Not all things hit home, but “me too” did

It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that something has to be personal to seem real.

Last week, my heart was going out to the victims of the Napa Valley fires. I didn’t know any of them but I could identify. They were homeowners like me and suddenly, they had nothing.

I couldn’t imagine losing everything I own in a fire. How could you recover from that, not just financially but emotionally? And before Napa, it was Hurricane Irma and before that it was Hurricane Harvey. Every day on the news it was a landscape of mangled trees and piles of debris that used to be houses.

But all three of these natural disasters — seeming now to be much less “natural” thanks to their connection to man-made climate change — played out while Rohingya Muslims were being driven out of Myanmar into Bangladesh. In two months, 582,000 of these people have been displaced after being tortured and raped, their villages burned.

Then there was the massive truck bomb that killed at least 300 people in Mogadishu a few days ago. And here I am worrying about affluent homeowners in California wine country who have lost their stunning balcony views. Could you find Bangladesh on a map? Somalia? I couldn’t. The world isn’t that big. Shame on me.

The comfortable numbness that gets me through the perpetually depressing international news ticker at the bottom of the screen on CNN was challenged again on the weekend, this time by the “me too” campaign. Actress Alyssa Milano tweeted a suggestion on Sunday that women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted post “me too” on social media. The response was immediate and massive.

I don’t consider myself to be oblivious to social issues and I’ve read the distressing stats on sexual assault. I wasn’t surprised to see so many women posting “me too” on social media. But what really got to me was how many I know, from work colleagues to people I’ve written about in arts stories to close relatives who said “me too” too. Once again, it took something personal to make an impact.

But it did. I thought about the women I know being subject to the unwanted attention of men and it kind of made me sick. I wondered, if I were in their position, how resilient I would be. And I admired their strength for getting through it.

Then, bizarrely, I remembered an incident at a friend’s wedding years ago when a drunk acquaintance put his hand on my girlfriend’s knee. Both of us ignored it — you’d hate to overreact, hate to make a scene at a pleasant event. What I essentially did was put that jerk’s feelings (couldn’t make him feel uncomfortable, could I?) above my girlfriend’s.

The great thing stirred up by “me too” is how nobody has to tolerate this kind of crap anymore. Here’s one Facebook comment of millions that sums it up. (I edited it for language, but I wish I didn’t have to): “If I am not polite I get called a b---h by the person who is making me uncomfortable. I think I keep doing it (being polite to a--holes) in an effort to avoid conflict — probably established generations ago due to women I share DNA with who had a valid fear of suffering abuse for speaking their minds. So the cycle continues. Until (expletive) NOW. Break the silence. No apologies. Zero tolerance for disrespect, verbal abuse and sexual bullying. Rise ladies! Brush the dust off granny’s coffin, and blow it away.”

I wish the women I know could trust that the non-a--holes of the male population support them, that we believe them, that we also don’t think it’s OK. I’d understand if they didn’t trust us — we certainly haven’t earned it — but I hope they do.