The National:

IN October 2017, the phrase "Me Too" entered into public consciousness as a rallying cry to women around the world who had been victimised by men; a signal that they need no longer be silent, that there was strength to be found in numbers. 

Over the next year, a tidal wave of allegations emerged about high-profile men, from the entertainment industry, to business, to politics. The message was clear: time was well and truly up for many men who had banked on getting away with it, because they had done just that for so long. 

There was a real, tangible moment where it felt like the world was finally waking up, taking its fingers out of its ears, the blindfold from over its eyes, and listening to women. A global revolution that started with a hashtag.

READ MORE: Fury over 'sexist' request to Nicola Sturgeon to apologise for Alex Salmond

Fast forward not three and a half years later, and a quick glance at Scottish politics gives the bleak impression that patriarchy might just have had the last laugh on that one. 

March 3 2021 will go down in history as a day when a nation’s attention was captured by the subject of sexual harassment and how complaints are, and should be, handled at the highest levels. Yet, in one moment, Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser encapsulated so much of what has been wrong with the political and media approach to the inquiry into the Scottish Government’s handling of the allegations against former first minister Alex Salmond. [Alex Salmond was acquitted of all charges in a criminal trial last year.]

The National:

Questioning Salmond’s successor and former deputy Nicola Sturgeon at the committee hearing, Fraser asked if she feels she “owe[s] an apology to the people of Scotland for asking us to trust” him. In other words: Does a woman want to apologise for the fact that she trusted a man who, unbeknownst to her, was behaving towards other women in a manner she describes now as “inappropriate”? 

This is offensive enough at the individual level, but the fact that this is playing out for an entire country - and beyond - to watch means it has implications well beyond the people involved in this case. 

Fraser has already tried to deflect from this by saying Sturgeon “lied” at First Minister’s Questions today by saying he’d asked her to “apologise for the conduct of a man”. Semantics aside, many women watching will have recognised the inferences of that question, and the fact that Murdo Fraser might genuinely not understand the meaning of his own words does not absolve him of their impact.

Far too often, when men behave badly, it is women who are expected to apologise, to take the blame. When women don’t report harassment or abuse that they’ve experienced, they are blamed for not doing it sooner. When they do report it they are called liars. And somehow it is the women - notably not the men - who are or were close to abusive men who are expected to answer for them, as though they, with all their positive womanly energy, should have been the one to keep them under control. 

For the avoidance of any and all confusion: nobody needs to apologise for trusting somebody who they later discovered was undeserving of that trust. This sounds like common sense, but the denial of this basic premise is not uncommon and it has consequences for anyone with a genuine interest in seeing reports of harassment, abuse or sexual violence taken seriously.

Men who abuse their power do not come wearing a T-shirt that tells everyone they’re a “bad guy”, and anyone who doesn’t see it is a fool. That person could be anyone, it could be someone you like and respect. 

But this is only one among countless examples along the way of how this process and the way in which it has been covered, discussed, poked and prodded from every angle, has utterly failed in getting to grips with the complex issues at play. 

If "Me Too" was a turning point, it’s hard to say if Scotland has gone in the right direction.