SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
BRIT + CO
August 20, 2018
By Kelli Korducki
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento had been one of the most prominent voices of the #MeToo movement since she came forward with rape allegations against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. On Sunday night, the New York Times reported that the actress herself stands accused of sexually assaulting a young man when he was a 17-year-old minor. Argento has also reportedly signed off on a $380,000 payoff to prevent further legal action against her.
The allegations against Argento have surfaced just as a different kind of celebrity #MeToo scandal is making ripples across certain corners of the internet. On August 13, the New York Timesreported that New York University had conducted an 11-month investigation into a sexual harassment complaint by a male former graduate student against Avital Ronell, a female superstar professor of German and Comparative Literature. After the university concluded that Ronell was responsible, a group of extremely influential academics signed off on a letter to NYU in Ronell’s defense; one of the most powerful feminist scholars on earth, Judith Butler, was one of them.
The two incidents are unrelated, but they raise the same important question: What does #MeToo mean when the alleged perpetrators are women? And, to take that question to its logical follow-up, how can a feminist movement come to terms with predatory behavior on the part of women who claim to be feminists, themselves?
The answer might just lie in what the two women’s cases have in common, which happens to also be what all #MeToo stories have in common: Power.
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