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#MeToo – Why Aren’t I Traumatized?
Is there anybody who doesn’t have a #MeToo story of some greater or lesser degree of severity/significance? The Kavanaugh circus – the latest drama in what’s been dubbed the #MeToo moment – has got me thinking about it for a number of reasons.
First, I’m just the guy’s (Kavanaugh’s) vintage and I can relate to life as a late teen/young man in the early/mid 80s. There’s been a lot of talk about that, as though Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds, and Sixteen Candles were the lived experience of every high school or college aged guy alive at the time.
Second, while my high school experience bears no relationship whatsoever to any of those movies or any of the lurid stories about Kavanaugh, my college experience does. I joined a fraternity at the University of Minnesota as a freshman in 1982 and I’ve said many times since then that that experience has lead me to understand how Alexander the Great could have gotten a bunch of juiced up, horned up young men to go out and conquer Asia. We were truly out of control and in need of some adult supervision. In hindsight, it would be surprising if there weren’t far too many #MeToo stories from the parties we used to throw regularly. Had I been heterosexual, there’s an excellent chance I’d have been a perpetrator. I certainly drank enough; as much as Kavanaugh’s accused of and more than he admits to.
So I’m inclined to think that among late teens and young men and women in the early 80s, binge drinking was common and at least some clumsy, handsy, drunken version of what’s now considered sexual assault was too. Many people my age know this from their own experience. It’s what gives at least the Ford and Ramirez accusations against Kavanaugh their plausibility (and distinguishes them from the Swetnick accusation). He may not have done it, but it’s not like it wasn’t done. It was. A lot.
But I have a question, and it’s a question I’d never dare to pose anywhere else on the internet other than Ricochet. The question is: what’s the big deal?
You see I’m not only a mid-50s former fratboy who would, but for his sexual orientation, almost certainly have “committed a Kavanaugh” in his youth, I’m also a former (can you be a former?) “victim” of a #MeToo event. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I was fresh out of high school, decidedly a virgin, she was someone I worked with at a summer job, twice my age. She got me very, very drunk (I was just discovering alcohol; high school athletics had kept my crowd away from it before that), and she took advantage. Sobered and hung over the next day, I was pretty freaked out. It was, coincidentally, the summer of 1982.
But today, 36 years later, I can talk about it without any fear or anxiety. Nothing about the layout of my home has been affected by the experience. If she were nominated to the Supreme Court and I was asked about it, honestly, I think my answer would be that it was no big deal. Not that it wasn’t at the time. To me it was. I felt violated. I was worried about STDs. I think it caused me months of stress and anxiety. What she did to me was wrong. But some days life’s a crap sandwich. That wasn’t the first bad experience I ever had nor was it (or will it be) the last. Me? I pick myself up and move on. It’s not like I lost a limb. I got over it.
So the first question is, is this a guy thing? Is this just less of a big deal to men than to women?
In many ways (the details of which I’ll spare you) the experience I had was quite a bit more “serious” than what Professor Ford describes. But I was an 18-year-old boy, incapacitated by alcohol yes, but otherwise at least her physical equal. I’m sure 15-year-old Professor Ford couldn’t have said that of 17-year-old Judge Kavanaugh. Does that shape how we experience these events and how we remember them and how (and whether) they scar us?
Or is it our wiring? Are women, as the sex that produces one egg a month and takes primary care for child rearing, just wired to be more selective about their sexual encounters and as a result more violated by an unwanted one?
Am I just weird? Me, personally? Do most men who’ve had experiences like mine suffer lifelong trouble like Professor Ford claims to have? Maybe I’m a sociopath. Or suffering false consciousness. Could therapy help me get in touch with the wounded, victimized child within?
On the other hand, how many women who’ve had to fight off a drunken lout manage to get over it? Is Professor Ford’s lifelong disability the norm? Or is she a fragile flower suffering over an event that most women would be resilient enough to move past? Is her claim of trauma even all that plausible? Or is it just too politically incorrect to doubt it?
If anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a #MeToo experience has any thoughts on these questions I’d be interested. And if your name and/or avatar doesn’t make it clear, it would be helpful if you included your sex in your answer.
Published in General
Am I the only one who doesn’t believe her story at all? I don’t believe one word of it. She was obviously coached, that voice she put on was ridiculous. I mean, what 50 something year old woman talks like that? I think she’s a Democrat operative who grew up close enough to Brett Kavanagh to put a story forward, but the reason she has no corroborating evidence is because it never happened. I don’t think she even met Kavanagh once in her life. We are being played by the left. Plain and simple and Brett Kavanagh’s life is the collateral damage.
I’ve had stuff happen to me in my life, that could put me in the #metoo category but I also realize now how woefully unprepared I was as to how to deal with boys when I was a teenager. Camille Paglia got into a lot of heat in the 90’s for writing a column that there was no such thing as date rape. Ms Paglia had done extensive research into human sexuality and she concluded that so much of sexuality is unspoken. That if you invite a boy up to your room, that is a signal to him that you want to have sex, that if you start making out and getting into some heavy petting that is also a signal to him that you want sex. But what happens is that the girl wants to go only so far and then stop and truly doesn’t understand the intensity of male sexuality. Also a lot of times girls do not articulate exactly what they want, and the boy may go farther than what she is comfortable with but she never says anything so the boy goes there and then she feels violated (see the Aziz Ansari account which articulates this to a T) .
There was a reason adults had restrictions regarding the interactions between young men and women that we decided to toss away in the 60’s and 70’s, has created this atmosphere.
The problem is you can’t have a conversation about any of this. The feminist are irrational in that they want women to be able to have as much sex as they want but also want regrettable drunken sex to be considered rape. Huh? I felt violated therefore I was. No, it doesn’t work like that. Human sexuality is so complicated and so often men and women don’t even understand their own bodies and what their hormones do to them. I think Andrew Klavan is right that a new Victorian age will be coming soon
Thank you for this and – seriously – tell your wife to turn off the TV. Serenity is important at times like this – as in the serenity to accept the things you cannot change. I maintain that by telling myself – 1) I hope a gross injustice is averted here but I acknowledge that I have absolutely no control over it; and 2) me choosing to binge on the two minute hates blasting from cable news 24/7 will raise my blood pressure and my anxiety level, but it will have no other impact on the outcome whatsoever; so 3) I choose to keep my blood pressure and anxiety level where they are (low and controlled) by not subjecting myself to those assaults.
Of course if you live in Alaska or Maine, call your Senator first before you tune it out.
I don’t believe her either. If this was believable, Feinstein would have been all over it in July and derailed the nomination straight away back then.
I don’t think Feinstein found it credible in July and only used it at the 11th hour when desperate and forced to.
This was an actress performing.
Cato:
Your experience seems to fit the standard #MeToo pattern, which looks to me not like sexual assault or rape, but like drunk regretted sex. I agree that you legitimately feel that she “took advantage,” but it seems to me that this did not occur in a way that is subject to any reasonable legal sanction that would allow adults to make their own decisions and have consensual sex. I acknowledge that not all alleged sexual assaults fit this pattern, as some involve the use of force or truly incapacitating drugs.
You don’t tell us precisely how old you were, or what the drinking age was at the time. If you were of the age of consent, that would be a serious issue, and probably criminal. I assume that this was not the case.
Our traditional social rules, pre-1960s, generally directed people not to engage in such behavior at all. These rules were jettisoned by the radical feminists in the Sexual Revolution, launching the bacchanalia that has lasted to this day. Now they are complaining about the entire predictable results, and have the temerity to actually blame the Conservatives.
Their solution is to throw out due process and the presumption of innocence. Which, I think, would leave us with something like Sulla’s Proscriptions as the rule of, well, definitely not law. This, by the way, makes your Ricochet handle particularly fitting!
This problem is not actually confined to sexual relations. Heck, it applies to mortgages, car purchases, and even things as silly as whether that quality Ronco product in the late-night ad is really worth $19.95. (“But wait. There’s more!”) Someone makes a persuasive sales pitch, and you buy it, and then you regret it. Sometimes there is an outright misrepresentation, which is actionable, but more often it was just effective rhetoric. You end up feeling like a sucker. But the only remedy is imposition of rules that presume that mentally competent adults are not capable of making their own decisions, which doesn’t seem likely to work (and is inconsistent with our idea of representative government, too).
People use their own experiences to interpret other people’s motives/meaning, which is why it is important to discard feelings and look at evidence to determine what can/cannot be confirmed. (We often get it wrong when we rely on our passions, right?)
I spoke with one of my own college roommates last night about some of our experiences, and this was underscored for me. She said because she’s experienced sexual assault she could “tell” that the judge was lying. As she watched him, she saw the faces of men who were not him, who had behaved very badly, and she got nauseous.
On the other hand, as I watched the judge, I cried because I saw the faces of the men I love in his place, not any past idiot that most of us have indeed encountered in our youth and left behind, especially if coming of age in the 1980s.
But I also could testify to knowing about my roommate’s experiences in the 1980s.
She said she didn’t know the year she had a particular encounter in defense of Ford, and it was very easy for me to say… “Yeah? That was when we were juniors, remember? That’s the year you lived with me.”
It wasn’t hard to figure the year out.
So when I think about what was experienced back then–what was a clear (in my mind) sexual assault that was punctuated by my dear friend showing up on our porch, tear stained and overwrought and barely able to talk–I definitely roll my eyes at the doctor thrown down on a bed.
Though that was an instance of “date rape”–and some of that culture you mention per the Greek system, lots of alcohol, etc.–perhaps I should have bundled my roommate into a car and driven her to a police station? I don’t know. That’s a super hard question for me more than thirty years later.
In retrospect do you think you should have reported your woman whom you say you learned had clearly established a pattern of sexual molestation?
Regardless, I think Ford’s testimony ultimately cheapens a woman’s currency (or a man’s) when coming forward to say “me too.”
Maybe I’m a horrible person, but I was struck as well by the fact that my friend admitted one of the reasons she could see Kavenaugh as a predator is that she really, really, really doesn’t want to see him confirmed. (My friend is an amazing person, but she’s also very invested in progressive politics.)
Whenever anyone demonizes people from another group for political views, it’s easy to take it a step further and feel justified in absolutely obliterating those people from the public square… even if that means destroying their private lives… even if that means taking something that many of us would think is NBD and turning it into the worst of crimes.
On your main question, I’m not an expert on this, but I’ve undertaken some informal study about personality traits recently, principally under the electronic tutelage of Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt.
There is a personality trait called “agreeableness.” Highly agreeable people are eager to please, can’t stand conflict, don’t like competition, and don’t stand up for themselves. Disagreeable people are competitive, like winning, and thrive on confrontation. Both are useful in different circumstances.
Women tend to be significantly more agreeable than men. I think that the difference is about a standard deviation, which still implies significant overlap, but is unusually large for a male-female differential in a psychological feature. As usual with such distributions, modest differences in the average lead to very large differences in the tails of the distribution. Thus, almost all of the hyper-agreeable people are women, and almost all of the hyper-disagreeable people are men.
There is another personality trait called “neuroticism.” This is a bit confusing, because it does not have the same meaning as the psychological disorder of the same name. Neuroticism is sensitivity to negative emotion. Women tend to be significantly higher than men in trait neuroticism.
Now combine the two. Imagine a woman who is in, say, the top 25% in both agreeableness and trait neuroticism. Such a woman is pliable, unable to stand up for herself, has difficulty saying no, and is unusually sensitive to both fear and social disapproval. She is likely to go along with a night of moderate drinking, clumsy romancing, and ultimately unsatisfying sexual intercourse. On the inside, she may be disliking everything that is happening, but she may give little or no outward sign of objection. To the contrary, because of her agreeableness, she may well give positive signals out of a general tendency to be eager to please.
The next day, she feels abused. Objectively, if she tells her story, people will say something like: “well, what did you expect?” And the terrible thing is, she probably did expect exactly what happened, which makes her feel guilty and even more terrible.
To this mix, add the modern victim mentality narrative. Almost all of us have lives full of failures, inadequacies, mistakes, and disappointments. It is not fun to face this. If we can blame these mistakes on something done to us, we can both feel better about ourselves, and excuse ourselves from the responsibility for self-improvement.
And thus you have the #MeToo movement.
I do not deny that some men are truly violent sexual criminals, and that many more are cads and oafs, at least on occasion. But my impression is that the above discussion better fits the #MeToo pattern. Heather MacDonald’s work supports this.
There will be men in the agreeable/high neuroticism category, but fewer. They will tend to be wimps and reclusives. (They don’t even have to be small — think of Hodor in Game of Thrones.)
Another comment about #MeToo. I agree with Andrew Klavan that the result will be something like a new Puritanism, but it will be a weird Puritanism, and we’ve probably been seeing it for several years. My impression is that young men are simply giving up the pursuit of young women, and turning increasingly to pornography.
I think that the only solution lies in a return to traditional values, but I do not think that this is likely as a cultural matter. Basically, like Klavan, I think that we need a revival, but I do not expect one. On the bright side, the good Lord regularly proves me wrong.
Really good point.
The tendency of leftists in general (and feminists in particular) to ignore the ability of an individual to improve his/her situation makes the world a very complicated place.
See “herbivore men.” The notion of men not seeking a human female partner seems to have found a real foothold already in Japan:
Wow. What a strange world we live in.
Modern efforts to remove “toxic masculinity” from the world appear to have far-reaching consequences.
And, I would argue, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…
I would welcome a return to traditional values, but the women in the me too movement would be the first ones to scream bloody murder over that, and to view it as further proof that they are being oppressed. @arizonapatriot may be on onto something-there may be a certain combination of agreeableness and neurotic traits that cause some women to be inclined to things like feminism and the me too movement. Unfortunately, there probably isn’t anything we can do, other than inform these snowflakes that they need to toughen up. A return to traditional values would be wonderful, but it’s wishful thinking to believe that feminists would accept that.
I am struck by how much the women of the me too movement resemble the image of women that seemed to have been held by many Victorian men-hysterical, hopelessly emotional, totally immune to reason. I don’t believe that most women are like that, but those of us who are not like that need to speak out more against those who are, and when we do, they will accuse of being mean, of not caring, of being traitors, etc…. and all we can do is just learn how to ignore them. It won’t be fun, but it is the only way. They are a minority-they are probably a minority of women, but when you add men to the mix, they are definitely a minority.
As women have fought to be treated as equals in society, in many cases feminism has not helped.
To the extent that I would welcome a return to traditional values, it isn’t because I feel that I need to be protected from men, it is because I would like to be protected from other women :) To the extent that I am kind of a snowflake myself, the people who bring out my snowflake tendencies are virtually always other women. I worked as a cocktail waitress when I was in my twenties, and was groped a few times, but that cannot begin to compare to the trauma that has been inflicted on me by other women. Virtually all of the men I have known have been genuinely good guys; the women, not so much.
I am not joking here, at all: I don’t like living in a society where I am expected to spend 40 or more hours a week in constant contact with other women. I just want to be left alone, but feminists never leave anyone alone: if you don’t join them in the workforce, they will make your life hell. If you do join them in the workforce, they will make your life hell. I really hope we are getting to a point where more people will just ignore feminists.
Because it has already created double standards and/ or lowering of standards in critical fields such as police, military, and fire departments. What’s not to love? I call it a failed experiment brought to us courtesy of the 60s radicals. Time to put this test to bed.
I am beginning to believe that Gramps McTemplar was actually on to something with his time tested barefoot and pregnant philosophy.
Times surely have changed in the past sixty-five years. Such an event was the day dream of every chap in my class during our teen years and would have been the source of unbelievable “side”.
I did mention it but I was 18. Definitely of age to consent to sex, and at the time and place old enough (barely, but old enough) to drink legally. That she might have been subject to legal sanction never occurred to me then or, until you mentioned it, now. I just feel like it’s my responsibility to watch out for myself. That notwithstanding, I think her behavior was inappropriate. The sort of thing that should justly be subject to disapproval and social sanction, just not legal sanction.
I agree with you about her conduct being inappropriate and subject to disapproval and social sanction, but that’s easy for me to do, as my long and winding road led to a position of staunchly traditional sexual morality. It makes for an easy, bright line rule: she wasn’t your wife, so it wasn’t OK, though the fault is on both sides.
I don’t have many takers on the traditional morality position, and the challenge is finding some sort of alternative, workable, bright-line rule. I don’t think there is one, but I’m willing to entertain suggestions.
Instead, we’re slouching toward some sort of vague, unworkable, multi-factor balancing test. Just when I thought we had seen the last of Justice Kennedy. :)
I don’t think there is a bright line rule but there are at least one old and one new insight into sexual morality that I think provide guidance in this case. The old one is the idea that the young are vulnerable and the more mature should take that into account before getting hinky with them. The newer one is that the severely intoxicated probably aren’t capable of fully consenting.
Rather than being able to marry them? Different lenses, for sure.
I am not understand your comment.
Both good points.
But when is the girl old enough to know what she is getting herself into in the case of a May – December relationship. Is there an age gap that is ‘just wrong on so many levels?’
The Playboy bunny (Anna Nicole Smith) and her billionaire oil tycoon husband come to mind.
Guy teachers who seduce gal students go to jail for a long time; gal teachers who seduce guy students seem to end up marrying them…Definitely different lenses/standards…Better, I hope?
Got it. Thanks.
Maybe guys and gals ain’t same-same after all?
Professor Ford was emotionally over wrought at the very least. As a female I don’t like that I am being asked to always believe the woman. There is something very wrong with Judge Kavanaugh being expected to prove his innocence. Only Conservatives are considered guilty until proven innocent.
And there was nothing and no one to support Professor Ford’s story. She had no facts, was inconsistent in many things she said and I am not even sure she ever met Brett Kavanaugh. I remain skeptical about everything she said as a result. All I know for certain is the political ugliness surrounding this nomination will not easily fade from memory.
Shout it from the rooftops — — please?
Well….? I mean, that’s the question, isn’t it?
You can’t have it both ways. Either women are tough enough to serve in combat, run for president, be cops, firefighters and anything else we want to be…or we are delicate flowers who just can’t cope.
It’s not just feminists, of course. The same college students who insist that being called by the “wrong” (that is, correct) pronoun, or being asked to dress appropriately for class represent horrifying, even violent blows to their sense of self will regard police officers not much older than they are as fair game for the up-close-and-personal insults and threats, the more racist, sexist and just plain mean, the better. And will think it simple justice to scream obscenities at elderly scholars with whom they disagree.
It’s not the sensitivities of twenty year olds that concern me. It’s their complete lack of interest in anyone else’s sensitivity.
By the way, @Columbo, I have sympathy for your wife even if —especially if—she’s going over the top on this. Been there, done that.
Yup.
Yes, an Alice-through-the-looking-glass one, spearheaded by those on the Left that a recent Time cover called “The New Puritans”, I suppose.
I think it’s a different question when you’re talking about a marriage than when you’re talking about a drunken hook up. As a general proposition, marriage is preceded by the opportunity for at least sober, if not always mature, reflection.