On Men Getting "MeToo'd"

Ever since the MeToo Movement got hijacked by celebrities on Twitter back around 2019, the whole thing has taken on strange connotations in the public vernacular.  People think it means all kinds of different things.  And in general they really don't know what the MeToo Movement is.

The MeToo Movement has always been a very grassroots, interpersonal support network by, for, and about African-American sexual assault survivors.  That's it, according to the founder, Tarana Burke.  It never was meant to be for holding the rich and powerful accountable. All of that was a co-opting and a side conversation that was completely beside the point of the MeToo movement.  People needed some way to focus their energies about the Harvey Weinstein story breaking.  And rape survivors really aren't organized as an army.

There really was nothing Tarana Burke could do to keep her hashtag from blowing up Harvey Weinstein's ass, although the two concepts were only very vaguely related because Harvey also abused people.  The problem is that RAINN, the Rape and Incest National Network, doesn't really have a cool hashtag.  They don't have the kind of resources to be "on it" in terms of their social media game.  RAINN isn't the kind of resource to catch that bounce.  But they would've been a more accurate place than MeToo, which was never intended to be an open door for everybody, or a resource for seeking justice.  That would be RAINN, in terms of the organization's intent and structure.

I can only imagine how Burke felt about standing by and watching Rose McGowan become the face of her life's work, while talking about how Trump "has some good ideas."   The entire conversation, over the course of years, has all but melted my brain.  I don't know the half of what she's seen and heard.   I have avoided listening to what people have to say about MeToo for quite a while.  We got into the realm of people like Michael Ian Black resurrecting his dead career by pushing MeToo under the bus a propos of nothing, once it was safe. 

It's disgusting now.  Michelle Wolf has gone full rape troll.  Even Kathleen Madigan took a few stupid digs at MeToo.  She had to make shit up, and it wasn't funny.  But she just couldn't resist.  Literally every comedian who hasn't personally been raped now has at least one MeToo joke.  It's officially safe to fuck with us, as if we're co-assholes just like rapists.  Because we sometimes MeToo the men, come out of left field with these wild accusations about the little nothings they didn't even do back in the 80s or whatever.

So now we're deep into the realm of fuckery where I never want to hear the phrase "MeToo" again, seriously.  First Joe Biden drove a bandwagon over the whole thing with the treachery of "Time'sUp."  I'm not even getting started on that.   As much as I hate Donald Trump, and fear for the world he will create in a second presidency, I'm delighted that Kamala Harris won't get the White House.    The racist rape trolling of the Biden-Harris campaign was off the motherfuckin deep end.  That dog whistling deafened me.  But I lived to never vote again.  I gave those two a double middle-finger salute based on his sexual assault history and the way their supporters interacted with me about it.

So in 2024, people talk about "men getting MeToo'd."  This doesn't mean the man was sexually assaulted, which is what it should mean.  No, it means the man has been held accountable for past sexual misconduct.  The punchline is that there's no discernment between a simple comment and forcible rape, and the punishment is always super excessive!  Get it? 

That's the narrative in the public consciousness, that any little thing happens, could be an innocent misunderstanding, and decades later that guy gets sent to prison on a felony without warning.  When in fact, in reality here on Earth 1, men can and do kidnap, rape, and even murder women repeatedly and still be given bail to go out and do it again and again.  There have never been meaningful consequences for male misconduct in my whole life.  It's always been "boys will be boys" and "it's a man's world" and "it's good to be king."

So when I hear people -- even seemingly decent people, who I like -- misusing the phrase "got MeToo'd" to mean that a man was presented with consequences for his behavior, it's incredibly alienating for me.  It shows me that (a) this person who I appreciate, for example John Oliver or Alizee, a booktuber who I enjoy, is at a high level of unconscious privilege in rape culture; (b) they are talking in public about rape from this place of cluelessness; (c) the actual sexual assault is entirely disappeared by this usage. 

That's the biggest problem with saying that a man "got MeToo'd" when he faced consequences for his sexual misconduct:  the initial sexual assault itself disappears.  The attack is now on the man who was going along unawares.  It makes him the victim and MeToo the aggressor.  So let's pump the brakes on our rape culture and think for just a second about what we're saying, okay?  "MeToo" means "I, too, was sexually assaulted."  Is that what this man is saying?  No?  Then fuck you for not taking the time to articulate that correctly on your show, you unraped individual.

I immediately understood "MeToo."  That was the beauty of it, before all the unraped people co-opted it and began saying it over us. 

Because we're really not at liberty to talk about our sexual assaults for so many reasons.  And we all know this.  It's estimated that 63% of sexual assault goes entirely unreported.  So we have to walk around with these extremely heavy secrets, just suck it up and march.  Meanwhile, if other people find out, they can hold it against you as if you were the one who committed the crime, not the one who suffered it.  It's so fucked.  So "MeToo" is about all we can whisper to each other sometimes.  It's all you can say without cracking up.  I recognized it immediately, and I'm sure others did, too.  It's just a little stolen moment that we can share, that we desperately need, those of us who are initiated.  And the rest of you just had to take it from us.   You have the whole rest of the world to stomp around freely in.  And you had to shit in our tiny, shared corner.

So when I hear someone misusing "MeToo" in this way, my asshole alarm goes off.  It shows me how deep they are in both their oblivion about and their comfort discussing rape.  It's a special kind of privilege that I really don't appreciate.  Unfortunately, I hear it even from people who I find to be otherwise quite decent.  The standards are so incredibly low when it comes to the fucks society gives about sexual violence.