I keep hearing that
#metoo has gone too far too fast. It is just hysteria, the things men have been fired for are too minor.
When I ask which claim is a hysterical minority - rape, groping, sexual
harassment, asking women to have babies and then holding them back at
work when they say no, locking women in rooms so a man could expose his
dick, a man having his penis groped in public - the conversation
changes.
It refocuses on the concern that in the future men might not get
due process or will be innocently removed from their jobs.
This argument is basically, "Stop while it is working and no wrongdoing
has happened so that men are protected from losing their jobs
innocently."
We don't have to stop doing the right thing because
the wrong thing might happen in the future. We can talk about the
overreach when someone overreaches.
I think the real fear here
is that men feel accountable for the first time and they are afraid.
They are afraid they might say the wrong thing and upset a woman's
feelings and get fired.
Men are finally starting to feel what
women have been feeling since the beginning of time. If we aren't nice
enough - we are bitches. If we are nice, some men think we are signaling
sexual attraction. If we don't signal attraction, we cannot get
promoted. If we signal attraction, men hit on us.
We are not
hitting some over reach, we are hitting a balance; a time when men feel
as afraid of the sexual misunderstandings or interests of their
workmates as women do.
I would like to remind people that women
innocently lose their jobs because they cannot negotiate men's sexual
feelings at work. To demand that women give up on a safe workspace in
order to make sure men stay safe is to assert that men are
more important than women, work is their space and women are the
visitors at work. Men are entitled to work, women are not.
That
is sexism and it's male privilege. A man demanding he not be held to the
same work conditions as women because it is unfair is just fragility.
Everyone should be able to go to work without having to protect a man's fragile sexual ego or his privilege.