Opinion
I’m a Feminist and I Have a Problem with the #MeToo Movement
I know what you’re thinking. How can a feminist not unconditionally support #MeToo, arguably one of the most significant manifestations of the late 18th, early 19th-century feminist movement? Before you jump to numerous conclusions about how privileged I am or what direction my moral compass is pointing in, consider that there are many women, even victims of rape, who have qualms about #MeToo. And with good reason.
The first time I heard about the #MeToo movement was when actress Alyssa Milano came out with allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein. My timeline exploded with one key phrase common to all posts: “#MeToo…” CBS News reported that the hashtag was tweeted nearly one million times in only 48 hours. About 4.7 million Facebook users globally posted over 12 million posts, comments, and reactions in less than 24 hours. At first glance, I thought, “Brilliant! Women are banding together to call out the toxic and perverted degenerates who have hurt them.” This was inspiring.
In what seemed like a matter of just minutes, more and more women began speaking out. Behind every woman who publicly made an accusation of sexual assault, an accusation that should never be taken lightly, there was an accused man. A filmmaker here. A Congressman there. Producers, coaches, actors, athletes, network analysts, chefs, political figures, businessmen, conductors, journalists, average Joes, you name it. All of these men…sexual predators? While it’s certainly true that there are disgusting and abhorrent men like Harvey Weinstein who have assaulted multiple women, there must be many more than just a small handful of men accused of sexual assault by the millions of women who came out as victims. Behind every single #MeToo post in the world, there is supposedly a morally corrupt, perverted, and sick sexual predator who caused immense pain and trauma.
It occurred to me that, if this is true, previous generations must have done something fundamentally wrong in raising the men of today. All of these men have somehow been conditioned to sexually assault as a product of upbringing, culture, and/or education. #MeToo’s contention is that close to 18 million women have been sexually assaulted since 1998. This then must mean that slightly fewer, considering some men assault multiple women, than nearly 18 million men are criminals. This just doesn’t make sense! That number is too high to be plausible. When I think about the 1 in 5 statistic that I heard so often before starting college three years ago, I also think about all the men I’ve encountered on Duke’s campus. How many of them are sexual predators? I believe that very, very few actually are. #MeToo, and the modern-day feminist movement in general, has turned into a man-hating frenzy, instilling fear in men lest they exhibit any behavior towards a woman that can potentially be called “sexual assault.”
I recently read a New York Times article reporting that Mia Merrill, a feminist and former art history student, began an online petition to take down a 1938 painting by the artist Balthus from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art because it depicted a young girl in a “sexually suggestive pose,” which apparently constituted sexual assault. The petition had thousands of signatures. This ridiculous story reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend over dinner during winter break last year. We were talking about the image of modern-day feminism and she recounted her experience of what she directly called “sexual assault,” which went something like this:
“Last week, I was assaulted. I was sitting in a cafe and a man I had never seen before came up to me and told me I had really beautiful eyes. He continued to stare at me for about a minute before he left, and I felt very uncomfortable.”
What these two stories have in common is that they are heavily misleading. The Department of Justice defines sexual assault as “sexual activities that occur without the explicit consent of the recipient, such as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape.” To say that experiences like that of Ms. Merill or my friend constitute sexual assault and have just as much gravitas as any other experience of sexual assault is offensive to real victims. The #MeToo movement’s conflation of someone being catcalled on the street and Annabella Sciorra being violently raped by Harvey Weinstein is highly problematic. In failing to make an essential distinction between nuanced sexual experiences, the movement is undermining itself by giving so much attention to radicals who claim that sexual assault can mean anything from a nonconsensual touch on the arm (or bad sex) to forced penetration.
While it may seem as if such outrageous stories are rare, they’re actually more prevalent than we think. Their ubiquity makes sense. Why? Because it is highly, highly improbable that so many men, all the men who #MeToo blames, are sick enough to actually commit an atrocity like sexual assault. It makes no sense for all of these men to bear even the slightest resemblance to a monster like Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics physician and child molester who sexually abused more than 150 women and was recently sentenced to 40-175 years. My contention is that women are prescribing a very loose definition to sexual assault and this “anything goes” mentality is hurting legitimate victims. Just like the story about the boy who cried wolf, there are only so many times women can cry assault before people stop listening. They not only stop listening, but they also begin to question the legitimacy of certain complaints that are, in fact, very valid.
As a traditional feminist, I believe women should be strong. They should certainly fight for their rights, but not demand special privileges to compensate for the years of oppression women endured when they didn’t have the right to vote or when marital rape was legal. As a feminist, I want feminism to be taken seriously. But assigning victimhood to an entire gender is not feminism; it’s a bad idea. It’s a reason to not be taken seriously. Calling millions of men sexual predators and condemning masculinity as a propeller of sexual assault is not feminism; it’s just making women look weak. Marching around calling people names and wearing pussy hats is not feminism; it’s failing to realize that we are undermining the struggles of actual victims.
No one is arguing that sexual assault shouldn’t be talked about. It has been and to this day remains an extremely important issue, objectively. But let’s not forget how blessed we are to be women living in America. We live in a country where today, everyone is equal before the law. Our ancestors have fought tirelessly so that women can have access to countless opportunities and enjoy the same privileges as men. Our ancestors have fought courageously so that a young girl growing up in society today knows that she can do anything she sets her mind to. Women comprise 60% of students on college campuses nationwide and win more than 80% of custody battles. Meanwhile, in Africa, Asia, and South America, over 30 million girls will never have the opportunity to attend even a single day of school. It is objectively true that American women as a collective are of the most privileged in the world.
The only way the #MeToo movement can become a better movement is if feminists are more-open minded to criticism. Yes, the stories are personal and incredibly important, but that’s exactly why we should be striving to create a movement that serves those stories justice and doesn’t blow everything out of proportion. We need to take off our rose-colored glasses and recognize that #MeToo is not flawless just because it deals with an important cause. It needs to be better. Much better.
Does that mean trying to work with our President, despite disagreeing with him, instead of constantly labeling him as a misogynist and refusing to even consider anything he says or does? Does that mean listening to conservative women and realizing that they, too, believe it or not, have very important things to say? Does that mean taking a step back from being so self-absorbed in our “daily struggles as women in the United States” and paying more attention to women in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe, recognizing that our privilege puts us in a position to make their lives better? Does that mean hesitating before making an incredibly strong accusation like sexual assault? Does that mean being loud, strong, and resolute, but also open-minded, grounded, and rational? I think yes.
The media blackout of the BIGGEST political scandal in American history.
Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all we’ve heard for the first three years of the Donald J. Trump presidency. Fast forward June 3rd 2020, Capital Hill, Washington D.C. our nations capital. Former Deputy Attorney General and former acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by South Carolina (R) Senator Lindsey Graham. This is the first time the Republicans get to investigate the investigators to get to the bottom of the Russian Collusion investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that alleged Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton. Russia in all of it’s iterations have been on the lips of every Democrat politician, legacy media anchor and liberal political pundit with condemnation for three years. Now the moment of truth has come and we are to question and hopefully get answers to the burning questions that all of us political navel gazers were waiting for.
Oh wait…… Did you hear that? Deafening silence from the legacy media! Now that we are getting answers to some very outstanding questions the media is MIA. We have learned at the end of the Mueller investigation that no one, no American worked with or colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. No American secretly includes the Trump administration. So how did the FBI, CIA and DOJ investigate charge, surveil, jail and try to impeach the president? You extend FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant like a normal warrant by showing probable cause. When you end up with nothing then you are left to look back and say then what was the cause for all of the investigations and warrants if you never actually found any wrongdoing?
This is where we come to the greatest political scandal in American history. The IG (Inspector General) Michael Horowitz and other investigators have found errors, mistakes and omissions in almost every FISA application. This meaning they were all fraudulent or illegal. The Obama administration officials were spying illegally on the Trump campaign in which Trump calls bigger than Watergate which I believe is true.
General Michael Flynn who was Obama’s DNI (Director of National Intelligence) was hated to the core by Obama and his top brass. Flynn bumped heads with Obama on almost every military and national security issue. Flynn was going to audit and restructure the whole intelligence apparatus. He was fired before he could get that started. He was then hired by the new incoming Trump campaign to the chagrin of Obama. January 4th 2017 the DOJ was dropping it’s investigation of Michael Flynn. On January 5th, Peter Strzok and the FBI would start or extend the investigation of Michael Flynn after a meeting on January 5th in the oval office with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, top aid Susan Rice, DAG Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey and a few other top aids. This is where they hatched another plot to go after Trump and General Flynn. Mind you the day before this infamous meeting The DOJ was about to drop all charges against Michael Flynn and the FBI agents who illegally interviewed Flynn said he didn’t lie. Now finally after years of prosecution Flynn retained a new lawyer Sydney Powell and she was able to finally get the exculpatory evidence and get his case dropped. But to everyone’s surprise in an unprecedented move judge Emmit Sullivan is trying to pull in an amicus brief (friends of the court). The judge is trying to be the prosecutor. Some say he got his marching orders from on high to not let Flynn get off but he has no legal legs to stand on. This leads me to believe Flynn is the Big Fish. They are spending all of their political capital to keep this man silence and sentenced.
They say they started the investigation because George Papadopoulus was overheard in a bar in England talking about Hillary’s emails. Now you only have to have half a brain to realize that is nonsense. So Papadopoulus was also set up framed and spied on. He forgot an exact date so they used that to prosecute him for perjury in which he did 12 days in prison. Who gets sentenced with 12 days if you are this big international criminal?
Carter Page was also wrongly investigated. An email was manipulated by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. He changed that Page worked with CIA to Page DID NOT work with the CIA. Which was a complete 180 and a lie. But eventually Carter Page was never charged. So why were all of the FISA warrant extensions signed to keep investigating him? Carter Page was an informant for the CIA and helped with the prosecution of Russians. So this was hidden from the court. Carter Page was portrayed as one of the ringleaders of coordinating the Trump administrations contact with Russia. That means Carter Page was intricately planning with Donald Trump to perpetrate this fraud. So we ask how often was Trump and Carter Page in cahoots to hatch the plot? Say what? They what? Carter Page and Trump never met? How can you plot this huge international crime and you have never met with your criminal partner?
All of these facts are coming out and now we see in August 2017 before Special Counsel Mueller was appointed there was no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. How can you run an investigation for three years and never find any wrongdoing? All evidence was made up and planted and slowly the public is starting to realize it. This is why Trump always called it the hoax! And now we can see Trump was right!
News@11
By Michael Ameer
Are we as (BLACKS) not smart enough to realize that we are being duped into a race war?
In 2016 George Soros funded the riots in Ferguson and around the nation in memory of Michael Brown who was gunned down by a white police officer in a violent confrontation. Also there was Philando Castile who coincidentally was gunned down in Minnesota by a police officer. This election year reaction is systematic like clockwork. They see a tragedy of the Black community and swoop in and coop the pain and suffering of a people for their own personal political gain. Black Lives Matter are paid protesters, ANTIFA are paid protesters and there are many more paid protesters. This is the job that former POTUS #44 held. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER! They foment unrest for political purposes not for justice.
Fast forward to May 2020 the violent death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota Police. I could not bare to watch the complete 8 minute barbaric treatment these police officers put on George Floyd. It was horrific. But not like in many of these cases the officers here were fired and charged with murder. Normally the public riots when there is an injustice and the police seemingly get away with murder. This time it seems that justice was prevailing and the Department of Justice was swiftly investigating the case. So if the perpetrator is being brought to justice why the riotous reaction nationwide?
The answer is quite simple. There are evil forces that profit and benefit on the pain and suffering of the underclass and they send agitators and organizers to violently protest in major cities to dominate the news cycle. You will also see this will happen in predominantly liberal cities with a high crime rates and possibly a sanctuary city. They turn a peaceful protest into a violent riot.
You saw a white woman with a dog unleashed in Central Park calling police on an “African-American” man allegedly threatening her. You saw a 20 year old black boxer with COVID19 and mental health issues put into a nursing home and recorded viciously beating a white elderly man. You saw Ahmad Arbery shot in Georgia by a white retired police officer and his son during a life or death struggle and video surfaces months later. Unfortunately these type of events happen all over the USA on a daily basis. What we have now is to take the white on black and the black on white incidents and make them viral and stir up the deep seated racial emotions and hatred. Once you see these images and scenarios on constant repeat on television and social media it will indeed have a tremendous emotional impact. This happens on the regular but we seem to fall victim of the emotional heartfelt manipulation.
My featured pic of Nick Cannon is a perfect example during the riots, holding up a poster of George Floyd and in the upper right hand corner of the poster is the logo from CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations). They say they are advocates for Muslim civil rights but they are always in every situation anti-American. They love the fact that blacks are terrorizing their own neighborhoods and they support this with their own dollars. These types of groups are paying blacks to do their dirty work. Are we not smart enough to know we are being used?
News@11
By Michael Ameer
https://www.facebook.com/groups/208142449894990
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