The Hazards of #MeToo: The Loss of Subtlety, the Silencing of Voices, the Amplification of Noise

The Hazards of #MeToo: The Loss of Subtlety, the Silencing of Voices, the Amplification of Noise

“…hidden here is a freak fragment
Of a pattern complex in appearance only.
What it seems to show is superficial
Next to that long-term lamination
Of hazard and craft, the karma that has
Made it matter in the first place.” – James Merrill

I have no wish to provoke a hurtful response, so let me put this is as plainly as I can. It’s been years since we spoke or saw each other. Till that point, our correspondence had remained friendly, often cheerful. But I lost trust. Shit gets back to me. I’ve been made aware of it several times over the years. It’s never about the many good things I’ve invited you to be a part of (insert professional thing laundry list) all without reciprocation. Instead, it cuts to the personal. Years later, I still hear about it. I’ve been nothing but kind to you, and supportive. I’m only asking for that same respect. The respect on which our friendship was founded. To be clear: I’d simply prefer to be left out of your stories. Please honor my request. And farewell.

—Text from a friend

That missive is sitting in my text message log right now. Verbatim, except I’ve removed language that could identify the author.

That’s right: I could call someone out right now. Are you dying to know? You might know him. You might even believe you need to know who he is, so you can save other women from the trauma he leaves in his squid-inky little wake. He’s a predator, a bully, an egomaniac and an insufferable manipulator and he’s complaining because I told someone about him, the entitled bastard.

It was quite the kerfuffle. He was a male colleague who, to put it mildly, enjoyed the professional power position in our “relationship,” and he had lost trust. In me! It was a close quarters professional event and I was so visibly rattled at having to deal with him that a friend pulled me aside and asked what was wrong. My defenses were down; I talked. This was the event where, Shit Gets Back to Me Boy had told me several times, one of these years he was going to show up to my hotel room and tie me to the bedposts. My well-intended buddy confronted Professor Lost Trust and, I expect, humiliated the shit out of him.

Truth? I’m a relatively open book, but I don’t name names much, or go out of my way to talk smack about the amazeballs roster of control freak fragile-ego dipshits who’ve put me in their crosshairs. Truth? If this particular person’s name came up, I was at least as likely to spill over with gratitude for all those “unreciprocated” cap-feathers. (How the hell could I “reciprocate?” I wasn’t in publishing, or academia, or any other place where I could affect his career. Which was a major part of the point.) So he wanted to be “left out of” my “stories,” as if I were making them up. Wouldn’t the prudent course have been to respond to being called out by our mutual colleague with an apology? High-handed righteous road-rage seemed… odd.

I mean, maybe he shouldn’t have spent four years texting me porn, making me his autoerotic focus object when he’d had a couple of drinks, telling me that one day, just once, he was going to fuck me, and splicing discussions of my “career” with nagging demands for lingerie shots, then reminding me to delete the evidence. I think he believes I did delete it. Men, let me put this as gently as possible: don’t send cock-selfies to women who report to you. Your John Thomas can be identified, and if you think we erase stuff because you said to, you need a neurologist. Believe me, we keep every smarmy word. And if we’re writers? Well, you’re lucky if you targeted someone with an expansive enough ethical sensibility to leave your name or your semi-erect dong out of it when the #metoo choir starts singing.

#MeToo and the Whole Truth

Yeah, me too! Associate Professor Drunken Dick Pic was hardly the only man in my life that way. There’d been, oh, let’s see: A barrista. An undergrad. An attorney. A guitarist. Five music producers, three publishers, four film or theatrical directors. My friend’s husband. My husband’s friend. Six poets, two novelists. No, four novelists! A cop. A scholar. A painter. A schizophrenic homeless guy. The head of an institution where I desperately wanted a job. Friends. Bosses. Managers. Some were emotional vampires and power abusers. Some vowed they’d suddenly acquire the power to make me a blazing meteor of professional success if I agreed to let them bed me. Several actively retaliated and damaged me professionally because I declined. Two were actual rapists.

But “Me too” is often not the whole story, and there’s a reason why judges make you swear to tell “the whole truth.” So let’s talk about this for real and not sit smugly behind a hashtag acting like we’re finally dragging a nasty skeleton out of the closet. This isn’t new, it isn’t news, it isn’t surprising, and importantly, it isn’t the same for everyone.

Truth? I’m pissed. And not at Harvey Weinstein. I’m pissed at the zeitgeist of Blamesmanship. I’m pissed that men still get to treat women like meat and we don’t even get equal pay for the privilege of sharing office space with ass-pinchers, philanderers and stalkers. I’m also pissed that men who are not cartoon supervillains are being silenced with impunity, that many women are frankly acting like victimhood is both a power position and a competitive sport (it is neither), that people are yodeling #MeToo because they want to surf a big wave; I’m pissed that arrogant prats are using the dudely response-tag #Ididit for bullshit performance art navel gazing and sensitive-guy brownie points, obscuring the efforts of genuinely self-aware men to engage in empathetic discourse.

I’m pissed off because our relationship with victimization is as fucked up as my relationship with Dr. Catholic Schoolgirl Uniform and his amazing one-handed typing but we aren’t talking about that. Here’s a sampling of puzzle pieces from my Facebook feed this week. I’m deliberately refraining from identifying anyone with screen-shots, and I am paraphrasing in some cases, for privacy.

1. 50ish Black single dad: “Can/should I say #MeToo if I have been affected by sexual abuse or harassment, or is it just for women?” Woman respondent: “Of course you can. Oh, and ALL LIVES MATTER, TOO.”

2. White woman under 35, in adamant repetitive posts: “Anyone not calling out abusers BY NAME is complicit! Silence is death! SILENCE IS DEATH!!!!!!!!”

3. Greek chorus of commenters on an older white woman’s distraught #MeToo post: “Name! Name! Out the bastard! He deserves it!”

4. Middle aged white man, in academia: “Once I was physically molested by a man at a conference. He was an important publisher. I was paralyzed and let him touch me because I was afraid of being perceived as homophobic.” (Response: “Once? Big deal.”)

5. Man-bun neckbeard type: “Woe betide me, I am an asshole. I once tried to smooch a girl at a party. She pulled away. How I must have destroyed her with my insensitivity! She must have spent years beating herself up over the mixed signals she believed she sent when in fact it was all me, me me. I shall endeavor to improve myself forthwith! For lo I am truly a pig. Witness my unflinching bravery in coming to terms with the utterly inconsequential thing I sort of did. #ididit

Can we talk about this please? Trauma hashtags? Because it will fix this? Because before last week women didn’t have voices? Am I the only one who finds that a little patronizing and a whole lot troubling?

Let’s get a few things straight. Being a “victim” does not make you an expert, even on Facebook. Sadly, it doesn’t even make you interesting, and God knows it doesn’t make you unusual. I readily concede your expertise on the subject of your own experience but you do not speak for all women because you are a woman. So don’t tell some guy on social media that it is, de facto and absolutely, “predatory” to pay a woman a compliment. Because that is horseshit. It might be, it might not be. And if someone says they don’t feel the same way, don’t express your “dismay” at “women attacking other women instead of standing together.” Being disagreed with and being attacked are different. It’s a vital difference: Internalize it. Please.

I’d like to suggest we consider not being smugly entitled to behaviors we don’t appreciate having leveled at us. If you are outraged by women being “shamed,” as in body-shamed, fat-shamed, slut-shamed, etc? Be willing to acknowledge that entitling yourself to shame-bomb other people is something we call “hypocritical.” Regardless of how convinced you might be that the shame-object is indeed guilty of something vile. Don’t like feeling silenced or shut down? Let other people fucking talk. Even if they are men. Yes—even if they are men. In fact, you might go one more radical step and listen to them before passing judgment; maybe you’d both end up with someone who’s on your side. Oh. Judgment. You don’t care for it coming from random strangers on the internets? Probably neither do other people. Does being told how you should feel or what you should think get your hackles up? Me too! So why the everloving hell are you deputizing yourself to tell other people how to think or feel?

Physics has basically shattered the notion of Baconian empirical reality at this point; we know everyone’s point of view is unique, personal, and valid to them. Could we embrace this before doling out judgments from on high? You might be up there in the stratosphere because a megaton of hot air has collected between your butt and the floor and is holding you aloft on a gaseous cloud of sanctimony. Sanctimony has been conclusively linked to global warming. You can opt out. Please opt out.

It hurts. Rape. Stalking. Bullying. Power abuse. Wondering if your work got rejected because you rejected a randy editor. Wondering if you got that award because a payback was going to be exacted in the future. Wondering if “You’re talented” really only means “You have boobies and I will keep stroking your ego until you let me stroke those instead.” Being humiliated, being belittled, being patronized. It all hurts. Not being believed hurts. Being told you’re obviously overinflating things hurts. Being held down at knifepoint hurts and being told you’ll get the lead in the play in exchange for a blowjob hurts. It hurts when it’s a stranger, a friend, a waiter who spikes your iced tea with rohypnol, or the creep that married your mom. All different. All pain. Was your first sexual experience coerced? Mine was, but I don’t think that’s more important than if it was your 8000th. It’s all hugely not-OK.

Men, you have a right to express yourselves, and if you’ve been sexually abused or harassed that is a big deal, just like it is for women. On the other hand, just because someone has the right to speak doesn’t mean it’s always a good time to grab the microphone. I’m not sure why we’re pretending no one knew about pandemic sexual misconduct before, or why we are acting like women only got a voice last week, but there is it. Bemoan your “inadvertent cruelty” to some woman you said “I think you’re pretty” to at Starbucks, and rend your garment in shame for how terrible that was only if you are cool with the vigilance committee saddling up and rising in with torches ablaze, because it is pathetically transparent and seriously insulting, and I speak as someone who is relatively tough to insult.

Once my ex-husband “expressed himself,” and almost got socked in the gob by a marriage counsellor for insisting that “I’d started it” with a power-abusing asshole and that it was “my pattern.” Ladies and gentlemen, I had not started it, but I definitely finished it. That guy lost his high-prestige job because he messed with the wrong broad. Oh, and that was great. Ask me about being deposed for five hours, or having to attend professional functions with his wife after she confronted me demanding that I admit I was the one trying to seduce him, or what he lied about to the board of directors. Ask me about what it’s like when someone who can affect whether or not you are employed is trying to get in your pants and your own husband thinks you invited it.

Look, it all sucks. But there is a difference between a mistake and premeditated predation. There is a difference between a hassle and a devastating act of malice. Between being raped at knifepoint and finding a flirtation has subtly crossed a line. Worst of all, and I’m sorry to have to point it out, there is this thing where sometimes we truly do have a choice about how damaged we are going to be by something. Not always. But sometimes. I am concerned that the deafening “me too” chant might have the unintended and very sad consequence of eliminating subtlety from the conversation (let’s be real: it’s eliminating conversation entirely once no one can be heard over it).

Not acknowledging subtlety, or intent or degree or actual damage versus potential or theoretical damage isn’t going to help me live in a more empowered world. It will raise the BTUs on the simmering cauldron of resentment, that is certain. Please, if you want things to improve, stop silencing people. As a former ESL teacher, I can tell you for sure that no one learns a language if they aren’t allowed to speak.

It’s weird: Victimhood can ironically feel like a power position. So much so that we are often loathe to give it up. Sometimes, people even like to use it as a battering ram. Or a chess piece. Victim Chess isn’t a good game. It doesn’t make the world safer, better, or more fair.

Maybe we shouldn’t reduce a complex and multivalent and often debilitating situation to a two-syllable hashtag. There is a difference between a crime and an annoyance. There is a difference between intentional intimidation and projection. There is such a thing as abuse that happens by accident. There is such a thing as behavior that’s theoretically abusive yet does no real harm. There are women who collude, who lie, who participate, who perpetrate. There are men who are abused. Sometimes if we are honest the situation is benign. Sometimes a person puts you in an unpleasant situation who is truly not a serial predator; sometimes a generally conscientious person makes a mistake, gets a little confused, a little drunk, a little off the rez, and it’s not proof of a larger and deeply sinister pattern.

Maybe it isn’t exactly OK, but it’d be equally not-OK to pretend you couldn’t let it go. You can let some things go. There is every permutation in the multiverse; everyone is someone’s victim, everyone is someone’s monster. “Calling out” everyone and their Labradoodle for their perceived crimes, misdemeanors, major and minor asshatteries is not always the right thing to do. Shutting people down for speaking about their own experiences is almost never the right thing to do and chiding those who choose not to speak is equally bullying. Rigidity is unsustainable and so is dishonesty. Dishonesty with yourself is particularly unacceptable and it is particularly rampant. Get a mirror. Use it. Don’t belittle other people’s pain by embroidering yours. It is arrogant. Arrogance is not useful in the pursuit of change for the better. Listening is. But everyone has to be doing it or it doesn’t work.

And as for you, Doctor Moneyshot, Mr. Sext-Therapist, Professor I’m Going to Bend You Over My Desk: You are wildly out of whack if you think what got violated was your trust, or if you think you were only ever respectful, or my friend. But I am not willing to pretend it wasn’t complicated. See, I liked you. A lot, actually. Before it really went too far, there were days when the only kind words I heard came from that sex toy you call a cell phone. I still remember the year you called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day when my children’s own father hadn’t even bothered. I remember the time you messaged me from that professional event back east, how you were sure everyone there was secretly hooking up except you, and we talked all night. No one coerced me into that. It felt good. We were both lonely and I thought we understood each other and it was good to just talk. About frustration and desire and wishing things were different. I kept that transcript not in case I wanted to skewer you someday, but because it was full of absolutely beautiful writing. We brought that out in each other, in the beginning.

If you don’t own the fact that “nothing but kind,” isn’t really true, Mister Slippery Slope Mountaineer, Dr. Strange Things Turn Me On In Ways I Cannot Control, then that karma is all yours, and you’re lucky the person I told wasn’t your wife. I own the fact that I didn’t try harder to shut you down. I own the fact that I was afraid I couldn’t afford to alienate you professionally, and I own the part of me that was willing to accept the not-OK stuff in service of not messing up the part that worked.

 
Join the discussion...