Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globes 'singling out the world's little girls for her message'. Credit:PAUL DRINKWATER The backlash, we are told, was evident in the French women's letter (co-signed by none other than Catherine Deneuve) that said the campaign had become "puritanical". It was evident in the horrified reactions to the account published this week of an anonymous young woman's sexual encounter with American actor Aziz Ansari, an encounter that was not criminal but nonetheless had her crying in the cab on the way home, as she told it. That story has ruined the reputation of an undeserving man, and shows the movement is no longer a progressive force, but a purge, the rules of justice discarded. This week I read the account, published on feminist website Babe, and like many women, I found myself thinking, "Why didn't she just leave if she didn't like what he was doing? Jerks will be jerks." It took more thought before I realised that question was the beating, bleeding heart of the whole #MeToo show.

Why didn't she leave? What forces were working against her instinct for self-preservation? Why did she ignore her better judgment and stay? What combination of social conditioning and stupidity kept her there? Every woman I know has been in a similar situation. We had legs, and cab fare. Why didn't we show ourselves out? The answer is complex, and bone-marrow sad, when you think about all the girls who have cried in cabs on their way home, and what heavens we must move to make sure our daughters don't have to. The answer has much to do with the double-bind girls are contorted into from childhood: placate, be kind, be good, we are told. But also don't let a man go too far, because that is slutty. Or, in 21st century telling, it shows a lack of self-respect. Also, and here is something women on all sides of this argument can agree on: we are human. We don't always know what to do in tricky situations. We have competing interests. We are subject to what psychologists call the approach-avoidance conflict: we want to be loved, and seen, and desired. Of course we do.

But we also know that the source of those things can hurt us. And I'm not talking about heartbreak, I'm talking about violence and violation, shame and humiliation. So what do we do with that ambivalence? We sublimate it, and end up in uncomfortable situations that we don't leave, especially if we're young and un-hardened by experience. It's the #MeToo movement that has us considering revolution, in the true sense of up-turning the whole scenario: what if there was no discomfort to negotiate? What if there was no male pressure to resist? The #MeToo backlashers also say the movement is turning women into victims, incapable of agency. That one really tickles me. The movement is tale after tale of resilience, and exists only because women have confronted the Goliath-ian institutions, workplaces and legal systems that have failed them, and found a way to work around them, mostly by using the media. Think about all the advocates for "freedom of speech" who wittered on during the debate about abolishing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

All of them, to a man, are out there telling the #MeToo women to shut up. Or, that they've had their say but need to be quiet now, or risk the dreaded backlash. To those alleged lovers of free speech, I say: this is what it looks like. The #MeToo movement is complex and winding and yes, a little too right-on in parts, and perhaps wrong in others, and it's full of competing ideas and uncomfortable truths, and – perhaps most titillating of all – women arguing with each other. But above all, it is defined by the wild and thrilling sound of women giving their opinions and telling their stories. Oprah Winfrey standing up at the Golden Globes and, in front of a room of entertainers, and a television audience of millions, singling out the world's little girls for her message. Novelist Charlotte Wood writing about female anger. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver writing about the "earthquake" of women "refusing to accept sexual aggression as any kind of award, and men … getting fired from their jobs". Margaret Atwood warning us not to eschew due process and wondering if she is a "bad feminist" (if she is, let's have more of them).

The hordes of women, in Australia and abroad, who have told journalists the humiliating things that happened to them, in the clinical language of the survivor who wants the truth recorded. All that really matters is that these stories are being told. The saucepan is boiling over. It won't stop now. #MeToo is called a movement because it keeps moving. We don't know where it will go next. What we are seeing now is not backlash. It is the beginning. Loading Twitter: @JacquelineMaley Follow Jacqueline on Facebook