Jay Kuten: #MeToo's misguided missiles

UNFAIR: Mark Wahlberg was paid 1000 times more than co-star Michelle Williams for work on a movie.

News of the false alarm of an incoming missile to Hawaii, and its attendant 38 minutes of chaos before calm was restored, was of major importance.

Its associated implications, of a nuclear war set off in error, require the attention of all of us especially those responsible.

That news was almost crowded out by the latest twists and turns of the #MeToo movement, begun in response to revelations of sexual predation of women by powerful men in entertainment and politics.

This week, Moira Donegan, a 20-something editor, acknowledged she had created an online spreadsheet in which anonymous people could make accusations about men whose careers and reputations would potentially be destroyed as a consequence.
There was absolutely no attempt to substantiate any of the claims and the motives of the claimants remained as obscure as their withheld identities.

Under the thin veneer of a warning "take with a grain of salt," the list, called "Shitty Media Men" named at least 70 men in that field, anonymously accused of various misbehaviours of a sexual nature. While purportedly intended to deal with workplace impropriety due to power imbalance, the behaviours listed range from "being handsy with women at parties", "weird lunch dates" and "sending creepy texts when drunk". One man made the list for "flirting", another for taking "credit for ideas of women of colour". These minor "offences" are on the same list as brazen threats, physical assaults, unspeakable cruelty and brutal rapes.

This moment of irresponsibility is the byproduct of #MeToo, which began with honourable intentions of righting long-standing wrongs against women.

Its elaboration extended from imbalance of power sexualised to significant discrepancies of unequal pay, e.g. the 1000 times greater pay of Mark Wahlberg than co-star Michelle Williams for the same work. If the #MeToo movement had resulted in more equal pay for women and men in the less exalted workplaces beyond Hollywood, it would have been a shining moment in the long march to justice.

But this "Shitty Men" list represents a revolution, creating new wrongs for old, a making of a second wrong rather than enhancing anyone's rights.

Ms Donegan says she made the list because, in her view, echoed by her most vocal supporters, the ordinary means for redress of grievance — protection of women — have failed.
The police don't handle sexual harassment claims adequately; neither do the human resources of the workplace. And, further, she says, these formal institutions must operate under the assumption of innocence of the accused. Hence the list.

What is disheartening and frankly dangerous about the sentiments of left-wing feminists like Donegan is their having lost faith in the processes of democracy — of democracy itself.

Their rage is understandable. It represents decades of experience of casual indignity and even physical invasiveness from their more powerful male bosses.

The vigilante response of disregarding facts in the service of gratifying feelings, discarding the deliberations of due process in favour of instant punishment, ultimately protects no one, neither victim, nor accused.

A very similar potency of rage has attended the history and daily lives of African-Americans. They've endured 400 years of injustice — even the hazard of their lives — at the hands of the white male hierarchy, supported by its women.

Yet they pursued their civil rights in a largely non-violent process, which, in its exercise of the democratic forms, of marches, of voting rights demanded, of use of the court-room, actually renewed the American promise, even if their equality sought continues to be a work in progress.

The goal of #MeToo was to make the world safer for women. If that effort has as its concrete by-product greater equality of pay for equal work, that would be worthwhile.
But if its methods include the unleashing of a new witch hunt of presumed guilt, the successive erosion of faith in democratic institutions upholding safety for everyone will suffer.

That's redolent of the infamous exculpatory refrain in Vietnam, "We had to burn down the village in order to save it."

Jay Kuten

Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.