Our intentions are good but our memories are short. It was exactly a year ago that the recording of Trump boasting about that “pussy grab” led to an online flood of women sharing their own experiences of sexual assault. There were the formative flashings, the inappropriate doctors, there were women who relived the abuse they’d suffered as children, tweeting into space and risking plenty in order to affect change.

Post-Weinstein, women have been sharpening their experiences again into little hashtagged spears

It was exciting! Do you remember 2016? When hope existed? Before the sky turned orange, and the winds came? That whole campaign felt important, a step forward. It felt as if by shining this honest light on women’s daily harassments and horrific assaults men would understand the gritty texture of our lives and never cross a boundary again. It felt big, like there was no going back.

Men responded to that outpouring with shock. They’d known it happened of course, they just hadn’t known. After publishing a column about that thread of assaults I received a load of emails from readers with their own stories – something had been uncorked, and women who’d never talked before about the crap they’d faced at 15 were encouraged now to shout about it. Partly out of solidarity. There was a huge feeling of warmth, of arms being linked, a reminder that you should not feel shame about having been victimised by a shitty man. But mainly these women were choosing to dredge up some of the worst moments of their lives in order to kick at the struts holding up powerful men, and to prevent a similar thing happening to somebody else.

And then time happened. It is one year later, and all that’s different is what’s playing on the radio. Post-Weinstein, women have been sharpening their experiences, again of harassment and assault, again into little hashtagged spears. A Twitter campaign is not the perfect solution to inequality, sure. Lumping Weinstein in with every other sexist dick in the world seems often to be very kind on Weinstein. But again shock has been expressed. People had known it happened of course, they just hadn’t known, their memories now the length of half a piece of string. Which has left me standing here like, “Wait…?” Squinting as though watching a Black Mirror Christmas special on a very small screen, a story where every year as winter rolls in women’s memories are harvested, our minds sluiced out with milk ready for spring. Because we literally Just. Did. This. We told these stories, we talked about what it meant, we prepared ourselves for a change that never came.

So what was the point? How does the value of solidarity we gain from these campaigns weigh against the price of the pounds of flesh shared, when the abusers of power we’re seeking to topple remain largely untouched? After all, Weinstein’s big crime was to promote his liberalism while quietly assaulting women; Trump made no such mistake. It was Weinstein’s hypocrisy that got him – the women’s voices still don’t appear to be the things driving change from the front seat.

From my home on the internet, what initially felt like a tsunami, thousands of women shouting, powerful, now feels more like rain. Just weather, late October. We’re still talking, but women’s confessionals are cheap today, and many (particularly those for whom sharing stories of abuse will have immediate consequences, and those who, upon reading others accounts of rape and assault will be forced to revisit their own carefully compartmentalised memories) feel undersold.

Women have been expected to fight every side of this battle, providing evidence, commentary, their bloodied bodies and patience. But at some point, surely, the victims of power should no longer be held responsible for proving it’s damaging. Women have laid out their experiences of abuse end-to-end, again and again, and now it’s time for men to follow it as a path for change. They’ve been shouting for years, they need reassurance that all this has not been for nothing. It’s someone else’s turn now. Ending abuse is not a women’s issue, nor women’s responsibility. And we owe it to every one of the people who took a risk by sharing their story online to make sure our memories don’t fail us, or them, again.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman