Backlash against #MeToo movement is unjustified
Three weeks ago I received a telephone call from a woman I’d worked with some years earlier. We’d drifted apart politically, and hadn’t spoken in some time. She explained, kindly, that a freelance journalist she’d never heard of had written to her claiming that someone had told him that I’d acted in a sexually inappropriate manner when I worked at Sun News, the now defunct television station.
If he could confirm this with three people, he continued, he would take it to the media. My former colleague replied that she’d known me since she was 19 years old, and that this was completely untrue and a ludicrous suggestion.
Shortly afterward, I discovered a second former coworker had been approached, and she too had completely dismissed the gossip. It’s likely that other women have also been contacted, and I assume that they reacted similarly. Because while I have been far from perfect, I have never been even close to guilty of this accusation. It was, I suppose, a fishing expedition, or a nasty smear initiated by an enemy.
Even so, it was extremely unpleasant. I told my wife immediately and she laughed. I spoke to family and friends, who said I shouldn’t worry; which was like asking the sea not to be wet.
But here’s the point: my temporary discomfort is largely irrelevant. There is a revolution taking place, a reshaping of power and authority, and those who have enjoyed easy influence for far too long suddenly have to take stock and think again. That can be painful, perhaps should be so, but is in the final analysis a very good thing indeed.
Women, minority groups, the long marginalized, are speaking out and demanding a long-overdue revision of a culture that has made their lives far more difficult than is right. There are casualties, however, and there have been cases made against some well-known men — one a good friend — that I believe to be utterly false. There’s no way to sugar-coat this; it’s horrible — but also extremely rare. The appropriate balance will be found, and an ethical rhythm will emerge. Liberation has to breathe, and those breaths are not always pleasing.
Yet what we’ve seen far too often is not a reasonable reaction, but a blanket attack from those who see their long-held status suddenly under criticism. I’ve witnessed journalists once known for their open minds defend men, and especially white men, against allegations of sexual harassment and assault, racism, even manslaughter. It’s as if the gender and ethnicity of the accused is more significant than the nature and validity of the charge.
Social media and talk radio is even worse, of course. Paranoia, fear and lack of empathy all coalesce to produce a new anger, with men and sometimes their female fellow travellers, shouting about conspiracies, political correctness and the war on masculinity and truth.
They have their villains, and they have their heroes. One of the latter is the occasionally interesting, but often risible and downright strange, Jordan Peterson, whom they revere in a quasi-cultish manner, and loudly defend whenever he is criticized, which almost certainly means that they will insult me after reading this paragraph, and after going to find out what “risible” means.
Change is often difficult, and when it’s personal it can be downright stinging. We’re all nostalgic in our own way. I’m a 59-year-old, straight, white man with most, if not all, that implies.
I’m pushed to rethink, to understand and — as with that nasty rumour about me — even to become upset. But the end game is something so much better, where everybody has an opportunity, and where equality is not just an empty slogan, but a genuine achievement. When the #MeToo movement began, I asked my 27-year-old daughter, who works in theatre in Europe, if she’d ever faced sexual harassment. She gave me an indulgent smile, as if she were dealing with a loved but naive child. “Oh, Dad, of course I have, of course. More often than I can say.”
Consider a world where fathers didn’t have to ask that question, where daughters could give a different answer, where Indigenous people felt listened to and empowered and people of colour knew that their lives really did matter. Consideration. It’s a wonderful undertaking, and nowhere near as terrifying as you’d imagine.