#ConsentIsQueen

English Article Assessment 2018

How the #MeToo Movement Has Confused the 21st Century

Imagine a world where victims are heroes. Oh wait, you don’t have to do that. You’re there. The 21st Century has seen a rocketing fall in objectivity. Your opinion is your truth and your truth is the truth. But only if you’re black, gay, Islamic or female. Straight, white, Christian males are not to be trusted. What does privilege know about the true struggles minority groups face? Well, as it turns out, they aren’t quite as wicked at we imagine.

One of the many victim movements oozing from the left jar is #MeToo. There are a lot of people hashtagging “me too” and telling their stories of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Sexual harassment is awful. Rapists should be castrated and thrown in jail. The way women are abused and silenced in Hollywood is despicable. It’s been happening for generations. Hollywood elites knew about the abuse and covered it up, then liberal elites covered it up because they wanted money from Hollywood elites, then the mainstream media covered it up because they wanted to please the liberal elites. This is disgusting. The #MeToo movement has caused a wave of other issues to protest, such as rape culture, consent and the lack of rules concerning sexual activity. However, the movement hasn’t handled these in the most tactful of manners.

We need to have standards. Of course, it’s valuable when women talk about their experiences and men should be supremely careful and aware of the fact that women aren’t always going to like it when they touch them. However, there is a problem with the supposed heroism of actresses coming out and claiming that they were sexually assaulted but will not name their accuser. We need a specific instance with a specific name so that we can fight it or decide whether you are just being oversensitive. We leave predators in positions of power by not naming names. When you say, “me too,” say who did it and what it was, so that we can determine whether the person should lose their career and livelihood and go to jail.

The #MeToo movement has been good for drawing attention to the lack of lines when it comes to consent. We have to know what is inappropriate – how do you expect people to abide by a line not drawn? There are times when a guy will make a move on a girl and the girl will be fine with it, then there are times when the girl will not be fine with it. When we are vague about these things, it creates divisions that don’t exist. Those that touch no one but their spouse are called prude and those who touch other women are accused of sexual harassment – so where do you draw the line? The #MeToo movement proclaims that consent is the only value when it comes to sex, but refuse to abide by those rules when it all comes down. No doesn’t always mean no, and yes doesn’t always mean yes. This could mean that the woman doesn’t want to have sex or she does but she wants to be persuaded into it – she’s playing hard to get. We’re trying to draw lines in an area where all lines have been obliterated. If a woman says no but a man seduces her until she says yes, is the initial no more important than the final yes? If a woman says yes but means no, are men supposed to read minds? If they don’t read minds properly, do we ruin their careers?

Any accusation by anyone at any time can ruin a man’s career. The official #MeToo website is very particular in including girls. The movement has been focussed on women and that women experience harassment at a high frequency. This makes women question every interaction they’ve had with a man and asking all men to question their “toxic” behaviour. The movement makes women feel like victims even if they aren’t. It’s enforced guilt in men – even good men are made to feel that they are complicit. The movement isn’t creating solutions, besides making people feel like they’re helping and acting as an outlet for victims. The movement creates a world where all men are potential attackers. #MeToo should have moved to raise awareness for both women and men.

Men shouldn’t have to identify themselves with a guilty group because of a class-based accusation. You’re not guilty because you’re the member of a class. In Sweden, where the movement is at large, boys are confused about what it means to be a man. You have public figures, adult males, admitting to a collective guilt and believing man’s moral virtue consists of his harmlessness. In this new century, the message to young people is feel good about yourself, when they need to be told that they have potential and it’s up to them to realise it. The world owes them nothing, but they owe the world. Swedish boys lose interest in responsibility. As soon as they stride out into the world they’re told that they’re nothing but a predatory patriarchy.

But not every man is a rapist. Hardly anyone is a criminal, and most criminals are 1 or 2 time criminals. There’s a group of repeat offender who seem to commit crimes, as opposed to petty criminals. It’s the same thing with sexual assault and harassment. Don’t confuse the action of some of the men with all of the men. There are groups of the radical left that erase the distinction between categories of criminal behaviour. They might say that anything unwanted is harassment. But how is the offender supposed to determine that beforehand? You make the sexual offer to find out if it's welcome. It’s almost always men who make the offer, and it’s almost always rejected. Women bear a heavier price for sexual activity than men do. We need to know exactly where the rules are, and we don’t.

There’s a case about comedian Aziz Ansari and a woman, named Grace, who went back to Ansari’s apartment, engaged in multiple rounds of sexual activity with him, and then afterward said she felt uncomfortable and wronged. There are feminists that believe Ansari should have his career ended. This is absurd. It almost undermines feminism, which pushes that women should make their own choices, but apparently now feminists believe men should make choices for the woman, saying, “I don’t think having sex with me is in your best interests.” It’s not just on men as to whether women have sex, but also that women have a good sexual experience. What we have here is an issue of expectations. The #MeToo movement blames men for confusion over sex, as women want to fulfil men’s expectations. Men had the hope that women will have sex with them, and that hasn’t changed. What’s changed was that the feminist movement told women that they had a responsibility to treat sex casually, otherwise you are falling in line with the patriarchal system. Men have developed expectations and women are moving to meet those expectations – it’s not good for anyone. Consent only matters in a system where people are capable of saying no.

Women are coming forward now about events that happened 15 to 20 years ago. There’s been an insistence that sexual behaviour can be rule-free. A lot of that was generated as a consequence of the birth control pill. There’s a part of human beings that would love it if there were no rules governing sexual behaviour. Unfortunately, you can’t divorce sexuality from emotion, family, respect, power, love and responsibility. It’s central, so there are rules. What are the rules? No one knows. So, there’s going to be mistakes all the time.

Rape culture is a concept used to describe a world in which rape is normalised due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. The SlutWalk is a movement of marches protesting this apparently existing culture. But who’s pro-rape? The idea that everybody is on the verge of raping women, which is what rape culture suggests, is not true and is a slander against men. The idea that we live in a culture that is fine with rape is wildly overstated. Nobody is in favour of rape or sexual assault. However, if a woman is uncomfortable about sex and afterwards she feels bad about it, we are supposed to believe that she was raped or wronged in some way. If you put yourself into a bad situation, that you go forward with, without any indicator to the person you’re having sex with that you don’t want to do this, and then you feel bad later, you have been wronged – by you. You’re your own victim. Men can’t read minds. It’s intellectually dishonest to believe we are living in a rape culture. Rapists are punished. Men get fired for making rape jokes. We demonise rapists. Of course, it’s not ok for men to catcall or slut shame, but these are by no means equal to rape. Making this association trivialises rape. The solution to catcalling isn’t walking around in underwear.

Men are heavily impacted by the visual in a way that women can never understand. This is why a man’s leg is considered gross and a girl’s leg is considered alluring. There’s an irresponsibility culture. But we’re moving from a supposed rape culture to the new consent culture. From myth to insanity. British sexuality expert, Deanne Carson, said that she worked with children from three years old and with parents from birth. A parent has to ask their child for consent, to change their diaper, to let the child know that their response matters. If a child has a dirty nappy then their parents should change it because that’s part of caring for your child properly – not because their child granted them permission. This idea has been referred to as “leftie lunacy.” Teaching consent is important, but this is ridiculous. A child relies on their parent to make decisions for them. All they care about at that age is that they’ll be cared for. Choices stress young people out, and if they grow up in an environment where everything is done by their choosing, they grow into brats. Carson believes that going against this idea is “negating the voices of these brave survivors of sexual abuse.” This idea of consent has been compared with asking a dog for its permission to go for a walk.

A society like this is not far off. Many feminists believe that criticism is the same as abuse. They enforce that when it comes to the #MeToo movement, you have to believe all women. The term “microaggression” is becoming ever popular and is any act that makes the recipient uncomfortable regardless of the intent of the perpetrator. We’re moving away from intent. It’s all consequence. Like feminism, the more popular the #MeToo movement became, the more diluted it became. It moved from being addressing issues such as being raped as a teenager to “some guy winked at me on the street.” However, the #MeToo movement is going to continue because it should - but we need to have some standards.