The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2018; original article contains links (among them, to the cited articles) and images
Nine reflections on, one year on.
image (not from article) from
Over the past year, the #MeToo movement spawned hundreds of articles reflecting on where all this is headed. Some reveled in an unexpected revolution — in late October, Margaret Renkl celebrated “the raw power of #MeToo.” Some fretted about its potential to sprawl: In January, Bari Weiss wrote that a story about Aziz Ansari’s behavior in his personal life, not his workplace, “trivializes what #MeToo first stood for.” Still others used the moment to train a lens on the Bible, advice columns and Bill Clinton.
We asked some of our contributors whose articles seemed to strike a particular chord with readers to revisit their pieces in light of developments since they were published — were they more hopeful now or less? What disappointed them, and what surprised them? Below are nine reflections on #MeToo, one year on.
SARAH POLLEY
‘“Harvey wants you there now.”’ — Oct. 14, 2017
I have felt of late that #MeToo was akin to keying an expensive sports car that just kept on moving. We all celebrated the victory of putting a scratch in the paint, and now that car (misogyny) is turning around and speeding straight toward us.
We see men whose careers have fallen because of the terrible things they have done to women blatantly rewriting their own histories in thinly veiled attempts to garner sympathy. We see Brett Kavanaugh spitting irrational rage, hypocritically undermining the very process he was assailing as a sham.
We hear Rick MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s, condescending to host Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC Radio’s “The Current” while commenting on her “tone.” He barks over her, his own voice so full of anger and entitlement when questioned about his decision to publish an essay by John Hockenberry, a man who was accused of harassment, and interrupting so much that he makes it almost impossible for her to speak long enough to do her job. It’s the kind of behavior that would immediately be labeled “strident,” “whiny” or “hysterical” in a woman. It’s familiar behavior, it’s what misogyny has always looked like, but it feels as though there is an extra cup of rage mixed into it now.
So much ink has been spilled on #MeToo creating a kind of censorship or exile for men, when we are all so accustomed to men not letting a woman get a word in edgewise on her own turf.
When I wrote on the #MeToo movement last year, I said, “I hope that the ways in which women are degraded, both obvious and subtle, begin to seem like a thing of the past.” I really hoped that more space and time would be carved out to dive deeper into the underpinnings of the #MeToo movement before the inevitable backlash. I think it’s important to acknowledge how quickly we went from looking openly at the challenges women face to how the conversation about misogyny affects men.
We’ve got a lot more unearthing of women’s experiences to do before we confine #MeToo to a blip in history, or accuse it of things it has not done. We’ve certainly moved history an inch forward with this movement. Let’s keep pulling, hard, despite the shift in the wind. All together now.
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Opinion | Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley: The Men You Meet Making Movies
I loved acting. But I didn’t realize what it was to be taken seriously until I began directing.
Oct. 14, 2017
NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ
‘At bottom, #MeToo is not about hashtags or individual firings. It’s a chance to reset the table of sexual politics.’ — Feb. 16, 2018
Back in February, my optimism about the #MeToo movement was high. I hoped that it wouldn’t just target monstrous, larger-than-life abusers but would also lead to ways in which we could rethink sexual pleasure in our everyday lives. In the spirit of radical pro-sex feminists of the 1960s, I thought #MeToo’s condemnation of harassment and assault needed to be coupled with an active, pleasure-based vision — or else women would forever be fending off Tinder dates who feel entitled to sex.
Eight months later, that broader vision has been sidelined by a moving target trained on bad apples. In retrospect, my piece was deeply colored by one woman’s account on the website Babe.net of a joyless and coercive sexual experience with Aziz Ansari, which the media would eventually call a “bad date.” It had come on the heels of the viral “Cat Person,” a short story in The New Yorker detailing a female college student’s equally icky, decidedly non-pleasurable sex and its aftermath, when the man is revealed to be a rageful misogynist in hipster clothing. Though the latter was fictional, both encounters had something in common: Unlike the horror stories of, say, Harvey Weinstein or Eric Schneiderman, they were extremely recognizable to the average woman, yet difficult to name. Despite the controversy over how the Ansari piece was reported, I felt heartened by how people were gradually, tentatively connecting the dots between outright abuse and sexual encounters based on men’s entitlement and pursuit rather than mutual desire.
This moment turned out to be fleeting. The pattern now unfolds like clockwork: allegations, outrage, fallout. And increasingly, comebacks (Mr. Ansari himself dipped a toe back into the public eye last month with a standup routine in Nashville). When it comes to shining a light on workplace harassment, this relentless cycle has moved the needle tremendously. The recent cases of Asia Argento and Avital Ronell demonstrate how regardless of gender, unchecked power can sexually intimidate the powerless. But when it comes to discussing whether we need to change the age-old sexual dynamic of male offense and female defense, we haven’t gotten very far at all.
A common refrain from older men accused of misconduct has been, “The world is different now.” If #MeToo has any hope of curbing abuse, it can’t just drain the swamp of this old world. It needs to propel a clear, rushing, exhilarating current leading directly to the new one.
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Opinion | Nona Willis Aronowitz
The Feminist Pursuit of Good Sex
The root of tensions between women over #MeToo isn’t about a generation gap. It’s part of a long fight over the politics of pleasure.
Feb. 16, 2018
KATIE J.M. BAKER
‘The bad men are going to make their comebacks whether we like it or not. It’s up to us to determine what it looks like when they do.’ — April 27, 2018
It was the comedian Louis C.K. who went first. He made an unannounced appearance at New York City’s Comedy Cellar in August, performing his first stand-up routine since admitting last year to sexual misconduct with women in his industry.
Louis C.K.’s return to the stage was followed in September by a nearly 7,000-word essay by the former radio host John Hockenberry in Harper’s. Mr. Hockenberry, who was accused last year of harassing several female colleagues at WNYC, wrote that he now wants to create “a new universal scaffold of love and romance.” The same month, The New York Review of Books offered its own lengthy essay by the former Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi, who cutely described himself as a #MeToo “pioneer.” You could read all 3,400 words and never know he was accused of punching a woman in the head.
In April, I argued that it’s important to think about next steps, beyond shunning, when considering what should happen to the #MeToo-ed men who aren’t headed to court — not out of sympathy but because it’s delusional to think these guys will simply disappear once they’ve been fired or otherwise pushed out of their industries. My goal in writing the piece was to think about systemic change, instead of endlessly arguing over whether individual men should shut up forever, a question that is not really grounded in reality. We may still be struggling to reach consensus on what to do with these men, but for now, one obvious step should be demanding that industry gatekeepers who facilitate these comebacks take more responsibility for how they do so.
Mr. Ghomeshi was accused by more than 20 women and some of the allegations included serious violence: biting, choking and punching. Yet The New York Review of Books allowed him to gloss over these facts and misrepresent the number of allegations and how they came to light; it allowed him to portray himself as simply “tone deaf” and “emotionally thoughtless.” (The editor of the N.Y.R.B., Ian Buruma, left his position in the wake of the much-criticized piece.) Similarly, Harper’s gave Mr. Hockenberry thousands of words to ramble on about his new goal of “reinventing romance” but seemingly asked him for nothing on what it must have felt like for his female colleagues who felt compelled to quit instead of put up with his behavior.
After Louis C.K. recently performed another surprise Comedy Cellar set, the late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel told The Hollywood Reporter that “ultimately, the audience decides” whether someone “is welcomed back.” But the public sphere is not a democratic free-for-all: Who gets to take part in it and how is determined by producers, editors, managers, comedy club owners and other powerful people in industries that have long been complicit in covering up or ignoring sexual misconduct claims.
What if the editors at these prestigious publications had forced Mr. Ghomeshi and Mr. Hockenberry to seriously address the allegations against them, rather than seek pity while evading and dismissing reality? What if whoever let Louis C.K. perform that night insisted he explain whether he has made any sort of reparations to compensate for the harm he has done before starting his set? (At the very least they could have barred him from surprising audience members with his presence.)
There’s a big difference between shunning and effective gatekeeping. And bad gatekeeping is a disservice not only to victims but also to anyone interested in thinking about what restorative justice might look like. Would these men have gotten a better reception if they’d acknowledged, thoughtfully and non-evasively, the harm they had caused and were explicit about the work they were doing to repair not just their own reputations, but the pain they caused others? We’ll never know if no one forces them to answer.
Read the original article.
Opinion | Katie J. M. Baker
What Do We Do With These Men?
Men felled by #MeToo are going to stage comebacks. So it’s time to talk about what it looks like when they do.
April 27, 2018
CATHARINE A. MACKINNON
‘Women have been saying these things forever. It is the response to them that has changed.’ — Feb. 4, 2018
After four decades, or two thousand years, depending on when you start counting, indications are that #MeToo is working. The imposed silence that has walled off reports of sexual abuse is crumbling. Sexually abused women, and some men, are rising up; perpetrating men, and some women, are tumbling down. What was previously ignored or attributed to lying, deranged or venial discontents and whiners is being regarded and treated as disgraceful and outrageous misconduct with which no self-respecting company or university can afford to be associated.
Last February, I noted that #MeToo was accomplishing changes that the law so far had not. Sexually assaulted women were being believed and valued who had been disbelieved and denigrated. That momentum continues, in resistance to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and a hearing that presented Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault as a long-familiar dialogue between her facts and his resume. As framed by him, the question was whether someone as valuable and accomplished as he would be denied advancement over something as dubious and negligible as the abuse against Dr. Blasey. Yet events much like hers are now being widely reported in the mainstream media as pervasive and endemic rather than sensational and exceptional. Reports of sexual harassment are occurring regardless of sex, gender, or politics. Perpetrators are revealed as not just those men over there, but our men right here.
In law, many crucial issues are being newly discussed, fresh and creative solutions proposed. These include consideration of the role and content of nondisclosure agreements, independence of investigation and adjudication, equitability in procedures at all stages, elimination of criminal law standards from civil and administrative adjudications, and — radiating out — equal hiring, equal numbers of women on boards, equal pay and many more women in politics. Anyone who doubted that sexual abuse was central to the second-class status of women might consider what taking it seriously for once on a systemic basis has set off. Outcomes in these cases, with many others, will provide some measures of the distance traveled and the distance yet to go.
Courts are typically more hidebound and less nimble than culture, although they are embedded in it. The norms of rape culture still infuse much existing law. Rape law largely uses a “consent” standard often consistent with acquiescence to unequal power. Sexual harassment law’s equality standard is unwelcomeness. Criminal law’s burdens of proof, difficult for survivors to meet, are often imported, tacitly or explicitly, into civil and administrative processes as standards for the credibility of the victim. Statutory law against discrimination has a statute of limitations that is measured in months, before almost any victim of sexual violation is past trauma, far less beyond post-traumatic stress. No movement to change it exists in Congress.
Liability standards for holding institutions accountable for sexual harassment remain unrealistically stacked against survivors, more so in education for young people than in employment for adults. Investigative and adjudicative processes in most employment and educational settings remain within the chain of command of the institution rather than independent of it, further stacking the deck against victims. Transparency is not the rule in these proceedings; secrecy is, protecting the organizational brand. Legal standards for retaliation — one of the biggest fears behind nonreporting — need to change to protect reporters.
Culturally, it is still said “women allege” or “claim” they were sexually assaulted. Those accused “deny” what was alleged. What if survivors “report” sexual violation and the accused “alleges” or “claims” it did not occur, or occur as reported?
#MeToo may be the first change toward women achieving human status since the vote. Indifference to sexual abuse contributed to electing this president, an election that in turn fueled the #MeToo movement against that indifference with a rage that the events surrounding Judge Kavanaugh will likely continue to focus and accelerate further.
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Opinion | Catharine A. MacKinnon
#MeToo Has Done What the Law Could Not
Sexual harassment laws couldn’t work until society started believing women.
Feb. 4, 2018
STEPHEN MARCHE
‘Men arrive at this moment of reckoning woefully unprepared.’ — Nov. 25, 2017
In November 2017, I wrote a piece titled “The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido.” I wrote the piece because I believed that in my own small way, I could inject some mild humanistic nuance into current debates around masculinity. I failed. Utterly. The bulk of the public conversation around men has never been cruder or stupider.
“It seems logical to hate men,” declared the director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University in a Washington Post op-ed this past summer. That statement of indiscriminate hatred reveals a relevant issue: What distinguishes current feminism from earlier waves is its focus on masculinity. Simone de Beauvoir uncovered the second sex. Betty Friedan described the feminine mystique. Ms. was a magazine devoted to Mses. “Lean In” was a plan of advancement for capitalist women. The subject of feminism used to be femininity, the reality of women, advice for women. But the subject now mostly is the behavior and nature of men. Why do they do the things they do? What’s wrong with them?
Men are the subject but they are also absent from the discussion. Almost no male point of view is taken seriously. And how could it be? The current array of popular male takes on gender — whether from Jordan Peterson, the Red Pill or any of the new men’s movements — are deeply crude and sometimes ugly, and offer little other than simple fantasies about a return to the way things used to be. Men, in their relationship to gender politics, are currently defined solely by feminism, toward which they can be either obsequious or reactionary. Mute allydom or rageaholic counterfeminism — those are the intellectual choices.
I believe that if we want to understand gender, men must make a contribution. And if men are going to make a contribution that is meaningful, it is going to have to be something that they are not just borrowing from the women around them. It may be unpleasant for women to hear sometimes. Otherwise it will just be men mimicking feminist pieties. You know who mastered that technique? Jian Ghomeshi. And Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., Eric Schneiderman and all the other “allies” who turned out, by the dozens, to be frauds. Remember that Harvey Weinstein helped endow a chair at Rutgers in the name of Gloria Steinem. If men are saying exactly what you want to hear about gender politics, if they’re brandishing their progressive credentials like school banners, there may well be a darker reason.
The only way out of the intractable problems of gender — harassment, the pay gap — will involve robust male participation. Otherwise, masculinity will remain what it is now in virtually all gender debates: a mystique, a something-nothing open to an endless palimpsest of interpretations and no substance, reduced in the end to the silliness of stereotypes. If you just want men to shut up, or only to nod along, too much of progress will be shame-based, built on weak foundations threatening always to crumble.
The current debate around gender is mostly women complaining about men to other women, and men mostly ignoring them. Everybody is defined by their enemies. Insight into desire, insight into the struggle and interplay of the masculine and the feminine, and insight into human nature are rarely aspired to, much less achieved. We live in a useless intellectual period. I can’t wait for it to be over.
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Opinion | Stephen Marche
The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido
We are attempting to hold a public conversation about male sexual misbehavior while refusing to talk about the nature of men and sex.
Nov. 25, 2017
SHANITA HUBBARD
‘When your community fights for those same people who terrorized you, it sends a very complicated and mixed message.’ — Dec. 15, 2017
Race and class have always been the deciding factors determining whose pain gets prioritized in America. Research indicates that African-American women experience higher rates of rape and sexual assault than white, Asian and Latina women. At the same time, their reports of sexual violence are less likely to be recognized by the legal system. All of this combines to underscore the notion that the cries of black women have never been considered important enough to secure them the justice reserved for those with more privilege. Making matters worse is when these external messages combine with complicated feelings on issues like community loyalty that can plague a victim when the man who commits offenses against her is also black.
Last December, I wrote about the complex nature of how #MeToo was unfolding in the black community — where the movement originated. As young black girls, I argued, we had been taught that because the lives of the men in our community were in genuine danger, the pain they caused us was not the priority. It’s no coincidence that a black woman, Tarana Burke, came up with the idea of #MeToo. Her campaign was intended to shift the focus, within our community and outside of it, to the critical needs of victims. But even as her movement caught fire among women more broadly, I worried that the voices of black women were being ignored. I still do.
Anita Hill was once exhibit A in how these dynamics operate. While I was too young to fully comprehend the magnitude of her accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991, I distinctly remember hearing statements like “It’s a damn shame that black woman is trying to take down that powerful black man” and “That black man has to fight against racism and these allegations from a black woman.”
And so this time around, it has been remarkable to witness the recent discussions surrounding Ms. Hill, who has been back in the news as a result of accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh. It has been almost impossible to revisit the facts of the case without exploring the intersection of race and gender. Today, the conversation highlights the unique position Ms. Hill was placed in and the level of silencing she faced. The feeling is far less accusatory and more empathetic. I’ve heard statements from within my community like “We owe Anita an apology.”
This conversational shift is noteworthy, but it’s by no means an indication that substantial progress has been made in how black victims of sexual violence are treated within our communities and in this country — especially when progress for women who are not navigating the complex intersection of race and gender remains in doubt. Last month, the world watched as a privileged white woman, Christine Blasey Ford, was forced to relive her trauma in the face of many who may never believe her. If her place of privilege cannot grant her protection, is there any hope for us?
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Opinion | Shanita Hubbard
Russell Simmons, R. Kelly, and Why Black Women Can’t Say #MeToo
When your community fights for the people who terrorized you, it means your pain is not a priority.
Dec. 15, 2017
DAPHNE MERKIN
‘Privately, I suspect, many of us, including many longstanding feminists, will be rolling our eyes, having had it with the reflexive and unnuanced sense of outrage that has accompanied this cause from its inception.’— Jan. 5, 2018
Last January, when the #MeToo movement was at its most fast and furious, and it seemed like powerful men were falling at the rate of one every few days, I wrote about my concerns as to where all this was headed. I worried that in the rush to judgment and lack of due process, we might be taking insufficient notice of a graduated spectrum of offenses, which might ideally elicit different levels of response rather than a unilateral “gotcha.” Almost a year later, I continue to believe that the spotlight cast by the #MeToo movement on the very real and complex problem of sexual harassment remains, too much of the time, blinding and unrefracted rather than illuminating and nuanced.
Because we live in fatally polarized times, it is next to impossible to have a conversation about #MeToo and its tactics without immediately being cast as woke and pro or clueless and con. The plain truth of the matter is that I very much doubt any woman is completely “against” #MeToo for the simple reason that anyone who has grown up in a patriarchal system — which is all of us — has experienced abuse of power, whether sexualized or not. No one is denying that men in power have committed abhorrent acts against women, both on and off the job, mostly in the form of brute aggression posing as flirting or sexual play.
But part of what I objected to at the time I wrote was the lack of consensus about what #MeToo had set out to accomplish — and what its overall vision entailed. Had we, I wondered, given enough thought to the taxonomy as well as contextualization of perceived offenses: What constitutes prosecutable as opposed to fireable misbehavior? Is there any space and scope for clumsy but well-intentioned flirting, especially when it took place decades ago, when different “Mad Men”-era office norms prevailed? Do we believe that men who behaved badly once can evolve and does their evolution matter? And how far should the net of #MeToo extend beyond the workplace to the way in which men conduct their personal lives?
These are subjects that need to be discussed, but eight months later, we don’t seem to have made much progress in establishing a sophisticated and thoughtful conversation about the offenses of the patriarchy and how they might best be addressed. The fact that various comeback attempts, all very different cases — Louis C.K., John Hockenberry and Jian Ghomeshi — have all elicited the same scornful and vituperative response is also troubling.
Cultural change is not easy to effect, especially when it comes to something as structurally inscribed as the patriarchy. It’s often incremental and not always as exciting or visible as simply gaveling men out of society, some of them talented and a loss to our cultural life. For the movement to go forward, we need a hefty dose of self-reflection and judiciousness. But most of all, I continue to believe that we need to arrive at a way of instilling different attitudes and codes of behavior in our children — girls as well as boys.
Read the original article.
Opinion | Daphne Merkin
Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings.
Many feminists have had it with this movement, in which women perceive themselves to be as frail as Victorian housewives.
Jan. 5, 2018
AMBER TAMBLYN
‘Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation.’ — Sept. 16, 2017
America’s never-ending procession of survivors of sexual assault and harassment being disbelieved has me thinking about something I wrote a few weeks before the #MeToo movement broke wide open — an essay that, for me, felt less like an opinion and more like a desperate declaration. I told a story about a famous older actor who hit on me when I was 16 years old; he called me a liar online, and his followers jumped to brand me as unbelievable. I proclaimed that I was done with not being believed, a sentiment that resonated for any woman who has ever told her story or been intimidated into not telling her story.
Today, I find myself wondering what has changed. I watched a measured and reserved Christine Blasey Ford face a firing squad of male Republican senators as the man she accused of sexually assaulting her wielded a type of raw, emotional freedom that women have rarely been allowed to display. Watching her story essentially be discarded by the Senate felt like the reflection of the universal woman’s experience, an all too familiar reality.
But the truth is, absolutely everything has changed for us, however incremental those changes may be. Women and survivors are no longer asking for permission to speak. We are forcing the world to listen — and in doing so, to change.
Read the original article.
Opinion | Amber Tamblyn
Amber Tamblyn: I’m Done With Not Being Believed
A man called me a liar, and it reminded me of all the people who have doubted me.
Sept. 16, 2017
ROXANE GAY
‘So many people do not realize they are bad men.’ — Oct. 19, 2018
I watch a lot of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Many women I know do, too. I’ve seen nearly every episode from 19 seasons, most of them several times. I will watch a dozen episodes of the show back to back, no matter how many times I’ve seen them. At times, it troubles me, my ongoing willingness to consume this show and the disturbing story lines about sexual assault and the terrible ways of the world, but there is something so very satisfying about watching it. The victims don’t always find justice, but they are, more often than not, believed by the S.V.U. detectives. Their stories are heard and respected. Justice may be elusive, but on the show, it exists within the realm of possibility.
In the real world, such is not the case. Despite everything we know about the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, women are still not believed. Their experiences are still minimized. And the male perpetrators of these crimes are given all manner of leniency.
A year ago, when the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were first published, I wrote about what I hoped men might do in that moment of reckoning: “Men can start putting in some of the work women have long done in offering testimony. They can come forward and say “me too” while sharing how they have hurt women in ways great and small.” I was being naïve, I suppose. Or I was placing too much faith in decency. But I never imagined that instead of self-reflection, men would reflect on how they had been harmed by their own bad behavior. (See: John Hockenberry, Jian Ghomeshi.)
I said that I watch a lot of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” but for the past year, current events have offered a far more sinister version of the show, without the attractive cast or the satisfying payoff of occasional justice. Every day, there is some new revelation about some man who has done some terrible thing. In this #MeToo era, women have repeatedly demonstrated the ways in which they have suffered at the hands of men. We have done so knowing we will be disbelieved, discredited and degraded. We have watched history repeat itself, time and again.
With Christine Blasey Ford, history is once more repeating itself. And it will continue to do so until we, as a culture, begin not only to believe women but also to value women enough to consider harming them unacceptable, unthinkable.
Read the original article and a longer version of this essay.
Opinion | Roxane Gay
I Thought Men Might Do Better Than This Oct. 5, 2018
Opinion | Roxane Gay
Dear Men: It’s You, Too Oct. 19, 2017
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