Global #MeToo: England

The next two posts in our global #MeToo series focus on The List by Yomi Adegoke and Jaded by Ela Lee. These posts further our discussions in prior posts on gossip, whisper networks, the international #MeToo movement, and investigating claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. These two novels are written by English authors, allowing us to evaluate these themes in the English context.

The two female protagonists of these novels – Olaide (“Ola”) Olajide in The List, who is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants and Ceyda (“Jade”) Kayaoğlu in Jaded, who is the daughter of South Korean and Turkish immigrants– also experience numerous instances of implicit bias and race-based microaggressions in the workplace, allowing us to further earlier conversations on these topics as well. Today’s post focuses on The List, while the following post (to be released on October 15, 2025) will focus on Jaded.

The List by Yomi Adegoke

The List tells the story of a woman named Ola Olajide who works at a fictional women’s magazine in London called “Womxxxn.” Ola is a high-profile journalist – with her own mass social media following and minor celebrity – and is defined by her feminist values and social activism. The story starts with Ola being alerted to a list (“The List”) being circulated on social media. Like the list in Whisper Network by Chandler Baker (featured in my earlier post), this list includes the names of men working in media and entertainment who have been accused of sexual harassment and assault. In contrast to the list in Whisper Network, however, this list has been released publicly on social media and has gone insatiably viral. To Ola’s immediate horror, her fiancé Michael Karantang – who, similarly, works in media and entertainment, and also has a minor celebrity presence online – has been named on The List, just one month before the date of their wedding.

As the story unfolds, Ola must decide who she trusts more: Michael’s anonymous accuser from The List, or her beloved, who insists that the allegations are false. What makes this situation particularly difficult for Ola is her public image, reputation and identity as a prominent feminist journalist who has herself reported on the #MeToo movement in the U.K. Ola feels that if she chooses to believe her fiancé, she will betray her core values and beliefs, and will also, very likely, experience significant professional fallout for the inevitably public impact of her standing by and defending a man who has been named on The List.

This fascinating novel interrogates all the complexities of harassment allegations, particularly through the unwieldy and ever-confounding power of the internet. In one especially powerful scene, Ola meets with the creator of The List, Rhian Mcintosh, to ask her who put her fiancé on The List. At this point, Ola has decided to do her own investigating, drawing from all her skills and resources as an investigative journalist, to uncover the origin of the claims, and attempt to determine their veracity.

When Rhian tells Ola that she does not know the identities of the people who added to The List, the two women begin to discuss the different implications of creating such a public list. First, Rhian explains her reasoning for creating The List: “She’d been thinking about doing it for years, she said, since 2017 to be precise. October that year, when the rug had been pulled from under Harvey Weinstein and stories of systemic abuse were coming out in sickening waves; first from Hollywood, then the music industry, then fashion, then everywhere else. Across the world #MeToo saw men named via press, summoned to court or held to account online. Female writers across time zones were in Facebook and WhatsApp groups, sharing their experiences, warning each other of the most prolific offenders. They’d done this interpersonally for years, but the power of the digitized whisper network was truly a sight to behold.”

At first, Rhian started The List in a Google Doc with a small group of trusted friends, to be disseminated only to other trusted friends (more like the list that was circulated in Whisper Network). Eventually, though, her friends argued that they needed to make The List public, as they feared they were leaving women outside of their own personal network at risk.[1]

While Ola acknowledges to herself that she agrees with most of Rhian’s beliefs (and would probably be friends with her under different circumstances), she also challenges Rhian: “How could you have not foreseen the obvious risk of it being manipulated?”; “Would you be okay with other crimes being handled via the court of Twitter?”

Ola also points out intersectional issues involving The List and race: “‘Look, I believe women,’ Ola said. ‘But false allegations being rare doesn’t make them impossible. Like, there was an entire historical period where Black men were getting jailed and lynched because white women were lying that they’d attacked them. Emmett Till? The Scottsboro Boys?” Indeed, false allegations of sexual assault and harassment have historically been weaponized against Black men with racist, targeted intentions, something to be kept in mind when investigating claims of sexual harassment.

Similarly, at the start of the novel, when news of The List is first announced, Michael describes a feeling of otherness in his workplace, although he cannot tell whether this can be attributed to his coworkers’ knowledge of The List, or the fact that he is one of the only Black men in his office: “He was used to having to speak in two tongues, well versed in reserving one voice for his friends and the other for the workplace, but today he was even more self-conscious.”

Like Jaded, The List also highlights many of the ways in which Ola’s race and gender impact her in her workplace, particularly with her boss, Frankie, who Ola describes as a “walking microaggression.” For example, when Frankie crashes Ola and Michael’s wedding (that does ultimately take place), she exclaims that they would have the cutest “mixed-race babies”: “‘But my God, you two! I mean, can you imagine your kids? Child models! That’s not offensive, is it?’ she said, facing Michael again. ‘You see, I once said that mixed-race babies were the cutest – a compliment to both white and Black people, I might add – and Ola got very cross at me. Then again, she gets cross at me for most things.’”

Ultimately, The List is a story of self-discovery and identity, in the face of various structures of oppression. The heart-wrenching, existential fallout spurred by The List also turns into a deep process of self-reflection and renewal for Ola as she analyzes the root cause of her distrust of Michael, irrespective of The List; and contemplates the state of her career at Womxxxn, with social media and the internet having so fundamentally changed the field of journalism.

The List in the Global #MeToo Context

In many ways, The List embodies different themes and issues present throughout the global #MeToo movement, beyond England. For example, The List also tells the story of Lewis Hale, a fictional character who commits suicide after the catastrophic personal and professional fallout he endured by being falsely accused on The List. In March 2018, real-life Swedish theater director Benny Frederiksson committed suicide after being publicly accused of sexual harassment and assault on social media, and socially ostracized as a result. Frederiksson’s death led to a #MeToo backlash, focusing on the negative consequences of such processes.

In addition, The List appears to be directly inspired by one of the many famous #MeToo movements that occurred in India at this time. In October 2017, then law student Raya Sarkar published a list (“The List”) of professors in Indian academia on Facebook, accusing them of sexually harassing their students.[2] The List was crowdsourced and Sarkar received input from other women through Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages. Overall, The List named seventy-nine professors and faculty members from twenty-nine different educational institutions across the country. Following the publication of The List, Sarkar received significant criticism from other feminists and activists in the country, arguing that the “name and shame” method was unethical and delegitimized the rest of the feminist movement. Other feminist thinkers, however, believe that this criticism is unjustified, and that the burden of creating perfect, equitable systems of accountability unjustly falls on those who have already suffered harm.

The List also begins very similarly to Unbound by Tarana Burke (featured in my last post). In Unbound, Burke’s memoir about the birth of the #MeToo movement, Burke recounts an experience of first being alerted to the viral #MeToo proliferation online, and being instantly seized with panic. Burke, an American activist who started the #MeToo movement over a decade earlier, focusing her activism on helping mostly Black and Brown victims of sexual assault in Selma, Alabama, was instantly shocked to see her hashtag slogan being co-opted on the internet by White Hollywood actresses. She instantly became incredibly anxious, thinking that all her life’s work would soon be reappropriated (without giving her credit) and reused in a way that undermined her initial motive.[3]

Similarly, in the beginning of The List, Ola wakes up to an inundation of text messages and notifications on her phone. Because she has installed an app on her phone that does not allow her to unlock her phone until a certain time in the late morning, she cannot read any of the messages, although she sees them accumulating at an unusual and anxiety-inducing pace. When she does eventually open her messages, she is, of course, seized with panic as she learns of The List and of Michael’s naming on The List. In both Unbound and The List, we see how the initial publication of these online confessions appeared entirely unprecedented, unwieldy, and completely anxiety-inducing. 

Ultimately, The List ends by confirming Michael’s insistence that he was wrongly and nefariously accused. Without giving away too much of the ending (for those who may read the book), the identity of the person who put Michael’s name on The List comes as a complete surprise. The ending of the book, and the revelation of Michael’s accuser, brilliantly symbolizes a situation where we can acknowledge the harmful impacts of these “name and shame” methods and the importance of due process, while also continuing to “believe women.” Indeed, most scholars of the global #MeToo movement believe that although these systems are not without flaws, they were born from a dearth of other more effective and formalized systems of redress, and they should not be muzzled merely for their imperfections.

As investigators, our fair, thorough, and impartial processes – whereby each party has an equal opportunity to share their account, provide supporting documentation, and suggest witnesses to be interviewed – allow us to provide due process to the accused and to provide a process significantly more equitable than “trial by Twitter”; and our process of analyzing credibility (which busts the “he said, she said” myth, as discussed in my earlier post), allows us to “believe women,” or sustain allegations of sexual harassment or assault, even without hard evidence.

Adolescence: Tackling “Toxic Masculinity” in Contemporary England

Earlier this year, in March 2025, the mini-series Adolescence started streaming on Netflix, created and produced by British actor Stephen Graham. The series instantly became very popular, captivating the attention of many media critics, and scoring 99% on the critics’ platform Rotten Tomatoes. Adolescence tells the story of a young 13-year-old boy named Jaime who murders a female classmate after she rejects his romantic advances. The four-part miniseries focuses on different facets of Jaime’s life, to interrogate the many potential root causes of violent misogyny.

The first episode takes place in the police station, with Jaime being interrogated by two police detectives; the second episode takes place at Jaime’s school; the third (and possibly the most fascinating) episode takes place in an interview room where a female psychologist performs a psychological evaluation of Jaime; and the fourth (very heart-wrenching) episode focuses on Jaime’s home life, as his parents and sister grapple with their grief and feelings of guilt.

Each episode was filmed in one take, with outstanding acting performances, particularly by Owen Cooper, who plays Jaime, and who never had any professional acting experience or formalized training prior to this role. Because each episode was filmed in one take, the cameras follow the actors continuously throughout the entire episode, reminiscent more of a choreographed play or performance, than of edited film. The result is a highly immersive viewing experience.

Since its release, Adolescence has caused a sensation in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the U.K., public schools will even start implementing curriculum on combatting “toxic masculinity” in response to the impact from Adolescence. According to Variety, “The smash hit Netflix drama — which has already provoked widespread debate for tackling the subjects of knife crime, toxic masculinity and the danger of online content on children — will now be made available alongside guides and resources for teachers, parents and carers to help them navigate the conversations that are raised.”

While the global #MeToo movement put a focus on the power of the internet to give voice to the voiceless and to unify women activists in unprecedented waves, the #MeToo backlash has shown the ways in which the internet and social media can also be used to perpetuate misogyny (as seen in Adolescence), and can evade due process for the accused in problematic and detrimental ways (as seen in The List).

Conclusion

Yomi Adegoke is a British journalist and author. The List was her first novel and became a Sunday Times Bestseller. It was also nominated for two British Book Awards, and was selected as a Good Morning America book club choice.

Stay tuned for our next post coming out on October 15, 2025, on Jaded by Ela Lee, continuing our focus on the global #MeToo movement in England.

[1] As also pointed out in my earlier post On Gossip and Hearsay, whisper networks can sometimes contain their own layers of hierarchy, privilege, and exclusion.

[2] With “Raya” bearing some similarities to the name of The List’s creator, “Rhian,” in The List.

[3] Ultimately, Burke explains that this is not what happened and not how she felt later on in the movement; but in these early moments, she was anxious and apprehensive of the uncertain future.