The just-announced Time’s Up initiative, supported by 300 prominent industry women and currently soliciting donations, is three things at once — a legal defense fund, a push for legislation to strengthen workplace harassment laws, and a renewed effort behind the “50/50 by 2020” push to discourage sexist hiring and promotion tendencies within the studios and talent agencies.

While the Hollywood boys club ethos is being challenged as we speak, there’s a 1.1.18 Guardian piece by Rory Carroll that feels even more persuasive in this regard.

Carroll quotes Peter Mehlman, an author and Seinfeld writer, as follows:

“The completely unjustifiable confidence that normally pervades this place is really shaken. You hear a lot of dinner conversation about where the lines are and what are the nuances of inter-office socializing. The saner, more decent people are asking questions like ‘Is that it for flirting?’ The dimmer, more entitled dinosaurs are saying ‘This business isn’t even fun any more.’

“This may be the most Pollyanna thing I’ve ever said, but I really think this is going to change things. A lot. It’s hard to imagine anyone in power sizing up a woman and saying ‘I’m all over her.’ Everyone’s getting conditioned to think twice, even the most predatory among us, or maybe especially the most predatory. I may be anthropomorphising here, but I really think the animals have no choice but to be civilized.”