Sexual harassment - overexposed phenomenon on social media?

According to the report of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Poland is one of the European countries with the lowest rate of gender violence. However, before we start to celebrate our “success” we should have a reality check and compare these results with the research carried out by Polish non-governmental organizations, which indicates that 90% of rape victims in Poland do not report the crime to the police. Why is it so? Amongst the reasons are their sense of shame, lack of faith in public institutions and insufficient knowledge of the laws that protect women and their rights. The #MeToo Campaign showed the world the scale of violence against women and made people realize how many crimes go unreported. 60 women had to testify before they were believed, and Bill Cosby was finally convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault. And when victims finally refuse to keep silent any longer and start publicising cases of gender violence, they are being criticized for using the wrong platforms. Let’s finally stop silencing women and dismissing their testimonies and start listening to what they have to say.

Different faces of the #MeToo Campaign

If we take a closer look at the feminist movements around the world, we will see that depending on aspects such as cultural background or the country of origin, feminists vary a lot in their aspirations, goals and views. Very often they disagree with each other and object to being identified with some other feminist groups. However, the thing that clearly unifies all of them is the fight for women’s rights. Of course, it would be ideal if feminists stopped mutual criticism, which undermines their trustworthiness, and showed greater understanding and solidarity towards women who consciously make other life decisions – it all comes down to respecting freedom of choice in the end – but that is already a whole different topic.
Similarly, with the #MeToo Campaign, Canadian author Margaret Atwood points out that #MeToo is a symptom of a dysfunctional legal system and asks whether escaping to social media will not cause people to bypass legal institutions and dispense justice online. In France, one hundred French women, including actress Catherine Deneuve, claim that #MeToo threatens women’s hard-won sexual freedom and may lead to the return of Puritanism. In Poland, the movement reveals the understated statistics of violence against women, the divisions of feminists in the country and stirs up discussions on the definition of sexual violence anew.
Many people ask if the movement has gone too far, whether social media posts contribute to the trivialisation of sexual assaults, and if all posts marked with the hashtag "MeToo" really deserve to be called sexual harassment (maybe someone has exaggerated in their assessment of the situation, right?). And whether we should always believe the victim, who has the ability to ruin someone’s life by revealing their name on social media.
All faces of the #MeToo movement have shown that it is impossible for so many women from different cultures to speak with one voice, just as it is impossible for all feminist movements to merge into one. This does not mean, however, that this justifies the questioning of the credibility of the posts on social media, on the contrary - it compels us to listen to all of them.
One thing is also for sure - writing each post, even if it was only a pasted #MeToo, required a lot of courage, was an expression of solidarity and a signal that it is high time to take another step forward in the fight for women's rights.

The ideals of the movement pushed into the background

Even though posts pointing to specific names were exceptional in Poland (the majority of people remained anonymous, often a hashtag alone has been published without any content) a heated discussion on the absolute faith in the victim and the right of the accused to fair trial has also taken place. Perhaps it is difficult for us to admit or believe in the scale of the phenomenon of sexual assault in Europe, but beginning this discussion somewhere is necessary for our culture to move forward, to develop new standards and to be an example to others.
The intellectual debate about what sexual harassment is and what it is not, and whether social media is the right place for this type of action, causes the ideals of the movement to disappear out of sight. The fear that women will suddenly start overusing the hashtag "MeToo" and the definition of sexual assault will become trivialized is also unjustified. Let’s just put it in simple words: if both parties consent, we can talk about flirting of some kind. When consent is lacking and there's a disagreement, it is already harassment. Presenting this problem is not trivial and should not be measured on a scale from better to worse, or in terms of whether the case is or is not deserving of the hashtag "MeToo". No description of a situation in which a woman experiences any form of harassment neither trivializes nor diminishes the action.