I brooded long and hard this weekend about #MeToo and the recent slew of rape trial scandals and the confusion they’ve inevitably sowed in female breasts. For most women the defenestration of Harvey Weinstein was a long-overdue sign that a certain form of sexual predation, involving using your professional status as a crowbar, would not be tolerated again. Who knows whether Weinstein will ever be found guilty in a court of law, but it’s fair to say the court of public opinion is firmly against him.

Then there’s the Belfast rape trial, involving Ulster rugby players who were eventually acquitted of any offence. The crude and debasing social media messages sent between defendants about the girl at the centre of the trial, not to mention the fact she suffered a bleeding vaginal lesion means many people, myself included, can’t help feeling there were offences against basic human decency.

Pulling in another direction, there’s the resignation of the Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders, whose term of office saw an alarming number of failed rape trials: prosecutions that collapsed after it became clear potentially exonerating evidence (such as flirty online messages following supposed rapes) had been withheld by the police. Cases that, it seems, should never have come to trial. Suddenly many a female heart was stricken with thoughts of a son or younger brother standing in the dock because an awkward sexual encounter had been misconstrued, or regretted.