The #MeToo and #HowIWillChange movements have encouraged all of us to look at the domineering masculinity that is inherent in our own industries. While I have only been working in music journalism for a short while, the stories I’ve started to hear from female colleagues and counterparts who were inspired to open up by #MeToo are often just as harrowing as any of the allegations against Weinstein and his Hollywood ilk.

I will change, therefore, by doing everything I can as a man in a male-dominated industry, however low or high that might be, by listening to women and giving them space for their voices to be heard. It’s also vitally important that this doesn’t end up manifesting itself in tokenism, taken seriously for a week then never mentioned again. One colleague, posting under #MeToo, recalled how, as a freelance film journalist, she mysteriously stopped hearing from the commissioning editor when she questioned why she was only ever given romcoms and children’s films to write about. We can’t stand for incidents like this any longer.

How we, as men, can act upon the sentiments of #HowIWillChange depends on our own circumstances, but the fight must be taken to every single industry, and battled in every single one of our personal lives. We must talk to women and listen to women, while educating ourselves about the scale of the problem and our role within it, all without immediately going on the defensive.

As Benjamin Law pointed out when he started this movement, given the number of women that I and other men know to have been sexually assaulted or harassed, especially in the wake of #MeToo, someone I know is a perpetrator, or I am one myself. Now, it’s time for each and every one of us to own up.

Images: iStock

“Why all men must take responsibility for stamping out sexual harassment and abuse”