A wider lens on the #MeToo backlash: Who pays for societal change? | World News,The Indian Express

One lawsuit is not enough to put an end to #MeToo, which is about far more than just the movie industry.

Written by Amanda Taub

Before I became a journalist, I spent a brief period as a commercial litigation associate, working long hours on disputes over securities, bankruptcy agreements and contracts.

That job taught me how much of the commercial world was just about expectations. Every contract, and every securitized transaction, had started out as a tiny little promise or prediction about what was going to happen in the future: Here are the rules of the game, it said, and here are the ways that you could come out a winner.

One thing that meant, I soon noticed, was that even when the world changed for the better — improved technologies that rendered old ones obsolete, fairer laws to make things more equitable — people got angry and felt wronged if they had invested on the expectation that the older, slightly worse world would continue. When progress for many meant costs for some, backlash followed, often in the form of a lawsuit.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week as I’ve been reporting on anti-feminist backlashes. That issue has been in the news lately because of all the vitriol around the Depp v. Heard trial, seen by many as a backlash to the broader #MeToo phenomenon. But it is a thread that weaves through a lot of other stories as well: anti-abortion politics, LGBTQ rights and the violence that many women around the world face when they try to demand economic equality.

https://indianexpress.com/article/world/me-too-backlash-amber-heard-johnny-depp-trial-7960471/

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