Me Too and You
There’s more that needs to be said about the disgusting Hollywood sex story starring Harvey Weinstein. If it makes you uncomfortable, remember that your culture’s at stake. Like it or not, Hollywood is a driver of culture, and so far we’ve been content to sit in the back, look out the window, and pay them for the ride. Now that so many sickening revelations have come to light, ranging from pervasive sexual harassment to institutionalized prostitution to outright pedophilia, isn’t it time to kick Hollywood’s horde of Weinsteins out of the car?
Alyssa Milano is a Hollywood actor, which makes her a self-appointed intellectual and moral titan. The Milano-created hashtag #MeToo, like all hashtags, is not only a gigantic waste of time, but is more destructive than helpful. If you’re a woman who’s been sexually harassed or assaulted, you’re apparently supposed to go on social media and write #MeToo to alert the internet that you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted.
The biggest problem with this appalling campaign is that it doesn’t do the one thing that would actually solve a case of harassment or assault: name names. Lacking specificity, #MeToo feeds the horrific beast that today’s feminist movement has been using as a looming shibboleth for about a decade: the myth of toxic masculinity, the notion that men who are not 3rd Wave Feminists are inherently dangerous to all women. Rather than calling out the individual men in their lives who have attacked them, the #MeToo campaigners build up loathing for the male half of the population, cloaking their sexism in a false patina of virtue. The more women who Tweet #MeToo, the more self-created evidence that there’s a problem with all men in Western society. So it’s a cycle that begets itself. The cry of #MeToo is no different from bleating about toxic masculinity, manspreading, mansplaining, and so-called rape culture. #MeToo indicts an entire gender for the actions of individuals, brought to you by a perpetually angry, perpetually victimized cohort that shrieks misogyny at the drop of a fedora.
This is internet slacktivism at its apex. Rather than gathering up the courage to bring a formal accusation of abuse to proper authorities, the #MeToo crowd merely types vague nonsense on a screen, builds a formless monster (with a penis) out of its resentments, and enjoys the warm glow of victimhood, everyone’s favorite path to success. What makes this far, far more dangerous is that sexual harassment and assault have been redefined to include any instance of behavior a sufficiently triggered feminist finds discomfiting. If you’re a man and you’re reading this, it’s likely that there’s a #MeToo post with(out) your name on it.
#MeToo does a horrible disservice to the women who have been assaulted, bravely named names, and brought their attackers to justice.
I don’t know if Alyssa Milano, the perpetrator of this current iteration of the internet lynch mob, has herself been assaulted. I haven’t read too deep into her story, nor do I care to. I do know that the first domino, Harvey Weinstein and his victims, needs to be examined a little more closely, as revolting as the prospect may be.
Anyone who Weinstein has forcibly raped under any circumstances is deserving of sympathy and comfort. As more information about his crimes comes to light, the more our stomachs turn. But what about the starlets who weren’t raped? The ones who were propositioned, made the mental calculus that fucking this Baron Harkonnen-like figure would be worth some measure of career advancement, and took off their panties? Were they abused? Plenty of other women told him no. Weinstein knows what he looks like. His kink must have been the despoiling of beauty. The disgust these women felt for him fueled his lust. That’s the kind of man he was, and that’s the kind of person who, up until recently, made the movies we watched. What are we supposed to think about the women who took cash settlements in exchange for silence, knowing that Weinstein was right then massaging himself at the thought of mounting another young trophy in a hotel room?
So what’s it going to be? Tapping out #MeToo hashtags in the passenger seat while the next Weinstein, sweat dripping down his face from his last casting couch exertion, drives your culture deeper into the abyss? Or are you going to refuse to be preached to by reprobates and stop funding your own culture’s destruction?
