The backlash to the #MeToo movement is in full chorus. The takes have emerged like cicadas from the uneasy earth: inevitable, predictable, the same droning noise about misandry and sex panics and feminism going too far for its own good. They were incipient as soon as #MeToo went mainstream, waiting for some catalyst to fully emerge, whether it was the resignation of Senator Al Franken, the outrage over Katie Roiphe’s forthcoming Harper’s essay, or, most recently, a woman’s account of a sexual encounter gone wrong with comedian Aziz Ansari. The backlash is dressed up as courageous contrarianism, when in fact it is the same old oppression reasserting itself—an inescapable defense of the status quo.
What is remarkable about these pieces isn’t their bravery in the face of an overweening majority. Nor is it that the authors are older and thus carry their generation’s views about sexual consent and political correctness to the debate (Weiss is a millennial). What’s remarkable is the familiarity of their arguments: The #MeToo backlash is almost identical to the backlash that greeted the wave of sexual assault reports on campus colleges in the 1990s. It all has the feel of ritual now: One group of feminists will try to define sexual assault and another group will call them alarmists. The latter will say that the anecdotes are hysterical, the statistics are exaggerated, the demands are unreasonable, and the victims, in conclusion, are deliberately weak people.
Think what you want about this situation, but if nothing else that describes the Atlantic article to a T. (“Don’t women know how to call cabs or slap anymore? Why back in my day entering a man’s house was consent!”)
The Patriarchy Strikes Back
Published
Mooncustafer 