General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy the #MeToo Moment Should Be Ready for a Backlash
Why the #MeToo Moment Should Be Ready for a Backlash
As a much-needed reckoning happens in the workplace, look to college campuses for a note of caution.
By EMILY YOFFE
December 10, 2017
snip
In the final five years of his presidency, Barack Obamas administration undertook a worthy and bold challenge: the elimination of sexual assault on campuses. In fact, Obamas team had a much more ambitious goal in mind. Vice President Joe Biden, the point person for the campus initiative, said at the end of his term that the administration was seeking to fundamentally change the culture around sexual assaulteverywhere. New rules of sexual engagement between college students were written at the directive of the administration, but top Obama officials said they wanted these to be applied in the workplace and beyond. Youre going to change the workplaces you work in, Tina Tchen, director of the White House Council on Women and Girls, said at a 2016 event honoring campus sexual assault activists. Youre going to raise your sons and daughters differently.
They expected this transformation to take years. But with the daily toppling of powerful men who have committed sexual violations in Hollywood, the media, Congress and more, these changes have become seismic. The silenced have been given voice, and their testimony has resulted in the swift professional demise of perpetrators. Shocking descriptions of the behavior of powerful men have shown that its not universally understood that its unacceptable to display ones genitals at work or to sexually abuse colleagues.
We now have an opportunity for profound reform, for women and men to join together to treat each other with dignity and respect. But as this unexpected revolution unfolds, we should also keep in mind the dangers of creating new injustices in the service of correcting old ones.
For that, its useful to look at how reforms played out on campus, where, unfortunately, many of the Obama administrations good intentions went awry. Among the principles and polices that have become entrenched at schoolsand are now spilling out into the wider worldare the beliefs that accusers are virtually always telling the truth; that the urgency to take action is more important than fair procedures; that we shouldnt make distinctions between criminal acts and boorishness; and that predatory male behavior is ubiquitous. These beliefs have resulted in many campus cases in which the accused was treated with fundamental unfairness, spawning a legal subspecialty of suing schools on behalf of these young men. Examining what happened on campuses shows where the politics and social rules of interaction between the sexes might be headedand how to avoid making the same mistakes on a larger scale.
Lots of snip - long article; very good.
Conclusion: The movement to stop sexual harassment in the workplace will eventually move past this moment of shocking allegations against famous men, and should soon focus on the many nonfamous people in quotidian circumstances. But top news organizations are not likely to provide as much due diligence about those cases. No doubt many disputes will more resemble those on campus, in that the charges will be about ambiguous situations for which there is little evidence. This amazing moment has a chance to be truly transformative. But it could also go off track if all accusations are taken on faith, if due process is seen as an impediment rather than a requirement and an underpinning of justice, and if men and women grow wary of each other in the workplace. As Laura Kipnis, a feminist professor at Northwestern, writes in her book, Unwanted Advances, I can think of no better way to subjugate women than to convince us that assault is around every corner.
Much more at link
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/10/yoffe-sexual-harassment-college-franken-216057
greeny2323
(590 posts)Mme. Defarge
(8,012 posts)We must, and can still walk back from the precipice, starting maintenant. (I should know, neest-ce pas?)
Adenoid_Hynkel
(14,093 posts)These sort of things are what happens when movements don't bother to do organizing.
Anyone can jump under the banner and hijack it.
We saw it when Occupy fizzled after its message was lost and the nihilists and black bloc people turned it into urban mayhem, and wouldn't even say no to neo-nazis aligning under the name.
Organizing takes work, but it serves a purpose. And there's nothing wrong with it, unlike what the "we have to be pure and avoid structure folks tell you.