Right: gone to ground; Harvey Weinstein has not been seen in public since a short time after dozens of women began to publicly recount their stories of sexual harassment and assault by the film producer.
 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Arguments suggesting the #MeToo movement has been damaging and excessive
1. Many men have been publicly condemned on the basis of untested allegations
It has been argued that the #MeToo movement has led to public claims of sexual harassment and abuse being made against prominent men, ruining their reputations and careers. The concern is that such untested allegations have been treated as fact.
In an opinion piece published in The Globe and Mail on January 13, 2018, author Margaret Attwood criticised any process in which accusations were treated as proof of guilt. She described this as a 'witchhunt', referring to 'the structure of the Salem witchcraft trials, in which you were guilty because accused.'
A similar point was made by academic and feminist Germaine Greer in a Radio National interview conducted on January 11, 2018, in which she queried the treatment received by Australian actor, Craig McLachlan, since accusations of sexual assault, harassment and bullying were levelled against him. Greer stated, 'If you actually look at what's happened to Craig McLachlan, he's been punished already. His new series has been stopped and they're pulling the Doctor Blake Mysteries and so on and so forth and he hasn't been proved guilty of anything.'
In a comment published in the New York Times on January 5, 2018, author and critic Daphne Merkin also expressed concern about the standard of proof being applied when men were publicly condemned for sexual misconduct. She stated, 'It goes without saying that no one is coming to the defence of heinous sorts...But the trickle-down effect to cases...in which the accusations are scattered, anonymous or, as far as the public knows, very vague and unspecific, has been troubling.'
This criticism has also been made in relation to the accusations reported in the media about Australian actor, Geoffrey Rush. On December 21, 2017, Penny Burfitt, writing in Le Courrier Australien, noted, '[This allegation]...barely constitutes a viable case, and certainly not one strong enough to have been splashed across the front page.'
A similar opinion has been expressed in relation to the media's treatment of the allegations made against Craig McLachlan. The creator of the Rocky Horror musical (in a production of which McLachlan allegedly behaved inappropriately) has urged caution in the publication of allegations, stating, 'You and I are not privy to what went on so we shouldn't speculate. In fact, I don't think anyone accused should be named until the police press charges.'
-tragedy-rocky-horror-creator-richard-obrien-responds-to-craig-mclachlan-allegations-20180109-h0fxvw.htmlIn a Twitter post made on January 13, 2018, Claire Lehmann, the founder and editor of the online magazine Quillette, stated, 'When someone is accused of murder we give them the right to a defence lawyer and the right to present their case. This isn't because society "supports murder" but because society supports individual rights, including [the] right to natural justice. I never want to live in a society where a mere accusation can bury a person.'
Herald Sun commentator Rita Panahi summed up concerns regarding a loss of the presumption of innocence in the rush to support abused women. She states, 'Due process and the presumption of innocence cannot be forgotten in our eagerness to embolden women coming forward with allegations of harassment and sexual assault. There must be a balance between believing women and ensuring that the lives of innocent people are not destroyed.'
2. The #MeToo movement has fostered an exaggerated view of what constitutes sexual harassment and assault
Critics of the metoo movement have complained that those claiming to have been sexually harassed or assaulted often adopt a highly inclusive definition of these offences so that even relatively innocuous or harmless behaviours are classified in this way.
It has been suggested that what are essentially courtship or flirting behaviours, where a man is indicating his sexual or romantic interest in a woman, are being deemed offensive and perhaps criminal.
On January 8, 2019, Le Monde published an open letter signed by 100 prominent French women, including actor Catherine Deneuve, which claims that some of the attitudes and behaviours prompted by the metoo movement are excessive and ill-judged.
The letter begins, 'Rape is a crime. But trying to pick up someone, however persistently or clumsily, is not - nor is gallantry an attack of machismo... Today we are educated enough to understand that sexual impulses are, by nature, offensive and primitive - but we are also able to tell the difference between an awkward attempt to pick someone up and what constitutes a sexual assault.' The letter suggests that the metoo movement is blurring these distinctions.
The letter suggests that men are being forced to go back over past behaviours, scrutinising conduct they had previously perceived as harmless. 'Men, for their part, are called on to embrace their guilt and rack their brains for "inappropriate behaviour" that they engaged in 10, 20 or 30 years earlier, and for which they must now repent... when their only crime was to touch a woman's knee, try to steal a kiss, talk about "intimate" things during a work meal, or send sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their interest.'
It has been claimed that the #MeToo movement has revealed a problem of definition within countries, between countries and between age groups. During November, 2017, YouGov, a United States pollster, surveyed people in five Western countries as to whether a series of behaviours by men towards women constituted sexual harassment. The questions ranged from actions that are often innocuous, such as asking to go for a drink, to overt demands for sex. The range of views was very wide.
The Economist, which published a report on the survey on November 17, 2017, concluded 'Given how little agreement exists about the definition of sexual harassment, employers seeking to ensure a comfortable work environment may need to be more explicit about the boundaries of acceptable behaviour than they may have previously realised was necessary.'
It has further been suggested that even in the area of sexual assault clarification is necessary. In a Radio National interview conducted on January 11, 2018, academic and feminist Germaine Greer called for revised definitions. She stated that there should be a category of sexual assault where there are 'different degrees of gravity according to the amount of damage that you do'.
3. The #MeToo movement encourages victimhood rather than responsibility among women
Critics of the #MeToo movement have further suggested that rather than empowering women, it encourages a victim mentality which has women deny their own competence and responsibility in sexual interactions with men.
On January 9, 2019, Le Monde published an open letter signed by 100 prominent French women, including actor Catherine Deneuve, which claims that some of the attitudes and behaviours prompted by the #MeToo movement disempower women. The letter states, 'This frenzy for sending the "pigs" to the slaughterhouse, far from helping women empower themselves, actually serves the interests of the enemies of sexual freedom, the religious extremists, the reactionaries and those who believe - in their righteousness and the Victorian moral outlook that goes with it - that women are a species "apart", children with adult faces who demand to be protected... we consider that one must know how to respond to [sexual] freedom...in ways other than by closing ourselves off in the role of the prey.'
A similar point of view was expressed by author Lionel Shriver, who as a contributor to a collection of comments published in Spiked on December 18, 2017, noted, 'I am concerned that we are casting women as irremediably scarred by even minor, casual advances, and as incapable of competently and sensitively handling the commonplace instances in which men are drawn to them sexually and the feeling doesn't happen to be mutual.'
Another contributor to the Spiked comments, journalist and author Mary Kenny, has noted, 'Feminism should mean taking responsibility for ourselves and also standing up for ourselves. Unwanted attention should be dealt with...What is dismaying about current trends is the tendency to return women to delicate, Victorian damsels who reach for the smelling salts if they hear a lewd joke. What next - chaperones?'
A related point was made by Australian author and feminist, Germaine Greer, who has stated that it is not effective to complain after the event. When, she argues, should act when the harassment occurs or the assault is attempted. '[I]t's too late now to start whingeing about that [years after the event]...I want women to react here and now. I want the woman on a train who feels a man's hand where it shouldn't be... to be able to say quite clearly, "Stop".'
It has further been suggested that the #MeToo movement encourages women never to assume shared responsibility for sexual encounters that do not turn out well.
On November 9, 2017, Quillette published a comment by therapist Lexa Frankl who recounts a drunken, consensual sexual encounter which left her with an incurable STI. She notes, ' For a moment, I found myself tempted by an escape into victimhood...Self-examination forced me to acknowledge that both my partner and I shared responsibility for the events of that night, and that martyrdom would be a cowardly and dishonest excuse for my own poor judgment.'
Frankl warns in regard to the #MeToo movement, 'Any rational discussion of moral responsibility has been drowned out by the deafening hue and cry about institutional misogyny and structural male oppression...[admitting no] ethical distinction between systematic sexual predation and...poor personal choices...'
4. The #MeToo movement demonises all or most men
It has been suggested that the #MeToo movement has become too extreme, seeming to condemn all or most men of being guilty of sexual harassment or assault.
This position was put by print and broadcast journalist Nathalie Rothschild, who as a contributor to a collection of comments published in Spiked on December 18, 2017, stated, '[T]he insistence that men are complicit in perpetuating a "rape culture" characterised by a "continuum of abuse" - running from lockerroom banter to gang rape - demonises half the world's population.'
A similar comment was made by author and journalist Cathy Young, within the same set of comments published in Spiked. Young stated, 'The post-Harvey Weinstein #MeToo momentum has ended the silence surrounding sexual abuse committed by a number of wealthy and powerful men, so it's difficult not to see a positive side. But it is also increasingly clear that this cultural moment has turned into an orgy of female victimhood and the demonization of men.'
Two months before, on October 21, 2017, Cornwall Live published a comment by Jacqui Merrington which raised comparable concerns. Merrington stated, ' The implication is that if every woman you know has been harassed by a man at some point, then every man you know has probably made a woman feel uncomfortable or unsafe or worse, abused. But should we be dividing the world along gender boundaries and victimising all women and demonising all men in pursuit of a change in culture that should involve us all?'
Merrington further noted, 'We...need to be careful that this does not turn into a counterproductive power struggle, defined along strict gender lines. The men who've joined the #MeToo campaign...and tried to speak out about their own experiences of being victims appear to have been largely dismissed. Instead, there's a clamour for all men to admit #Ididthat and a sense that if a man doesn't own up to something, then he hasn't realised he's wrong yet - not that he could be blameless.'
5. The #MeToo movement is intolerant of criticism
It has been claimed that many spokespeople for the #MeToo movement are intolerant of criticism and that the movement is becoming dictatorial. Some critics have noted that women, in particular, who challenge aspects of the movement are condemned as disloyal or as being brainwashed by the supposedly woman-hating culture that surrounds them.
In a comment published in Spiked on January 11, 2017, the editor, Brendan O'Neill, stated, 'Any woman who criticises #MeToo can expect to be metaphorically attached to the stake. This week the wonderful Catherine Deneuve and other French cultural figures slammed #MeToo for being anti-men and demeaning to women's agency. Deneuve was raged against, with Asia Argento, the actress who started the accusations against Harvey Weinstein, saying she has clearly been "lobotomised" by "interiorised misogyny".'
O'Neill went on to suggest that the role of speaking for all women had been monopolised by a small group of influential women in media and entertainment who were seeking to advantage themselves further and who therefore silenced criticism. O'Neill stated, '[#MeToo] is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion. This is why they respond with such unforgiving, misogynistic fury to any woman who questions them - because these women...threaten to unravel the victim politics that is so beneficial to a narrow but influential strata of society today.'
In a comment published in Quillette on January 16, 2018, French PhD researcher Ulysse Pasquier also discussed the hostile response many #MeToo supporters gave to the writers of the open letter signed by Catherine Deneuve.
Pasquier notes that the letter draws attention to supposed intolerant, totalitarian aspects of the metoo movement and argues that it was greeted with the same intolerance. He states, 'In many ways, critiques arguing that the letter is anti-#MeToo are not only incorrect but off-topic. The letter's main intent is to serve as a warning and call out an ongoing societal trend that goes beyond a current awareness of sexual harassment. The signatories indeed point the finger at a new representation of feminism that runs the risk of "installing a totalitarian climate on our society".'
Pasquier concludes by highlighting the extremism and rejection of differing views that he claims mark many of the metoo advocates. He writes, '[T]he #MeToo movement has drawn attention to a scourge that has long remained silent and covered up, but any group-based movement driven by emotion runs the risk of exaggeration and excess. Today's wave of feminism runs the risk of alienating not only men but many women too if it cannot brook dissent, when it distorts narratives, and when it shows a cavalier disrespect for the principles of a free society.'