#MeToo in Review
A year after #MeToo started trending on Twitter, an article in The Economist suggests that “this year-long storm of allegations, confessions and firings has actually made Americans more sceptical about sexual harassment.”
YouGov surveys of 1,500 Amercians on their attitudes towards the topic conducted in November 2017 and again in September 2018 found that attitudes had shifted against the victims over that period. The attitudes of female respondents had shifted more than those of males.
One of the largest changes relates to the increasing perception that “False accusations of sexual assault are a bigger problem than unreported assaults.” The Economist article points out that (according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Centre) false reports of sexual assault are relatively rare, whereas 63% of sexual assaults are never reported to police.
We can also observe that there was a much stronger split of attitudes between Trump voters and Clinton voters than there was between the attitudes of men and women. This partisan difference was very much on display during the recent Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing.