#MeToo’s touchy divide
In December 2017, two months into #MeToo, Democratic Senator Al Franken, an early #MeToo ally, resigned a er eight women reported that he’d touched and kissed them without consent on occasions dating back more than a decade. Franken’s first accuser, conservative talkshow host Leeann Tweeden, alleged that the former Saturday Night Live performer and writer had sexually harassed her during a 2006 USO tour; she said he had shoved his tongue into her mouth while rehearsing a jokey skit he’d written—wait for it—about sexual harassment. She also released a photo taken on tour showing Franken mugging for the camera, reaching toward her breasts with a leer while she appears to be asleep. Seven additional accounts of unwelcome groping later and the progressive pol was a political liability at the very moment the Dems were attacking accused child molester Roy Moore, then running for the Senate. Franken’s denials and generic apologies carried no weight; 36 Democratic senators, led by Kirsten Gillibrand, called for his resignation. Franken gave it, choosing not to submit to a drawnout Senate Ethics Committee investigation.
The Franken case, which gave rise to “Has #MeToo gone too far?” outrage, was a largely unexplored milestone in a nascent movement triggered by reports of Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive sexual assaults, explicit harassment and systemic protections. Franken’s frat-boy behaviour, while gendered and demeaning, was of a far different order, if somewhere on the spectrum. The allegations that engulfed Weinstein were criminal. Less clear was how to respond to microaggressions: the disrespectful bodily encroachments so normalized for most women and many men that they say nothing, fearing that they’ve either misread the situation or will be seen as overreacting. We’re talking the boss who routinely massages underlings who “look stressed.” Or the family friend who delivers a “friendly” bottom grope. It’s the sort of “handsy,” “hair-kissing” accusations recently levelled against Joe Biden that haven’t derailed his presidential bid.
The arrival of a sympathetic 12,000-word New Yorker profile of Franken by Jane Mayer, whose work shaped #MeToo, sadly fails to address these questions. But the polarizing piece exists as a fascinating artifact: a throwback to pre-#MeToo “great-man” narratives: the clinically depressed Franken is depicted as regretting resigning and presented “on the losing side of #MeToo,” as if it’s a zero-sum game.
Yet Mayer marshals no exculpatory facts about Franken’s alleged behaviour. There’s far more criticism of the “opportunistic,” “vigilante” Gillibrand. Mayer also raises concern over a rush judgment and lack of “due process” that rightfully has arisen from #MeToo. Here, Franken isn’t a good example. As the legal historian Mia Brett tweeted: “Your co-workers urging you to resign is not denying you due process.”
Mayer does poke big holes in Tweeden’s story and motives, detailing her pro-Trump, pro-Fox News bias. (She says less about the other seven, all Democrats, except to note that one voted for Franken.) At times, Mayer seems like a defence lawyer attacking a plaintiff’s character; she notes Tweeden posed for Playboy and “participated in other ribald USO skits,” as if that somehow constitutes blanket consent.
That Franken was never accused before, with colleagues seeing nothing amiss, is marshalled as evidence of no misbehaviour. These same minders, Mayer writes, also “stood guard against [Franken’s] possibly offensive humor,” like a “tasteless article” he wrote for
Playboy about “scientific advances in sex robots” that nearly derailed his first Senate run. Franken is portrayed as so “oblivious” physically that staff had to tell him not to swing his arms wide when walking, eat with his mouth open or kiss female friends on the mouth. In the next breath, Franken is “a warm, tactile person,” “a hugger,” in his words. It’s easy to see how these two tendencies could prove atomic.
Oddly, Mayer’s defence of Franken ignores a key revelation of #MeToo and any sort of assault: that powerful men’s sexualized behaviour is less about sexual desire than asserting power and privilege. Franken’s defenders deny the avowed “hugger” and mouth-kisser could ever touch a woman because he’s a devoted husband who “didn’t have a wandering eye.” Mayer quotes comedian Sarah Silverman for the final word: “He has no sexuality.”
Yet even Franken’s defenders point to his outsized entitlement. “He can be very aggressive interpersonally,” one said: “He can say mean things, or use other people as props. . . His estimate of his charm can be overconfident. But I’ve known him for 47 years and he’s the very last person who would be a sexual harasser.” Another male friend’s defence reveals ongoing tolerance of retrograde sexist behaviour, as evident in the U.S. Army still being entertained by puerile Benny Hill-style skits in the 21st century: “Much of what Al does when goofing around involves adopting the persona of a douche bag. The joke was about him. He was doing an asshole.”
Here, “about him,” not “asshole,” is the operative phrase. And that’s a major problem with Mayer’s defence of Franken, which includes the line: “Only two incidents were alleged to have happened a er Franken was elected to the Senate,” as if it requires X number before it’s a problem. A rare, key insight is shed when Mayer asks one of Franken’s accusers whether his behaviour was a sexual advance or a clumsy thank-you gesture. The woman makes it clear his motives didn’t interest her; only his effect on her did. “Is there a difference?” she asks. “If someone tries to do something to you unwanted?” As Mayer sums up: “because she was at work—a professional woman deserving respect—his intentions didn’t matter.” And that’s precisely what’s radical about #MeToo: it presumes someone experiencing abusive or disrespectful behaviour in a power imbalance deserves to be heard.
Mayer ends with lawyer Debra Katz, who represented Christine Blasey Ford, expressing concern about the Franken case: “It feeds into a backlash narrative that men are vulnerable to even frivolous allegations by women.” Yet none of the charges against Franken were “frivolous.” None of the women equated his behaviour with Weinstein’s. None wanted him ousted. They wanted him held accountable for behaviours that are everywhere, all the time, but waved off as benign minor violations when in fact they telegraph disrespect and are corrosive with time. It’s easy to view Franken’s exit as extreme when a man accused of serial sexual assault is the U.S. president. But his exit signalled tolerances, as well as the inability to put such behaviours in needed perspective. Defending him by saying that reporting physical encroachments is “frivolous” is not the answer: it implies an arbitrary “bad-enough-to-report” threshold before women (or men) who feel demeaned should be taken seriously. Or, in other words, before they’re allowed to say “#MeToo.”
‘IT FEEDS INTO A BACKLASH NARRATIVE THAT MEN ARE VULNERABLE TO EVEN FRIVOLOUS ALLEGATIONS’