#FairnessFirst: Stand with Swift SA's #ThatsNotOK
Piers Morgan commented sarcastically at the time of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaux’ 'joke taken out of context' comments about #Peoplekind a few weeks ago, by saying: “Mankind ended last night.”
Morgan may be right.
#MeToo: Et tu, brute?
Though the Trudeaux incident was hardly hardcore, there’s been a flood of incidents worldwide that have left females wondering about the male mindset. It’s closer to home than ever before, as Variety now reports that South African film and TV director Khalo Matabane has allegedly been accused of sexual misconduct by at least half a dozen women.
It’s been dubbed:
the first high-profile case to emerge in South African media in the wake of the global #MeToo movement.
But it doesn’t stop there. The global ramifications keep coming. In an article he opened with: “Sometimes, real life is beyond parody,” Morgan wrote in the Daily Mail that he thought the below had been tweeted by a satirical site like The Onion, if not misquoted, or misleadingly paraphrased. It wasn’t.
Disgraced filmmaker Roman Polanski says the #MeToo movement is 'total hypocrisy'https://t.co/XXbrBrDkSC
— TIME (@TIME) May 9, 2018
It’s fitting that Time reported this, as Time made the #MeToo ‘silence breakers’ its Person of the Year for 2017.
In the interview, Polanski said:
Everyone is trying to sign up to #MeToo ‘chiefly out of fear’ and compared it to North Korea’s public mourning for its leaders that is so intensive that 'you can’t stop laughing.' He did not explain further.#MeToo is hardly hysteria. Instead, it’s about standing up and saying "that's not OK" - whether this is happening to you or someone you know.
Say #ThatsNotOK
Last year’s study conducted by industry body Sisters Working in Film and Television (Swift) revealed that up to two-thirds of women working in the South African film and TV industries claim to have reported ‘some form of sexual harassment in the workplace.’
Swift started a gender department to offer pro bono legal advice to women reporting sexual abuse and also launched the #ThatsNotOK campaign at the time, together with a series of short video public service announcements portraying real-life incidents from the poll.
Seems it’s time to reshare the PSA created with Actor Spaces:
It’s time for the #TimesUp movement to extend to all reaches of the industry. We need to all take a stand and say #ThatsNotOK.
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About Leigh Andrews
Leigh Andrews AKA the #MilkshakeQueen, is former Editor-in-Chief: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com, with a passion for issues of diversity, inclusion and equality, and of course, gourmet food and drinks! She can be reached on Twitter at @Leigh_Andrews.
