How “Me Too” Unfairly Maligns Men and Perpetuates Victimhood
“We must fight this nonexistent expectation!” is hardly a rallying cry for change.
If you’ve paid any attention to social media this week, you’ve likely seen several posts saying “me, too.”
Meant to amplify instances of sexual assault, and prompted by the innumerable Harvey Weinstein victims, women who believe themselves victims of such an instance have been encouraged by their peers to mark themselves by posting “me too” on their social media platforms. Some posts go in to great detail, others simply post those two little words.
Though it may be genuinely well-intentioned, “me too” unfairly maligns men and perpetuates victimhood in the worst ways. Telling only one side of the story, without proof, and without providing the accused party opportunity to defend themselves is hardly a pathway to progress.
Similar to the campus kangaroo courts that try and punish men using nothing but (often) baseless accusations, “me too” implies there’s an abundance of nasty, anonymously assaulty men lurking around every corner. And it’s simply not true.
Part of the problem lies in defining ‘sexual assault’. Unlike days of yore, sexual assault now could be anything from conversation that’s suggestive in nature all the way up to violent rape, depending on who you talk to. Unwanted jokes, being asked out on a date by someone with whom you’re not interested — any of these once commonplace occurrences could now be construed as sexual assault. When cat calls are viewed as tantamount to rape, nothing about this sexual assault conversation can or should be taken seriously.
Whether intended or not, the end result is the blanket maligning of the entirety of maledom and the implication that everyone with a Y chromosome ought to repent for their original sin of being born male.
It’s the ultimate man-shaming.
Because this is all about women (isn’t everything these days?), men have been encouraged not participate by sharing their stories of sexual assault. Like most progressive movements, right thinking and acceptable participants are the chosen ones and the rest? Well, forget them. Those being accused of sexual assault, whether directly or anonymously can’t possibly have anything to contribute to this faux conversation, you see.
Actor Jim Beaver (“Deadwood” and “Supernatural”)shared his story of sexual assault while in the military and then followed by saying the following had this to say on his Facebook page:
I see women all over the internet posting their “Me, toos.” I recognize these statements not as claims of victimhood but as clarions of solidarity, as posted notice that this shall not stand, as words representing arms-about-the-shoulders of these women’s comrades in this newly-invigorated fight against an old enemy. I salute all who have experienced these ordeals and who stand prepared to fight so that not just this battle but this war ends now.
As a man, I personally cannot, despite my own experience, quite bring myself to join in with a “Me, too,” even though I see some men doing so. I respect and support any man who has been sexually misused or sexually bullied. But what seems to have taken the world, at long last, by storm in the past few days is most prominently an issue for women, because while many men have been victimized in such manner, the painful truth is that we live in a world where women are *expected* to put up with such things, where it is so commonplace that we managed to elect a president who brags about such behavior. (The clear likelihood is that had the current occupant of the White House been caught bragging to a TV reporter about molesting men, he would never have become president. But since it was just women, well, boys will be boys.)
Well, this boy says the men and boys I know and trust and look up to are better than that, and we will join in calling out the curs among us who think “boys will be boys” is acceptable behavior.And so, since I’m not comfortable taking on what seems most appropriately a rallying cry for women standing up against a repugnant status quo, I won’t say, “Me, too.”
I’ll say, “I believe you.”
No one is contesting the veracity of the “me too” stories, nor is there an effort here or elsewhere to delegitimize or demean actual instances of sexual assault. What is being and should be evaluated is whether this viral conversation is productive or inadvertently destructive.
Typical of most progressive issues, arguments are created where none exists. No one, absolutely no one is arguing that women, by virtue of being born so, are doomed to a life replete with unwanted advances. Yet that’s the implication. “We must fight this nonexistent expectation!” is hardly a rallying cry for change.
Being victimized is not a choice. Choosing a life of victimhood and leaning on past traumas as solely defining events is just that, a choice. Likewise, shaming men and disallowing their perspective is a choice and one not seriously interested in change.
Conversation works best when there’s actual conversing.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
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Comments
There’s nothing constructive about declaring yourself a victim.
@MeToo is a fucking joke.
It’s filled with women that relate generic abuse stories and trolling for sympathy, all while going to ludicrous lengths to actually AVOID NAMING ABUSERS.
It lets them feel good about themselves that I’M PARTICIPATING, while not actually doing anything to stop the people that abused them, leaving them free to continue to victimize more people and laugh at what a coward you are.
This is exactly how Harvey Weinstein was able to operate for DECADES. Because everybody in Hollywood told gossip and stories and almost nobody was willing to actually DO anything about it.
Good point. However, can we please not use that word on here where mixed company abounds?
“#MeToo” What a load of crap! When did proudly proclaiming “I’m a victim” earn anyone a ounce of respect?
I feel sorry for those who are truly victims and have often tried to help them where I’m able. Victims that earn my respect are those who fight back hard and don’t hide in the woodwork for years until someone else makes the first move.
However, then there are those who claim ‘victimhood’ for incidents that are unlikely to have never happened. And, those victimized so frequently that you come to suspect they’re n fully capable of handling life. These people at best earn pity, not respect.
Men do it because it works. I grew up watching it – countless women who told me they just wanted a nice guy to treat them with respect, and I fell for it. I became the uncle they would all confide in, watching as they hopped in bed with the first bad boy to slap them on the ass.
The ones these women are complaining about are the losers they rejected and where insulted to be proposition by. They’re not telling you about all the times they submitted because he was a bad boy or who had the promise of a large bank account.
All the feminist went wild over Trump’s pussy grabbing remark about celebrity gold-digging groupies. The real conversation should have been why are so many women such whores.
Let’s be more modern about this: “me three.”
I believe the legal definition of sexual harassment takes both the manner and frequency into account. So yes “sex or you’re fired”, one time is harassment, but if it’s just “hey nice legs”, thats not going to do it unless it’s part of a repeated pattern of those types of comments. And sexual assault is another thing entirely, of course.
So, I have to wonder … did Harvey generally come through? He’s ensconced in Hollywood, a big producer in the movie biz, holding some of the keys to lives of fame and lucre, and many fortune seekers and such pilgrims go to Hollywood looking for just that. So, Harvey gets what he wants … do his suppliants?
(I’m not all that interested, personally … just asking for a friend.)
I’d really like to see Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick’s “Me Too” posts. I’m sure they’d be discredited and laughed off though.
Good grief, when is this insanity of pretending to be a victim going to end!?
Happily, I stay off social media, so I’m only seeing reports. Keep in mind that false accusations of rape and sexual assault are not uncommon. The Ronan Farrow report in The Hill was, I hear, carefully sourced and specific. This Twitter storm is anything but careful and specific. This can easily become an extension of the bogus “campus rape” hysteria. Actual sexual assault is a serious matter and deserves serious law enforcement investigation. Convicting all manners of men with internet innuendo is counter-productive. Not all men are rapists and not all of these stories will turn out to be true.
I hear that a counter-campaign #IWish is now underway by older women.
The progs are getting themselves all frothed up over this now? But it was all good when Billy Jeff Clinton was brutally raping women serially and Hillary was raping them in the court of public opinion in order to maintain the Clinton clutch on power. This is all to build up anger so they can make another run at ousting Trump.
“Businesswoman and politician Mary Burke wants to connect and empower women with a new app” ( http://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/10/18/businesswoman-and-politician-mary-burke-wants-connect-and-empower-women-new-app/772954001/ )
Mary Burke is the failed candidate for Governor of Wisconsin (she lost to Scott Walker) and apparently managed also to lose a sinecure at the family company, but, now she’s all about a women’s empowerment group.
So, why didn’t Hillary think of that? After all, she’s a failed candidate for an even higher office, and her career also appears to be built on her family connection?
Yet, candidate Burke didn’t run to be Governor of the Women of Wisconsin, nor did Clinton run to be President of the Women of the United States. Can they not see how hypocritical it is to demand access to any space that is still reserved for men even while starting and encouraging women-only “empowerment” groups?
http://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2017/10/18/businesswoman-and-politician-mary-burke-wants-connect-and-empower-women-new-app/772954001/
(As for me-tooing, might an obvious hazard be that some might question whether the me-tooers rose to their positions of fame or fortune by merit or by, umm, other means?)
This social media victimhood makes a mockery of the real pain, the terrible trauma of being raped. #metoo is foolish and the kind of thing expected from children not grown women.
But then it was started by over-the-hill celebutard Alyssa Milano who has nothing better to do with her time, since she isn’t doing much acting these days, and has the IQ of a bean sprout.
One of my children was a natural “me too.” We have been working for years to help him not be a follower, but be his own person. Me too is for children. This # stuff is all just inane. Means nothing. Sadly, the Obamas led the world in thinking it equals action and accomplishment.
I also would love to ask lots of these Hollywood folks, do you not listen to the lines in your tv shows and movies? You’re vulgar.
#MeToo is a transparent attempt by the media to change the story from “sexual abuse and rape of both sexes in Hollywood” by Bob Weinstein, his cousins, and his cronies into a standard blame men rape culture narrative.
That way all of the unanamed abusers in Hollywood and the media get let off the hook, and even Harvey Weinstein gets a second chance to blow investor money once everything blows over.
Something is really wrong with the culture in a Hollywood, and we should not let the media change the subject.
This is all related to the cult of victimization, which is taking over this society.
In our current society, we are told that there are only two classes of people, victims and oppressors. And, that there is no more virtuous condition than victimhood. Our modern day saints are not those who stood up to victimizers and fought back, but those who acquiesced and accepted their victimization.
In the Weinstein/Hollywood situation, none of the women there want to be thought to be enablers of this culture. But, there is no middle ground between oppressor and victim, in our current society. So, we have “victims” coming out of the woodwork. That these women will so easily cast aside their cloaks of being powerful, dominant women and present themselves as weak, submissive females is incredible. But, they are professional actresses, so maybe they view it as merely another role.
Just as occurs across the world business spectrum, some people acquiesced to demands for extra curricular services in exchange for a leg up in the industry. Some refused, but did nothing to further rock the boat, for their own personal benefit. Some complained about the situation and were either ignored or shunned, for the benefit of most of the others. But, now, when being one of the victims is virtuous, the same people who acquiesced or who failed to do anything to stop the cultural practices from occurring are all victims. For their own benefit, of course. It is all about the most powerful motive of all; self-interest.
The perverse effect of #MeToo is to disempower young women.
I’ve been watching this for some time at places where the kiddies hang out. I saw the following scenario over and over.
Some young woman meets up with a guy (who might be anything from a friend to a complete stranger), goes to his place for Netflix and Chill. Overconsumption of alcohol or marijuana is part of the story. So is a lot of cuddling. She says “no” somewhere along the line, maybe even as late as after the first round of sex. Maybe she just thinks it. She reports that she feels bad afterward, and asks if she was raped.
And she gets told yes, she was raped, and no, it was not her fault.
I have been told from other sources that boys are now being taught that it is their responsibility to secure explicit (as in damn near written) consent before sex. This is probably good policy, but it treats the boys as the sole decision-makers in a confusing scenario.
I don’t see anybody teaching the girls how to avoid potentially dangerous situations, or how to make a “No” stick.
I know from personal experience that it is quite possible to make a “No” stick. We do not live in a “rape culture.”
I also know that horny girls who get turned down later can tell some outrageous lies (such as the Mattress Girl, whose boyfriend lost interest in her, so she proceeded to make a national spectacle of herself).
To make a “No” stick, a young woman has to think clearly to herself, and decide in advance what she will or will not do. And then, she has to avoid giving mixed signals. This does mean having the internal honesty to admit, plan for, and take responsibility for her own contraception and protection from disease, if she decides to have sex. It also means being willing to break off further contact if he makes sex a condition for continued dating. Anybody who cannot do all of these things is a child and too young for sex. To the extent we fail to teach girls moral responsibility for their own actions, we set them up to be victims.
Thank you for cogently expressing the ideas that I, as a mere male, am not allowed to express in Progressive World!
“some people acquiesced to demands for extra curricular services in exchange for a leg up in the industry. Some refused …”
And yet it seems practically of the me-toos are coming from those who acquiesced.
Wouldn’t those who refused (and were thereby denied what they might have obtained, had they acquiesced, or, had acquiescence not been available as a bargaining chip) have a better claim to victimhood?
“No one is contesting the veracity of the “me too” stories”
Wrong. I am. I have seen “harassment” complaints filed to cover up embezzlement, to get back at a boss with standards, or just to flat out get rid of someone who’s in competition for a job or promotion. There has to be a standard established that “because I said so” isn’t enough to ruin someone’s life.
One of the cool things about #Me Too or whatever the heck it is, is that men are not allowed to have an opinion on the matter or comment on it.
Instalanche! Way to go, Kemberlee!
I am male, therefore I rape, and sometimes rape-rape.
Judge people by the “color of their skin”. Diversity, right?
Darn, Me Too! I don’t know how many times I was drunk and raped by women. That explains why I am so messed up.
On the serious side of things, I really do think that porn and Hollywood have done a great disservice to women and how they should be treated. As a young man I was always taught to treat women with respect. No clue where others would think they could forcing themselves on a woman. Most of those men were jerks and any women with some common sense figures that out.
Tell me 50 Shades of Gray does not promote this thinking. Or in the earlier days 9 1/2 weeks.
I don’t think Molly Ringwald’s story sounds like true sexually abuse. Neither does this so called Model Prince that hooked up with Blaine. I think there are other emotional issues in play.
The one thing that made the most impact on me was when we had a stag party for my brother with an 8 mm projector to show some movies (tame by today’s standard) and my father left the party without saying a word before the show started. It was a beautiful how he lead by example as to what was right and wrong. To this day, I still open car doors for my wife. Our role models suck today because we have allowed the good ones to be abandon to what is cool or popular.
All is not lost, I have hope. Game on to make America Great!
What I can’t understand is why would a man as handsome as Weinstein need to force himself on women ?
I hope to God a sarc tag is not needed