#MeToo didn’t kill itself

During the Aziz Ansari scandal 2 years ago, when the author was much more supportive of what seemed to be the true goals of #MeToo beyond the apparent extraneous political trappings, the following observation was made:

“[L]ike all “revolutions” (pace Flangan’s description), #MeToo might eat itself; not for nothing did [Caiitlin] Flanagan “assume[] that on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they’d stay laser focused on college-educated white men for another few months”.   One can ask whether she meant that the movement risked caricaturing itself by falling into intersectionality, or whether she believes it should fall under that rubric; either way, not only has this revolution not “jumped the shark”, but it might even become the shark.”

Well that was fast.  When you get down to it, scope creep was built right into the ostensible “mission”: the scope was going to remain vague so that Creepy Joe could get elected.  This goes back way further than Biden, in any case: Eric Schneiderman, whose victims were pressured to be silent because he “promoted human rights”; Bill Maher telling Bill Clinton’s accusers in 1997 to “take one for the team”; and even Bob Packwood, the rare pro-choice GOP Senator who was considered extra important to the abortion rights movement while it was known for years that he was nearly as predatory as Harvey Weinstein.

The signs were probably there even before the movement was: anyone remember Ezra Klein cheering on the specter of blatant injustice v/v “consent laws” in the name of stopping “campus rape culture”?The fact that there were many strident critics of his analysis even on the left only underscored the fact that, for the movement ultimately, it wasn’t going to be a case of the ends justifying the means; rather, the means and ends were identical, and only applicable to those deemed politically undesirable.   Someone doesn’t hate those blurred lines;  “accountable but electable” tells you all you need to know.

#MeToo had one job—make all men behave.  A laudable nonpartisan goal.  In retrospect, it should have been readily apparent that not only was the movement never going to do that, it was going to deliberately end up making it more difficult.

#MeToo didn’t kill itself.  It was stillborn.