Mere hours after The New York Times and The New Yorker dropped bombshell exposes on Harvey Weinstein‘s unhinged and rampant sexual abuse, the #MeToo campaigned was launched and holy shit. Since then, we learned that basically every celebrity dude we like is overestimating how much women want to see their penises. Naturally, TIME’s Person Of The Year for 2017 are “The Silence Breakers”.
This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist. They’ve had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can’t afford to lose. They’ve had it with the code of going along to get along. They’ve had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.
Like, I want to give TIME credit for doing this, but then you realize Time’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal said Trump was this year’s “runner-up“. That’s like putting Gandalf on the cover then saying Sauron was the runner-up. I don’t get it. Anyway, read the article and watch the video. Pretty powerful stuff. Even if it feels like a calculated marketing move disguised as commentary on a social movement.
