Cate Blanchett warns social media is harming #MeToo agenda

Cate Blanchett fears social media is preventing people having a nuanced conversation around sexual misconduct.
The 49-year-old actress has been a prominent supporter of the #MeToo anti-sexual harassment movement but is worried that people are focusing on outrage rather than how to improve society.
Asked by the host of BBC podcast Books To Live By, Mariella Frostrup, if the worst offences are being treated in the same way to a, “hand that slips onto your knee at an office party,” Cate blamed social media for encouraging anger rather than deeper discussion of change.
“It’s the downside of social media because it doesn’t allow for peaks and troughs,” she said. “It doesn’t allow for nuance and it doesn’t allow for processing time.
“I think it’s really really important that that long term deep time strategic thinking is allowed to take place, along with the very real and understandable immediate response with people who have been experiencing… who have been placed in a position where they have had to be subservient and the shame that goes around with that. It’s very very difficult now to find a place now where you can have nuanced conversation.”
The Thor: Ragnarok star, who took part in a #MeToo protest at last year’s (18) Cannes Film Festival, also cautioned that shutting down opinions we disagree will not change minds.
“There has to be discussion,” she added. “We can’t move forward without intelligent discussion and also debate. Debate is different to hate speech. Talking about something. But the problem is sound bites won’t solve it and finger pointing won’t solve it.”
Another fear of Cate’s is that trial by social by media will undermine the justice system.
“I do really believe that the judicial system is a fundamental building block of democracy and if we pull that out of the Jenga block, it’s all going to collapse,” she warned.