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What Was the Lesson of #MeToo?
Journalist Julie Ioffe had an interesting observation about the tiff between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and it shows how #MeToo could be a bomb about to detonate inside of the Democratic primary:
Still thinking about the Warren-Bernie squabble and I have a question to people who have accused Warren of lying: isn’t the lesson of #metoo and the last few years that we believe women and don’t call them liars?
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 14, 2020
Is it going to be possible for any Democrat to challenge Elizabeth Warren on anything?
If the answer is no, I’d like to game out what that looks like. Warren, a pathological liar, would skate to the nomination under the premise that women are now sacred beings, quite unlike men.
In a general election, Warren would then meet President Trump in debates. Is he going to give her a free pass to call herself a Native American? Will he give her a free pass to talk about her kids attending public school? Of course not. Nor should he.
And where does this leave women and the #MeToo movement? Right back where they started. Women won’t be any better off in the workplace, and they certainly won’t be any closer to the White House.
Sexism isn’t to blame; you can’t tell women that they are no different from men in any way, and also that they should and will be trusted no matter what the circumstances. Giving Warren a free pass elevates a deeply flawed and vulnerable candidate and sets back any progress feminists may have made for women in the workplace.
Published in General
I was just talking with a friend about how the Dem candidates are ill-prepared to handle the candidacy of Elizabeth Warren “as a woman.” They seem to feel obligated to say that of course a woman can be President and that a woman should be elected, but they don’t know how to argue for their own superiority in the face of that argument. If it’s so important to elect a woman, why don’t the men just quit the race? They seem incapable of articulating that the issue isn’t the gender of the President, but rather the particular skills, abilities, personality, experience, and policies of an individual candidate that matter. Whoever is elected cannot be the embodiment of every group in this country. We’re not electing a committee that “looks like America,” so I don’t understand why anyone should care whether the slate of Democratic candidates is racially diverse or inclusive of “all” genders (I’m using their terminology here, but I didn’t watch last night. Did anyone ask the candidates how many genders there are?). And while I’m on that topic, why are they so hung up on women candidates when they no longer believe in the male-female binary?
The logic used by Julia is an argument for why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
AFIK, I’ve never read Ioffe’s work. I have seen her on Twitter, however. She says many, many stupid things.
I didn’t realize that vaginas had the magic power to prevent their owners from lying.
But the #MeToo movement wasn’t intended to be a feminist-catch-all about equal pay or glass ceilings. It was specifically about women saying that they, too, had been the victims of sexual assault. That it’s morphed into a catch-all movement speaks to the way it’s being cynically used to silence all opposition to intersectional feminism. (It also was doomed the moment it became clear that most of the victimizers were Democrats.)
But what if they’re liars?
They’re not. They’re just not.
Except for Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Laura Ingraham.
All leftist ideology falls apart when confronted with logical consistency.
Bethany, what do you think was the lesson of #MeToo?
I imagine that different people will have different answers. I suspect that Ioffe has correctly identified the “lesson” supposedly “learned” by people who had a favorable impression the #MeToo movement. You correctly point out that they have “learned” a lie, with the lie that they learned being that women do not lie. It’s actually quite ironic.
I think that there was an important truth behind the #MeToo movement, but that this truth has been completely missed, and even suppressed, by the #MeToo advocates.
However, before stating my view, I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts.
This famous exchange:
…the moment when #Believe all women became #Disbelieve all men
^ This.
Had Ioffe been more interested in accuracy rather than rhetoric, she wouldn’t have said, “isn’t the lesson of #metoo and the last few years that we believe women and don’t call them liars?” but “isn’t the lesson of #metoo and the last few years that we should give women more benefit of the doubt as witness to their own lives?”
Many of us, who have no expectation of being treated like we were some angels incapable of untruth simply because we have ovaries, nonetheless know what it’s like to get too little benefit of the doubt when we give an account of what has happened to us, often for no better reason, apparently, than that we are women (this seems to be a problem in health care, for example).
#MeToo was specifically about acknowledging this where sexual impropriety is concerned, appealing to safety in numbers: the more ordinary women who don’t have some weird political axe to grind, can simply admit, “Oh, something like that happened to me, or someone I know,” the more we can acknowledge these improprieties are a Thing That Still Happens (often, in what are supposedly “enlightened” progressive circles) and not just weapons to use against innocent men.
But of course the loudest voices almost always do have some weird political axe to grind. So maybe we shouldn’t be at all surprised #MeToo would morph into a cynically-used catch-all movement. That’s still different from it only having been cynical dissembling all along.
I’m still thinking that #MeToo going viral may have its roots in Harvey Weinstein bailing out Woody Allen’s career after his Soon Yi affair, and Mia’s son’s driving desire to pay him back for that. But once that grenade exploded and the Kevin Spacey bomb went off to bring the pop culture sexual harassment narrative to both genders, there’s no question it gained steam in part because some people saw the collateral damage it would cause as worth it, if the outrage could also eventually ensnare Trump.
Certainly the Al Franken Decade in the Senate ended because Democrats thought Alabama was going to elect Roy Moore, and wanted to be able to bash him for his sexual harassment allegations without having to deal with the return fire towards Al. The fact that it didn’t get Trump (because his things like porn star affairs were consensual, as opposed to being pure power plays), sort of put #MeToo on the back burner, to where the media stopped paying attention unless there was another movie about Roger Ailes coming out.
So while Warren might try to use #MeToo against Bernie, and might have the support of CNN, the Bernie Bros are the loyalist supporters of all the Democratic candidates, and after watching CNN and others help drag Hillary across the finish line in 2016, they’re not going to take the allegations as credible. Which would end up further eroding the #MeToo movement, but it would be done from the left, not the right.
The lesson of #MeToo is that if Hillary Clinton had won the election there would not have been a #MeToo. The spark was the October 2017 New Yorker article on Harvey Weinstein; an article that never would have been published if Hillary had been elected (well, maybe Ronan Farrow could have gotten Breitbart to publish but then it would be ignored and treated as if it never existed). Harvey was very close to the Clintons and, as Farrow has since said, he was actually contacted by the Clinton campaign which urged him to back off the story. How could the New Yorker, the NY Times etc run the story given that close association if Bill Clinton was First Hubby and Hillary, who, for 25 years, had taken a flame thrower to the reputation of any woman who threatened the political career of her husband, was now President?
Just another reason for women, and all of us, to be grateful that Donald Trump is president. Make sure you tell your Progressive friends!
Jon is right. While #MeToo was certainly begun as an outcry against Pervert Weinstein, it was hoped that it would take out Trump and other Republicans as well. It backfired gloriously and exposed so much sexual perversion among prominent men on the left that it had to die or morph into general feminist complaining.
Exactly! I spent 2 weeks as a reactionary believing it was a fatal mistake to give the vote to women after 3 long-term friends (all women) explained to me that women had to be believed. Only one of these women is truly stupid. The other two are public school teachers who successfully raised their own children (in intact families). This was a few months after Feinstein thought the testimony of a mentally disturbed cat lady would stop the appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Their arguments consisted of saying the same sentence again, only louder with a “you go girl” foot stomp.
My reaction truly disturbed me and I am glad it passed and I am back to adoring women – somehow.
I wouldn’t touch this post with a ten foot pole.
And obscene things. Like this, which got her fired from Politico.
So why does Rick Wilson, who once Tweeted out a similarly sick comment suggesting incest between the President and his own daughter, still get feted by The Bulwark? Is Politico more principled than Sykes and Kristol’s cruddy little webzine?
Well, it’s been almost a day, so I’m going to give up on waiting for Bethany to respond.
The lesson that we should have learned from #MeToo is that modern sexual morality (actually immorality) is terrible for women. Many women are vulnerable, both physically and emotionally. Casual sex is inherently degrading and demeaning. I don’t think that there is any way around this problem, other than a return to proper, traditional sexual morality.
The #MeToo movement seems to propose a solution that is completely unworkable. Casual sex is fine, unless the woman decides that she felt pressured. She can decide that she feels this way after the fact. Such a decision makes the man a rapist, and he is not permitted to defend himself, as she must be believed.
Modern sexual morality (immorality) is also terrible for men, though generally in different ways and for different reasons.
If all women are to be believed, then King Solomon really should have cut the baby in half.