Day 4
Today I opted for an essay. I’ve been writing this essay in my head for some time, so I decided it was time to put it on paper. I have been concerned that we are becoming complacent; we do that, you know. As soon as the hype passes, we sigh with relief and go about our lives, convinced if no one is talking about it, that it isn’t important. That’s not always the case; in fact, it isn’t even often the case. Our short attention spans render us incapable of continuing through many grand projects to the finish.
ME…AND ME…ME TOO…ME TOO...AND #METOO
We all saw it…the wave that grew and grew until it became a tsunami. Women for the first time speaking up about harassment, sexual assault, and rape. Women reporting the men who abused them…and doing it publicly. The house of cards was about to tumble and we all got to watch, even those of us who don’t do Twitter. We might not report our own assaults, but we watched it go mainstream. It was on all lips, on every news outlet…#MeToo.
Fast forward. It’s a few years later, and we can tune in to analysts telling us about the changed atmosphere, how the paradigm has sifted, thanks to courageous women speaking out. They speak breathlessly about men being challenged, and for once, the system listening. Harvey Weinstein, anyone? A powerhouse if there ever has been one…but now in the big house. It was…it is…awesome.
Is it? I wanted to check on the reach of #MeToo, but it was difficult to find the statistics I wanted. Nevertheless, I persisted. In October of 2018, there are a few glowing reports of 201 powerful men brought down by #Me Too. I wasn’t impressed; there were hundreds…maybe thousands (I can’t get a clear number)…of men accused. Two hundred and one is only a tiny fraction of that number.
By September of 2019, with two years of #MeToo, it was reported that only twelve influential figures were actually facing charges or convictions. By 2022, reports were that only a few men accused went to prison. No doubt some few had their lives changed, their careers ended by the accusations. Most of the men…almost all of them…are back in action, rebuilding their careers, if their careers suffered in the first place.
Glowing reports of the change in culture are greatly exaggerated, one might say if one was being uncharitable, lies. The culture hasn’t changed; if anything, it is worse. Donald Trump inspired the #MeToo movement, but it didn’t prove powerful enough to make a dent in sexual harassment. Why? Because for it to make a difference, two things have to happen.
The first thing is that there must be consequences. Since so few men suffered those, most men are able to shrug them off and return to business as usual. Yes, they might have had to keep their hands to themselves for a few months…maybe as long as a year…until they could be sure it was going to be safe. But when I hear reports of men living in terror about accidentally brushing up against a woman? Well, let’s just say…facts do not support that horrifying (or rosy, depending on which way you look at it) assessment. Men have continued unabated in their pursuit of women, whether at the office, at the bar, or at the church. Wherever men and women gather, there you will find the risk of at least one sexual predator hiding in amongst the innocents.
To hear the news tell it, though, the world has become a terrifying minefield for men. “I just walked past her!” In that case, you are not guilty of anything. Don’t worry about it, you’re not going to jail. “I just put my hand on her knee!” You are guilty of sexual assault (unless you had her permission) but don’t worry about it; you’re not going to jail. It’s likely you won’t even receive a reprimand. “It wasn’t anything. I just ripped off her blouse and trapped her against the wall and…” Of course, we aren’t going to hear that. We’ll hear denials. But it doesn’t matter, because the odds are he isn’t going to jail, and the odds are he isn’t going to get a reprimand. The odds are, she will suffer reprisal if she reports it, whether to HR or to the police. The system is not kind to women who report rape.
What about false accusations? Oh, of course! I forgot about those! Actually, no, I didn’t. Statistics show that false rape reports are rare; from two to six percent of reported rapes. Approximately eighty percent of rapes are not reported, according to the Department of Justice. Ah hah! You’ve got me…how can we know, if they’re not reported? There are ways of collecting that data; studies have consistently shown low rates of reportage. But we’re not interested in that statistic here; this essay is about reported rapes.
So, if you take the number of rapes reported (Forbes reports a figure of more than seven thousand in 2019), and two percent of those are reported, that would mean one hundred forty innocent men every year! That’s…horrifying. Only…think about it. The number seven thousand reported rapes…eighty percent not reported…that means around thirty-five thousand rapes…why are we more horrified about the one-hundred forty than the thirty-five thousand? Especially since fewer than one percent of rapes or attempted rapes end with a felony conviction? The odds of these one hundred and forty men having to do much more than answer some questions are passingly small…so small as to be negligible. The odds of a woman being raped are much higher – more than thirty-three times higher.
Pardon me if I am not impressed when I am told, as I have been several times, that some prominent figure has managed to survive being ‘MeTooed” (as clunky a verb as I think I’ve ever heard). The odds of returning to your life without much interruption was close to one-hundred percent. The world focused on ‘Harvey’; he became the symbol of the glowing success of cultural change.
Sexual harassment is a lot broader than Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby…a lot broader than Hollywood…even broader than the Catholic Church. The majority of sexual predators remain(ed) in their positions without pause; a few careers have been put on hold, but most of those have been picked up again when the heat was off. Sexual harassment has existed for a long time, and I suspect it will continue for a long time to come. Without real consequences, why would anything change?
The second thing that has to happen to call it a success is that society has to change. Many journalists writing about #MeToo insist that this cultural shift has occurred, and is still occurring. This is big news, and worth celebrating! At least, it would be if it were true.
Twenty-two states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws to deal with workplace harassment. This is another glowing success! Fewer than half of the states are addressing the issue…and it is very easy to pass a law. It is another thing to enforce it, especially when the cultural zeitgeist is for having your eyes glaze over when you see violations. Sexual harassment remains a very real part of our culture, not the least because it is seen as normal, and because it is accepted by way too many people that only ‘good girls’ can get raped. Good girls translates to white, middle-class, virgin girls who would never wear a skirt even slightly above the knees, and would drop dead before wearing a slit skirt. They are girls who walk to school in an insulated bubble, and return home immediately after piano practice. It is girls who remain home any time they are not in school, and if by some circumstance of life they are forced out of their bubble, they always have someone accompanying them.
Sound harsh? It is. Most people won’t admit that this is their view of rape, but when a woman (or girl) gets raped, the questions and accusations start to fly. “Why were you there?” “Why didn’t you dress more modestly?” (Meaning, of course, why weren’t you wearing an all-body concealing sack.) “Why did you go out with him?” People will pick aside her sex life (if she has one) and may even invent one (if she doesn’t have one). If she has ever had consensual sex, which in this context seems to be broadly enough defined that it includes kissing someone, going out on dates, or even smiling at a male at some time since puberty.
The stories women tell are heartbreaking. Some of us don’t tell our stories; we have seen too much. We know we won’t be believed. I didn’t tell my story until I was in my thirties…and I was not believed. My parents knew I didn’t have a habit of lying; they knew my abuser did have a habit of lying. In spite of that, they believed him. Such is the world we live in.
There are a lot more things to be said, and perhaps I will say them another day. But that moment has not yet come. This rant threatens to get long enough to engulf everything if I don’t stop now. I do, however, just want to say one more thing. No matter what glowing things journalists, bloggers, and your Uncle Burt say about how much #MeToo has changed our culture, it is all a delusion…or maybe a lie. Rape culture is alive and well, and feeding on the misogyny that surrounds all of us. If you don’t believe it, open your eyes and check it out. Listen to the women…and believe them. Remember, most reports of rape and assault are true. There is about a ninety eight percent chance she is telling the truth.