#metoo has gone #too far

When you read about the #metoo movement in The Guardian and other papers, or hear people talking about it, you find that the speaker/author regularly confuses and conflates several different things.

1.       Sexual coercion in several areas of professional life (It started from the movie industry, but now it is concerned about all areas, rightly so.)

2.       Sexual assault and the nature of consent (and that we’re living in a rape culture)

3.       Domestic violence

4.       Patriarchy

Interestingly in any of these situations the narrative is always the “men are perpetrators, women are victims”. Neither of the loud proponents seems to be concerning themselves with victims other than women and perpetrators other than men, and they are more than happy to ignore the grey areas so that they can present a beautiful black-and-white picture that supports their crusade against the Patriarchy. A lot of people –women included- are saying that the #metoo movement transformed into a sort of “warlock-hunt”; these articles are worth reading.

Sexual coercion

Powerful individuals pushing themselves onto vulnerable people, taking advantage of them is wrong. Forcing others to perform sexual  acts to get advantages is wrong. Weinstein is a scumbag. (So are Spacey and Takei, by the way.) However. The idea that in a relationship the one holding the power is automatically the guilty party (especially if he is a man) is just plain stupid. The first lab I attempted my PhD was in a lab where the PI had a wife who acted as a lab manager. I learned later that she used to be his MSc student, and my PI divorced his fat and ugly wife to marry his blonde and thin student. In this case you may argue that my PI took advantage of his situation, but it’s not what happened. What really happened was that the lab manager took advantage of her situation, and simply seduced her supervisor. There are cases when you clearly have a scumbag abusing his power (see Weinstein), but a lot of these cases we like to forget that we all are humans with our insecurities, worries and, yes, libidos. Just because in a professional setting the guy was a superstar of peptide chemistry, does not mean he was not an insecure chubby man who could be easily manipulated by a self-assured, striking young woman. And I have not even mentioned people who abuse their sexuality to get ahead in line. Sexuality is power too, you know. In fact it is the ultimate power in this world. What I’m saying here is yes, scumbags, like Weinstein should not be allowed to do what they do best; however every case should be treated with care. (The problem here is what the problem is in most of these cases involving genders: the people setting the tone are not concerned about collateral damage, since it does not happen to the members of the group they belong to. Even if the perpetrator does happen to be a member of their group they normally get off easy in both legal proceedings and in the social media outrage-machine.)

Rape culture and sexual consent

This has some tangential connections to the issues triggering the #metoo movement, but only in a very specific way: can someone give consent if the other party is much more powerful than they are. This has, since then, spun out to be a general outcry about consent, and the whole, very unrealistic “yes means yes” attitude. Apparently women are not capable vocalizing their wishes if they don’t want something, so to protect these fragile creatures a constant verbal confirmation is needed during sexual acts. Interesting concept, but it does beg the question if these people have ever had sex before. It also means, of course, that if two drunk people bang each other, the man essentially raped the woman since she has taken something that made her incapable of consent. (This is true even if she only had a glass of wine, by the way.) The fact that the guy was drunk too, does not come into play. It’s not two adults doing things that they may regret later –it’s one adult doing things to another for which he will be criminally liable for the rest of his life. Responsibility is something only one party has to think about. (I wonder why infantilization of women is OK with these people, but whatever.)

Weinstein did give a very good opportunity for these people to push their agenda; after all we all know men are always more powerful than women, right? After all, Patriarchy.

To be honest it is not necessarily wrong to re-evaluate social norms, and create new ones; the problem is when it’s a retroactive, one-sided process. The retroactivity is pretty easy to see: people get burned for relatively minor things (like touching of knees) they did in the ‘80s. Well, guess what. Those were different times, and it’s not necessarily conductive to judge those times based on your present social norms. The one-sidedness is also quite evident; it’s enough just to talk to a bouncer or a bartender if you want to hear about inappropriate behaviour by women – behaviour they do not get pilloried for; but behaviour a man could easily find himself arrested for.

But this is not where one-sidedness ends. OK, let’s pretend women do not behave obnoxiously, or there are no double standards on behaviour. The present discussion places every single iota of responsibility on the man. There are no clear “new norms”. We still live in the past (apparently) where it was a man’s duty and job to court women; they are (and were) the proactive party most of the cases. Like it or not, this is something that has been going on for as long as sexuality existed in the animal kingdom (OK, not as long, but nearly). The males court the female, the female chooses her mate. Just because it has always been like that does mean it’s set in stone: after all, social norms can and do change. In fact, many men would prefer if women were more proactive. However. This places men into a very precarious situation presently, since there are no accepted new norms yet. Most women expect men to pursue them; most women expect men to be proactive and “manly”. It’s not the “toxic masculinity” certain feminists like to talk about; it’s simply the fact that genders do have different roles. You don’t have to abide them, but the differences are there. You smile at someone, you bring them flowers, ask them out, kiss them; we all know the drill. Right now what is being argued for is that anything that a woman does not welcome is sexual harassment or abuse. There are no clear lines, no clear definitions. She can change her mind later, too –like in the case of Aziz (and countless others). So what these people are arguing for is that women have no responsibility in changing their behaviour, only men do. But we are not giving them new rules; the rules are that if we don’t like you, we don’t like what you do, or we regret something we did later, we can absolutely and totally fuck you up. (Like Mattress Girl, and the others who destroyed the lives of men they accused of rape.) Funnily enough this can happen to a woman, too, if she poses as a man. But, as we know, women do not lie about rape or sexual harassment. Ever.

And this is not on. This is not “sexual liberation” of women; this is an absolute empowerment of women at the expense of men.

Since we discuss rape. Does rape happen? Absolutely. It’s not Mattress Girl’s figment of imagination at all. A friend of mine was raped when she was a child by their neighbour and her parents dismissed her claims. It’s absolutely outrageous and something that needs to be punished severely. But the discussion is incredibly one-sided.

It is incredibly disingenuous that rape –in the eye of the law in most countries- can only be done by men to women. It is also incredibly disingenuous that people disregard every single piece of evidence and statistics that do not confirm with the “men are rapists women are victims” narrative; and that narrative drives policies. The simplest examples are the female teachers sleeping with their students; most people just shrug, or even feel a bit of “that’s the way to do it, my son” attitude. (Myself included.) However, these cases should not be treated differently from male teachers sleeping with their underage students –yet they are. Both in the public eye, and in the eye of the law.

But it does not stop here. Female on male rape does happen. In fact, a study looking at sexual violence found that females and males had carried out sexual violence at nearly equal levels by the age of 18. You can read other studies and statistics, too.  Most US studies conclude that federal surveys detect a high prevalence of sexual victimization among men—in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women. The factors perpetuating misperceptions about men’s sexual victimization are reliance on traditional gender stereotypes, outdated and inconsistent definitions, and methodological sampling biases that exclude inmates. And yet nothing happens; these people are not included in the list of people deserving help; they do not conform the “men are the perpetrators, women are the victim” narrative. The typical response from a feminist (and I use this word with reluctance because I guess “third wave feminist” would be more fitting), is that “Patriarchy hurts everyone”. This is bullshit, of course. “Patriarchy” used as a convenient trump card in these discussions even though it makes absolutely no sense. Patriarchy is supposed to disadvantage women so that men can exert their power over them –after all, it is in the name. If this system disadvantages both genders in different way, it is not a patriarchy. As we discussed, names are important. The real issue is here –as with all the other “Red Pill” issues- is that certain feminists think it’s a zero sum game: if we talk about men’s problems we will ignore women (or, if I’m less charitable, they hate men). So it’s a struggle from here on between sexes for them; a struggle they are actually winning.

It does not have to be like that. As a feminist scholar said about male victims: “Compassion is not a finite resource.”

Domestic violence also comes up a lot when it comes to #metoo. This, just like rape and sexual assault, is a very grey area- not as black-and-white as they would like it to be seen. In fact, people who dare to claim it is a reciprocal thing, tend to get death threats. And lose the right to enter the shelter they themselves founded. Figure that.

Let’s see the statistics again. There are also studies on the matter; freely available for everyone. Yet nobody bothers; or even worse, they ridicule the victim.  It seems like, after reading the studies and reports, that men are also quite often victims of domestic violence; yet they are never on the agenda when it comes to help. The fact is, a man who is a victim of domestic violence, has nowhere to go. (Or rather, he can go to prison if he calls the cops.) This is not to say that all things are equal; it is very true that a lot more women die or get seriously injured as a result of domestic violence. What I am doing here is pointing at the discrepancies of narratives and realities. The usual “men –bad, women- good” narratives are just not true; and a lot of victims go without support because of that. The whole issue has been hijacked by a very radical form of feminism worldwide; even mentioning the discrepancies in sentencing, the homelessness rates, the suicide rates, education, and so on evokes a mixture of hatred and ridicule. There are no sane voices in this debate; and this is what the #metoo movement morphed into –another weaponized outrage-factory in this gender war where everything is about the evils of Patriarchy, and not correcting the problems in our society we both built.