Summary: The meToo madness continues, growing weirder each week. Here are two reports from the front lines.
For twenty years Americans laughed at the antics of our universities. Their indoctrination of students in strange leftist doctrines, their elevation of race and gender above all other concerns, their increasingly abstruse theories about victimization, and their pretensions to esoteric knowledge and moral superiority. We forgot that their indoctrinated pupils were streaming out into America’s governments and businesses.
Slowly the Left has sent a stream of gasoline into our streets. Now it has ignited. Nobody is laughing now. How much will this change America?
“A Female Senator Figured Out One Small Way to Fight Sexual Harassment.”
By Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.
“We still have a distance to go, of course, but it’s a meaningful start.”
“Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, revealed this week, without fanfare or drama, a new series of questions she intends to ask every nominee who appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee: Anybody being vetted for federal judgeships will now be asked about sexual harassment and assault.
“As Hirono explained, her decision is in response to the surge of sexual harassment and assault reports that started in Hollywood but have also touched those with lifetime appointments in the federal judiciary. Her intention going forward is to use some of her limited time to ask every nominee, judicial or otherwise, who appears before her in a confirmation hearing the two following questions: ‘Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?’ and ‘Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?'”
How do men know for certain that their “request” is “unwanted”? Telepathy? That’s why we ask.
How will the Senator respond to “yes”? Will she grill nominees about a drunk night at a bar while a freshman in college? Does she pass judgement on them? Nominees for high Federal office already have to take a pay cut, undergo proctologist-like background investigations, relocate to a new city. Now judicial nominees get an examination of their personal life by Senator Social Justice Warrior?
Sensible qualified people will say “no thanks.” That’s asking too much for public service. Only the power-mad or undistinguished will subject themselves to a ritual for so little gain.
“The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari“
By Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlantic.
“Allegations against the comedian are proof that women are angry, temporarily powerful — and very, very dangerous.” Flanagan is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and the author of Girl Land
“Sexual mores in the West have changed so rapidly over the past 100 years that by the time you reach 50, intimate accounts of commonplace sexual events of the young seem like science fiction: You understand the vocabulary and the sentence structure, but all of the events take place in outer space. You’re just too old.
“This was my experience reading the account of one young woman’s alleged sexual encounter with Aziz Ansari, published by the website Babe this weekend. …Here’s how the story goes.
“A young woman, who is given the identity-protecting name “Grace” in the story, was excited to encounter Ansari at a party in Los Angeles, and even though he initially brushed her off, when he saw that they both had the same kind of old-fashioned camera, he paid attention to her and got her number. He texted her when they both got back to New York, asking whether she wanted to go out ….
“They had a glass of wine at his apartment, and then he rushed her through dinner at an expensive restaurant and brought her back to his apartment. Within minutes of returning, she was sitting on the kitchen counter and he was …performing oral sex on her …, but then went on, per her account, to pressure her for sex in a variety of ways that were not honorable. Eventually, overcome by her emotions at the way the night was going, she told him, ‘You guys are all the fucking same,’ and left crying.
“I thought it was the most significant line in the story: This has happened to her many times before. What led her to believe that this time would be different? …
“Was Grace frozen, terrified, stuck? No. She tells us that she wanted something from Ansari and that she was trying to figure out how to get it. She wanted affection, kindness, attention. Perhaps she hoped to maybe even become the famous man’s girlfriend. He wasn’t interested.
“What she felt afterward — rejected yet another time, by yet another man — was regret. And what she and the writer who told her story created was 3,000 words of revenge porn. The clinical detail in which the story is told is intended not to validate her account as much as it is to hurt and humiliate Ansari. Together, the two women may have destroyed Ansari’s career, which is now the punishment for every kind of male sexual misconduct, from the grotesque to the disappointing.”
Her description does not do justice to “Grace’s” story. Like so many of these stories, it makes little sense. She made little effort to leave. She says “She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to f**k him at all.” The answer she forgot to give was “stop; I’m leaving now!” There are many such oddities in her account. No wonder feminists do not want their stories questioned.
Some women give gentle critical reviews of it, such as Barbi Weiss’ NYT op-ed: “Aziz Ansari Is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader” — but include profuse condemnations of Ansari based only on “Grace’s” odd story.
The meToo moral panic continues to burn. We can only guess at the damage it will do and the eventual effects on American society.
For More Information
Recommended articles by women having second thoughts about this hysteria.
- “Is Feminism the Answer to Sexual Harassment?” by Mona Charen at National Review.
- “Is ‘Weinsteining’ getting out of hand?” by Cathy Young in an op-ed at the LAT.
- “The Warlock Hunt” by Claire Berlinski at the National Interest — “The #MeToo moment has now morphed into a moral panic that poses as much danger to women as it does to men.” Oddly, she believes that the meToo movement will make women safe on the street.
- “I, Too, am thinking about Me, Too” by Carol Tavris at the Skeptic. She is a social psychologist, and provides a valuable perspective on the meToo hysteria as a moral panic.
- “Margaret Atwood faces feminist backlash on social media over #MeToo” by Ashifa Kassam in The Guardian — “The Canadian author’s defence of due process for those accused of sexual misconduct sparked online ire.”
Ideas! For ideas about using Holiday cash, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about society and gender issues, about feminism, about sexual assault, about rape, and especially these…
- It’s time to forcibly re-shape America to fight the campus rape epidemic! Even if it’s fake.
- The University of Virginia shows how change comes to America: through agitprop and hysteria.
- False rape accusations tell us something important about America.
- Feminist revolutionaries seized control of colleges. Now come the tribunals…
- The unexpected response to the sexual harassment crisis.
- Weaponizing claims of sexual harassment for political gain.
- Mysteries and ironies of the next new sexual revolution.
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- Second thoughts about romance in the #MeToo age.
- The amazing numbers behind the #MeToo movement!
A counterpoint to the debate.
Well worth reading: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women
“Philosophy professor Christina Sommers has exposed a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments with highly questionable but well-funded research, presenting inflammatory and often inaccurate information and stifling any semblance of free and open scrutiny.
“Trumpeted as orthodoxy, the resulting ‘findings’ on everything from rape to domestic abuse to economic bias to the supposed crisis in girls’ self-esteem perpetuate a view of women as victims of the ‘patriarchy’.
“Moreover, these arguments and the supposed facts on which they are based have had enormous influence beyond the academy, where they have shaken the foundations of our educational, scientific, and legal institutions and have fostered resentment and alienation in our private lives. Despite its current dominance, Sommers maintains, such a breed of feminism is at odds with the real aspirations and values of most American women and undermines the cause of true equality. Who Stole Feminism? is a call to arms that will enrage or inspire, but cannot be ignored.”
