe : "Feminism is not concerned with a group of people who want to benefit but a type of injustice that wants to eliminate." (By the way, here is a strong enough argument to refute those who pretend to exclude trans women from feminism .)

As Manuel Arias Maldonado has written in this newspaper, "it is undoubtedly beneficial to change some of the unwritten rules that have been regulating male-female relationships." But at the same time, as New Yorker essayist Masha Gessen warned, there was a risk of overreaction: "The conversation we are having about sex began with incidents involving clear coercion, intimidation and violence. Paradoxically, it seems to have produced idea that meaningful consent is elusive or even impossible. "

Beyond the presumption of innocence, pillar of the rule of law, there is another good to preserve: sexual freedom. The manifesto of the 100 French women artists and intellectuals in response to #Balancetonporc (the French reply to the signaling in networks of alleged stalkers) who defended "freedom to import" warned that an excess of regulation would necessarily go against women's sexual freedom , which has cost so much to achieve. "We think that the freedom to say no to a sexual proposition does not exist without the freedom to bother you," they wrote. Gessen cited a 1984 essay by Gayle Rubin, Thinking sex, which explains: «For some, sexuality may seem like an unimportant issue, a frivolous deviation from the most critical problems of poverty, war, disease, racism , hunger or nuclear annihilation. But it is at times when we live with the possibility of unimaginable destruction, when people become dangerously crazy about sexuality. We may be in one of those moments. The best intentions can lead to dire conclusions. The spirit of accountability should not guide us in the search for equality and the elimination of injustices.

Aloma Rodríguez is a writer and member of the Spanish writing of Letras Libres .

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