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#metoo
No, #MeToo Isn’t Over
Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
Apr 22, 2026
After serious allegations of sexual misconduct, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress on the same day. That same week, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein went on trial for the third time in New York; the University of California, Berkeley removed the name of accused sexual abuser Cesar Chavez from its student center; and a federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump regarding his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
These consequences for powerful men credibly accused of sexual assault have people asking: Is the #MeToo movement back?
As a co-founder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which was launched in 2018 to provide legal funding and media assistance to support survivors of workplace sexual harassment and related retaliation, I can confirm: Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
When #MeToo first went viral, it felt like the Earth shook. Women worldwide responded to bombshell New York Times reports by sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Quickly, it became clear that Weinstein was the tip of a massive iceberg. Allegations soon spread from Matt Lauer to Roger Ailes and beyond. But while big household names were capturing the public’s attention, something else was happening: People across the country were ready to take their abusers to court.
We have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo.
That’s why, three months after #MeToo went viral, the National Women’s Law Center joined with other advocates to create the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which helps survivors, no matter where they work, find justice. Over the last eight years, we have found a great deal of justice.
Since its founding, we have helped more than 12,000 people get the legal assistance they needed to hold their perpetrators accountable. From McDonald’s workers who were survivors of rampant sexual harassment by their bosses, to a female truck driver in Arizona who was sexually assaulted by her co-worker on the side of the road, the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund has fought for justice and accountability—and won.
In the years since we launched the fund, the #MeToo hashtag may have stopped trending (in part because people are less likely to use hashtags altogether), but the movement is still here, doing the work. In fact, 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws aimed at strengthening protections against workplace harassment. And we are not done.
We also can’t discount the immense cultural change that #MeToo’s created. For instance, Cheyenne Hunt, a Democratic creator and activist, used social media to draw attention to her story about abuse from Swalwell. She may not have used the #MeToo hashtag in her initial posts, but her courageous work follows the same playbook thousands of other survivors used to hold their perpetrators accountable. And the public was ready to respond, after nearly a decade of being grounded in Tarana Burke’s MeToo framework.
Yet we have seen from across the political divide people questioning whether the movement was successful, as evidenced by the alleged serial abuser now sitting in the Oval Office, who once said, “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” But these are the wrong questions to consider. Better ones might be: What would it take for women to feel safe in the places they work and learn? What support do survivors need? What is the cost of refusing to provide that support—the cost to survivors and to all of us, as women’s careers and contributions and opportunities are short-circuited by sexual violence?
What has happened in comment sections and court rooms has helped assure that this movement lives on in our laws and culture. Try as some might to roll back this progress—and some, particularly the president, are trying mighty hard—this reckoning will never simply be put back in the bottle.
That said, the latest examples make clear that this country still has miles to go. And given who is in the White House, the threat to survivor justice is as stark as it’s ever been. The Trump administration has spent the last year undermining survivor protections—in just over a year, it has refused to enforce harassment protections for transgender workers, blocked funding for domestic and sexual assault organizations, and weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment in schools.
But that is not evidence that this movement has failed; rather, it goes to show what many of us in the movement already knew: that there is always more work to do.
That work is, of course, made harder by people who think women’s bodies are theirs to possess, and that power means being immune to consequences. Still, we have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo. No matter how powerful you think you are, no one is above accountability.
So for anyone who thinks the #MeToo movement is over, I challenge you to look into the faces of the brave women whose stories are demanding and shaping change: Lonna Drewes. Ally Sammarco. Annika Albrecht. Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. Jessica Mann. Ana Murguia. Debra Rojas. Dolores Huerta. Annie Farmer. Virginia Giuffre. Survivors everywhere continue to speak truth—and because they do, #MeToo is as loud as it has ever been.
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'Shame Must Change Sides': Thousands March in France Against Sexual Violence
The protests were organized in support of Gisèle Pélicot, who has become a symbol of feminist defiance in the country when she chose to make the rape trial of her husband and 50 other men public.
Sep 14, 2024
Thousands of people took to the streets in 30 French cities and Brussels on Saturday to protest rape and sexist violence and to support Gisèle Pélicot, a woman in her early 70s whose husband of 50 years is on trial for drugging her periodically and inviting dozens of men into their home to rape her while she was unconscious.
Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France when she decided to make the trial of her husband and 50 other men public to ensure that "no woman suffers this."
"We are all Gisèle," protesters chanted in Paris, according to Le Monde. "Rapist we see you, victim we believe you."
The crime was discovered when her now ex-husband Dominique, a 71 year old who has plead guilty to drugging and raping his wife, was caught taking photos up the skirts of women in 2020. As part of that investigation, police uncovered a USB drive with a file labeled "abuse," which included more than 20,000 photos and videos of the attacks on his wife that were taken over a nine-year period. There was evidence that he had recruited more than 80 men to participate via an online forum. Police identified and charged 50 of the participants.
At the trial, which began September 2 and is expected to last four months, Pélicot described her harrowing experience. As The Guardian reported:
"My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years."
She said she had barely recognized herself in the images, saying she was motionless. "I was sacrificed on the altar of vice," she said. "They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag."
"When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed—of course the body is not cold, it's warm, but it's as if I'm dead." She told the court rape was not a strong enough word, it was torture.
Saturday's protests were called by feminist groups in France.
"We thank her a thousand times for her enormous courage," Fatima Benomar of the feminist group "Coudes a Coudes" association told BFM TV.
34-year-old Justine Imbert, who attended a 200-strong march in Marseilles with her six-year-old daughter, told Le Monde, "It must have taken huge courage, but it was essential," for Pélicot to make the trial public.
"It allows people to see the faces of her husband and all the others, to see they are not outcasts but 'good fathers,'" Imbert said.
"I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
The men accused in the trial include a member of the local government, a civil servant, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, and more than one nurse.
"It's shocking… because we see that the [men on trial] are a bit like Mr Everyman. It goes against the idea that there is only one type of rapist," 21-year-old photographer Pedro Campos said, according to The Guardian.
Martine Ragon, 74, told journalists she had come to the demonstration in Marseilles to "denounce rape culture."
"This well-publicized trial will allow people to speak out about it, to raise awareness," Ragon said.
Anna Toumazoff, who helped organize the protest in Paris that brought around 700 people to the Place de la Republique, also emphasized the need to talk about "rape culture."
"After seven years of MeToo, we know that there is not a special type of victim. We are also collectively realizing that there is no special type of a rapist," Toumazoff told The Associated Press.
Magali Lafourcade, a magistrate and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, told AP that Pélicot's sharing of her story was important because 90% of women who are raped in France do not press charges and 80% of the cases that are brought forward are dropped.
Lou Salome Patouillard, a 41-year-old artist, who joined the demonstration in Marseilles, told Reuters, "I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
During the trial, Pélicot said that she began to have problems with her memory during the period when her husband was repeatedly drugging her. When she told her husband she was afraid she had Alzheimer's, he scheduled her a doctor's appointment. During the investigation, it was revealed that she had contracted multiple sexually transmitted diseases.
Through her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau, Pélicot explained her decision to make the trial public.
"It's a way of saying... shame must change sides," Babonneau said at the start of the trial, words that have been taken up as a rallying cry by France's feminist movement.
When supporters unfurled a banner from the Marseilles court building on Saturday, that is what it said: "Shame must change sides."
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Section 230 Is a Civil Rights Statute
Without Section 230’s protections, Americans would know less about police brutality, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful, or the options for women seeking an abortion in states that allow them. The measure must be protected.
Feb 17, 2024
Black History Month is a powerful reminder that each American, no matter their stature, has an ability to affect great change. That’s due in large part to the free speech protections afforded us under the First Amendment. During the 1960s, social justice advocates exercised their free speech rights through rallies, protests, and speeches, paving the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
Today, it’s far easier to advance social progress through online platforms, thanks to a federal statute that fosters open inquiry, debate, and commentary.
That statute—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—gives platforms legal immunity for what third parties post. For example, Yelp is not liable for anything written in its reviews, no matter how scathing they are. This immunity has allowed ideas on the Internet to explode, leading to breakthroughs that have improved our lives.
Yet Section 230 is now under bipartisan siege, with dozens of bills in Congress proposing to reform it and presidential candidates calling for its revocation because they believe online platforms have either become too political or engage in censorship.
In fact, the U.S. government allegedly threatened to revoke Section 230 immunity from social media platforms if they didn’t take down what the government deemed misinformation about Covid and vaccines. The charges are at the center of a legal dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear during their current session.
Section 230 is now under bipartisan siege, with dozens of bills in Congress proposing to reform it and presidential candidates calling for its revocation because they believe online platforms have either become too political or engage in censorship.
Advocates for reform or revocation of Section 230 should be careful what they wish for. The immunity they currently provide removes the fear of liability, resulting in more speech, which has been advantageous for three of the major civil rights issues of the current era.
The first is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Legal immunity for social platforms has enabled African Americans and other minorities to call attention to the sometimes-deadly realities associated with police interactions in their communities. In the wake of live streaming and online postings of police brutality and the accompanying Black Lives Matter protests, some states attempted to criminalize the recording or posting of encounters with law enforcement online. Thanks to Section 230 protections, users could continue posting video and commentary about policing and BLM.
The second is the #MeToo Movement. Section 230 has allowed women to raise awareness about workplace sexual harassment. In the absence of immunity, powerful alleged abusers could threaten the platforms with legal liability for defamation and have claims about them, even true ones, to be taken down.
Finally, there’s abortion. Just four days after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is not protected by the federal Constitution, South Carolina legislators proposed a law making it “unlawful to aid, abet, or conspire with someone to procure an abortion,” including providing information about abortion “by Internet or other mode of communication.” Without Section 230, any social media platform, website, or Internet service provider that hosted such information could potentially be criminally liable under such a statute.
Consider what would happen if Section 230 did not exist. If the government or another powerful entity wanted to suppress speech it doesn’t like, it could either take legal action against the speaker themselves or the distributor of the speech.
In most cases, it’s far more effective to go after the distributor. Threatening the author of an offensive book might cause the author to self-censor, but there is no guarantee. Threatening Barnes & Noble or Amazon is more effective because there is little economic incentive for them to continue carrying the book with the threat of government action.
Further, because distributors disseminate the work of many authors, it can compound the likelihood that they will censor more speech on the same subject. The Supreme Court has recognized that permitting distributor-level threats gives the government a potential end-around the First Amendment since it results in censorship of the speaker.
Without Section 230’s protections, Americans would know less about police brutality, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful, or the options for women seeking an abortion in states that allow them. Social media users, particularly those in underserved, underrepresented, and otherwise resource-poor communities, would be less able to discuss those issues online.
Social media is not perfect. But the immunity provided by Section 230 makes it better, not worse.
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