What’s changed, five years since the #MeToo movement exploded across social media? 

While David Leser may not be the first person you’d think to ask – being a “straight, white, middle-class male who has breathed the untroubled air of privilege” (his words) – he’s been starting numerous conversations on navigating a post Me Too world.

Back in 2018, Leser ventured into the subject, asking how sexism, discrimination and violence against women had become so commonplace. And what we can do about it.

Initially publishing a provoking Good Weekend article on the topic, Leser then expanded out his research into a book, Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing, published in 2019. His daughter, begged him not to do it, saying, “Dad, I don’t think you get it” and urging her father to not just listen to women, but stand beside and behind women and bear witness to what’s going on.

A few years on, Leser has no regrets and says his family is proud of the work. He says the conversations publicly have been uncomfortable at times, but adds that criticisms are party of the job as an author and journalist.

Asked how he’d update the book in 2023, Leser says looking at the disturbing shift in reproductive rights for women in the United States would be an obviously place to start. But he also adds he’s been met with and worked with a number of men who are trying to rewrite the script of masculinity, where he believes good and essential work is occurring.

“At the core of the whole Me Too movement, at the core of the feminist project, is actually the way that men behave. The way that men treat women. The inequities are unacceptable. And, of course, the violence [is unacceptable],” he says.

But Leser also points to men who he says are doing extraoredinary things, particularly those trying to introduce boys and men into different models of masculinity.

“So, if I was to balance the ledger, and not make the [updated] book a total nightmare scape of bleakness and regressiveness, I would bring in these attempts,” he says.

“There is a global MenEngage Alliance. It’s in 70 countries, it’s in Africa, South Asia, and North America. There are men trying to do things and become allies to women and take a pro-feminist, pro-human rights, intersectional view of how men can actually behave and be and how we can educate boys. So I would want to explore that in more depth too, because without wanting to gloss over any of the terrible stuff that’s happening, I think that we need to hear more about how men can be good allies and how men are trying to be good allies to the women in their lives.”

But on the bleaker side of things to explore, is the impact of social media which have been more severe and dramatic in the past five or so years. While Leser says we should never want to see media or social media shut down, we need to acknowledge the dangers, and shifted behaviours around what has been unleashed.

“I think once we developed this digital technology, the possibilities of consensus of adherence to a common set of facts or principles or truths, basically was just eliminated,” he says.

“So everybody’s got their smartphones and young boys can watch porn and watch the degradation of women as a kind of part of their daily menu. I don’t know how we kind of hold the tide back. Because it’s coming at us from all directions. It’s coming at us through social media and the misogyny that is on social media is just it’s extraordinary.”

As for where we were in 2017, back when the Harvey Weinstein story was breaking, we were learning more about the power and control in Hollywood and women were sharing their own stories under the banner of “Met Too”, Leser said he recalled his own shock, and then wondering what he could do and wanting to show how men could b prepared to learn and listen.

“It was easy to play the man, not the ball. It was easy to kind of just think about Harvey Weinstein and his kind of atrocious behavior. But I’ve always been interested in a less than ad hominem approach and more of like, what is systemically going on?

“I started hearing stories, which were just horrific, scarifying, from people I love and [I remember] thinking, why didn’t I know this?”

The world today isn’t necessarily any safer for women, and the risks only increase during periods of instability. Leser’s pursuit of answers continues.

But he ends the interview on a positive, noting the millions of people globally who are doing wondering and courageous things, whom we may never know or even hear about.

“I think we really have to remind ourselves of that. And maybe that’s a kind of stubborn optimism. That’s the term that Christiana Figueres who led the Paris Climate Accords uses. But rather than naive optimism, I think that I want to stubbornly cling to the idea that most people are essentially good and they want to be good.”

David Leser’s book is Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing. You can hear more from the conversation shared above on The Women’s Agenda Podcast.