Online reaction to Angelina Jolie’s allegations about Brad Pitt is all too familiar

Brace yourself for the public filleting of Angelina Jolie. You don’t have to be in the entertainment industry to know how this particular script goes.

Allegations the actor and activist made about her ex-husband Brad Pitt surfaced recently in a court filing in Los Angeles. She claims that he grabbed her by the head and shook her during an incident on a private plane in 2016; poured beer on her and the children; choked a child and struck another. These claims were subsequently investigated by the FBI who declined to bring criminal charges, although the filing suggests Jolie was told there was “probable cause to charge Pitt with a federal crime for his conduct that day”. Pitt’s lawyer responded by characterising this as a “personal attack”.

And there you might be inclined to leave it – another celebrity couple follows the well-trodden route from an exclusive wedding splash in Hello! Magazine, to sordid accusations, acrimonious divorce and open warfare over their shares in a French chateau. Hello!’s “supernova couple” have the inevitable supernova meltdown.

What makes this worthy of wider attention, though, has been the reaction online. The overwhelming verdict of the public appears to be that she is lying, despite the fact that all six of their children appear to be standing by her since the couple’s divorce.

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Something remarkable followed those initial claims against Weinstein. Thousands of women around the world in all walks of life turned their own skin inside out and publicly shared their most painful hurts and humiliation

This isn’t the first time the court of online opinion has reacted to claims of abuse against a high-profile man with the insistence that the accuser must be making it up. It’s not even the first time this year. The public boning and gutting of Amber Heard during Johnny Depp’s defamation suit make very clear to alleged victims the risks of going public with accusations against a powerful man. He may never go on trial, but you definitely will.

It is now exactly five years since the so-called watershed moment of the first stories about predatory film producer Harvey Weinstein. A lot of tears have been shed in that time. A lot of words. But not so many prejudices. Not many toxic behaviours.

Something remarkable followed those initial claims against Weinstein. Thousands of women around the world in all walks of life turned their own skin inside out and publicly shared their most painful hurts and humiliations. We did so because it felt like the beginning of something important; a moment when the scales were tilting. Women were no longer willing to silence what New York times columnist Maureen Dowd called their “inner blech” around predatory men.

Five years on, it all seems terribly naive. Sure, Weinstein is in jail in New York, and facing a trial in Los Angeles this autumn. A handful of other famous men suffered a career setback (in some cases, a brief one).

Back in the real world, though, the court of public opinion still determines whether alleged victims of abuse are entitled to a fair hearing based on how likable they are, or whether they seem vulnerable or pure enough. The tabloid media continues to bully and demean women, with what often feels like a revived vigour. There’s an entire industry dedicated to the vilification of Meghan Markle. Women politicians are still subjected to egregious online abuse.

A story in this newspaper reveals that discrimination and sexual harassment against women members continue in the Defence Forces. Another story highlights that we will never know how many victims of sexual violence were harmed by failures within An Garda Síochána to handle 999 calls correctly.

[ Jennifer O’Connell: British media’s obsession with Meghan Markle isn’t personal, it’s existential ]

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If the #MeToo movement was meant to act as a reviving force to a feminism that had become moribund and complacent, it has hardly been a thundering success.

Globally, women’s rights have felt under near constant siege in the past five years – some of it, ironically, as a result of a backlash against the movement. In the United States, half a century of reproductive rights have been unwound, despite 60 per cent of Americans supporting legal abortion. In Italy, the position of prime minister in waiting Giorgia Meloni on abortion is that she will give women “the right to not have one”. In Iran, women are rising up following the killing of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody, for “improper hijab” wearing.

There’s no doubt this is a difficult time for women and girls globally, but some things can never be rolled back

The past five years also coincided with a pandemic that forcefully sharpened gender inequalities. Women “lost jobs at faster rates than men, stayed out of the job market longer, took on higher levels of caregiving at home and experienced intensified domestic violence,” says Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women. Women’s inner blech has built to an inner roar, and it is still being silenced.

Those of us who believed #MeToo represented a moment of enduring change were naive. Then again, what social justice movement doesn’t start from a place of total idealism?

If anything, the backlash against the movement is a sign of its power and the possibility it still represents. Much ground was lost globally in the past five years, but gains were made too, notably in the area of legislation against sexual violence. In Ireland, the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2022 will strengthen the law on consent and ensure anonymity for victims. Thirty-eight of 46 members of the Council of Europe have just adopted the Dublin Declaration, aimed at stepping up efforts to tackle domestic violence. And this week, Minister for Arts Catherine Martin launched a programme to provide safer working conditions in the arts, paying tribute to those who spoke out five years ago.

But more important than any of this is the fact that there is now widespread public understanding of sexual violence. No man can ever again honestly say that he didn’t know, that he had no idea, that he never thought.

There’s no doubt this is a difficult time for women and girls globally, but some things can never be rolled back.