Opinion: Stop Declaring That #MeToo Is A Failure Just Because You Want It To Be

#MeToo Movement Goes Too Far - Baltimore Sun
Where #MeToo Goes Off The Rails - Chicago Tribune
#MeToo Is Bound To Fail - Daily Wire
#MeToo And The Failed Revolution - Theology Web
Has The #MeToo Movement Gone Overboard - Psychology Today
#MeToo Is Destined To Be An Absolute Failure - Quartz Work
The Failure of the #MeToo Movement - Wicked Solutions

Last week, I was in the audience of a panel discussion about #MeToo, and yet again I had to listen to people declaring that #MeToo is a failure.
These declarations have been running rampant, filling pages and airtime and conversations with the endless refrain; #MeToo is a failure.
Each person has their own reasons for believing so, but their declarations often come after one particular case or incident that they believe is the outrageous tipping point, the inconceivable line in the sand, the one politically correct step too far.
And this point of declaration reveals the idea that they are not willing to abandon, the hill that they are willing to die on.
The idea that asking permission before touching someone is ridiculous. The belief that sexual jokes are an unavoidable part of office culture. The unwavering concern about false accusations. The conviction that if one accusation feels ill-founded, all accusations are.
The entitlement to dismiss an entire movement as a failure just because they don’t want to listen anymore.
It’s a tactic often utilised by people wishing failure upon others. Conservatives declare that liberals have failed, misogynists declare that feminism has failed, racists declare that #BlackLivesMatter has failed.
Declaring a movement or an ideology a failure is not an analysis, it’s a dismissal. It’s a refusal to engage. It is a choice made by the privileged.
It’s also illogical. How can something have failed if it is not finished trying? How can something have failed if the fight isn’t over? How can something have failed by standards or objectives it never claimed?
Tarana Burke was the Black activist who originally conceived of #MeToo in 2006, but the movement became mainstream in October 2017, when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
That was it. This iteration of #MeToo did not come with a list of further objectives, demands or details. It is and always has been an awareness raising campaign, and it has inarguably achieved its goal of starting a conversation about women’s experiences of sexual harassment and violence.
So why are some people calling it a failure?
Simple. Because if it is a failure, they don’t have to listen anymore. If it is a failure, it’s not worthy of their attention. If it is a failure, they don’t have to examine their behaviour, their attitudes, their potential complicity in the abuse and oppression of women; even themselves. If it is a failure, everyone’s privilege and comfort remain the same.
If #MeToo is a failure, nothing has to change. And so they declare it is, and wish that it were true.
But #MeToo is not a failure, for the very reason people wish it were: it has started a conversation that makes us uncomfortable. Necessarily. Each story, each incident, each shocking yet not surprising new development challenges our attitudes, our privilege, our deeply ingrained societal structures and inequalities. Each new story forces us to confront ourselves, forces us to ask ourselves how willing we are to take responsibility and do the work needed to make people feel safe.
Are we willing to listen? Are we willing to stop worshipping our pop culture heroes? Are we willing to make belief, and not disbelief, our default when it comes to stories of sexual harassment and violence?
Are we willing to think of how our own behaviour, our attitudes, our jokes, our sexual encounters, our navigation of consent may have fed into a culture where women feel unsafe, where harassment is normalised, where sexual violence is dismissed as just a bad date, where survivors aren’t believed, where they don’t feel safe reporting sexual violence, and when they do, they are the ones interrogated and blamed as if they were on trial?
Are we willing to give up some of our comfort and privilege in the pursuit of equality?
Are we willing to do the work to change?
One of the common catalysts for people declaring that #MeToo has become a failure was the Aziz Ansari case, where a woman anonymously shared her account of a date with the comedian and actor. Her deeply disturbing tale elucidated the effects of toxic masculinity; the endless ways men have been socialised to ignore women’s rebuttals and relentlessly pursue sex.
The account describes how Ansari escalated a kiss into sexual touching without ever checking if the woman was comfortable and consenting, how he assumed she would have sex with him. How he repeatedly made sexual gestures, forcing his fingers in her mouth and pushing her hand towards his penis even after she pulled away multiple times. It details how he pretended to accept her refusals and make her drop her guard only to pressure her again, moments later. He tried to use alcohol to make her more vulnerable. He bent her over, rammed his penis against her and demanded “Where do you want me to fuck you?” – after she had specifically said she didn’t want to have sex that night.
I still physically tense up and shiver reading that account, thinking about it, retyping it. It illustrated so starkly the ways in which our culture has normalised sexual aggression and apathy about enthusiastic consent to the point where a man can leave a date feeling like it went well, while the woman can get in a cab and burst into tears, feeling like she spent the night being violated and pressured and coerced – and knowing that it doesn’t even count as assault. In this society, that’s just a bad date. Part of the routine. Nothing to get worked up about.
What the Aziz Ansari case demonstrated was that we have not only permitted the violation of people's sexual boundaries, we have accepted it, normalised it, romanticised it.
We are complicit in it, because we don’t recognise it as being wrong.
But that was the line for a lot of people. This was the point where #MeToo had gone too far, had gone off the rails, had to be written off as a failure. Because what the Aziz Ansari story did was show that this conversation isn’t just about abusers like Harvey Weinstein who yielded unimaginable power, serially attacked women, and whose manipulation and threats and coercion were now so well documented it was impossible to ignore – even though he has so far evaded any criminal conviction.
Harvey Weinstein is an unequivocal abuser, the bogeyman who became real, the now easily identifiable symbol of evil whose despicable actions relatively few people can truly comprehend or recognise. He still fit our idea of abusers not being men, but monsters.
Aziz Ansari, however. Aziz Ansari is just a guy who wanted to have sex, and pushed for it. He, we can recognise. We’ve been on dates with that guy. We’ve been friends with that guy. Maybe we are that guy.
And that’s the truth that is too uncomfortable to bear. That’s why so many people tapped out of the conversation at that point. That’s why #MeToo was suddenly declared a failure – because people needed it to be. This was the story that hit to close to home, and so they chose to stop listening in order not to think about what it really meant.
What the Aziz Ansari incident highlighted was the divide between people who think that #MeToo is and only should be a legal discussion, and those who believe that what #MeToo points to is the need for a social and cultural overhaul in how we think about sexuality, consent and violation. The latter group - of which I am an unapologetic member - are aware that what Aziz Ansari did was not considered a crime. We are also aware that this isn’t the point. The point is that what is currently thought of as normal sexual interactions have left many people, mostly women, feeling terrified, violated and oppressed for far too long. We believe that this culture needs to change.
But to change it, we must first acknowledge it, and that’s where the issue lies.
Not the only issue, of course. What the people who focus on the legal aspects of each #MeToo case are ignoring is that justice is not, nor ever has been, a real option for most survivors of sexual violence.
Only one in ten Irish victims of sexual violence reports the crime, and only 7% of those reported cases result in a conviction. Less than 1% of victims of sexual violence get justice. And even securing a conviction doesn’t mean that the victim is believed by the community. One only has to think of the victim in the 2009 Listowel rape case who had to watch 50 members of the community, including a parish priest, shake the hand of her rapist after he was sentenced. The 2013 case of Fiona Doyle, whose father repeatedly raped her from the age of four, and whose abuse was ignored, even when she contracted anal warts, even when she reported her father to the Gardai. Or look overseas to the victim of the Stanford rape case, who was accused of ruining Brock Turner’s life and future – because he was found guilty of raping her.
In the corporate field, established processes of dealing with sexual harassment are being ignored and deliberately sabotaged in order to protect the harassers. Susan Fowler’s account of reporting sexual harassment in Uber revealed that HR departments, the very people whose job it is to protect employees and ensure that sexual harassment is dealt with, were protecting serial abusers, because they made money for the company.
As of yet, #MeToo has not resulted in a single conviction. The long-term consequences for men who have been accused are still unquantifiable, and in many cases hypothetical: a man may lose income. He maybe might have possibly have lost out on an award nomination. He may have to exit Hollywood now and retire with his millions.
He may get a chance at redemption. We all know Hollywood loves a comeback story.
But even still, people are crying out that it is men who are being targeted unfairly, that it is men who are being denied due process, that men feel intimidated.
And this makes #MeToo a failure.
I don’t think #MeToo is a failure. I think it is forcing people to confront the exact limits of their discomfort, the exact point at which our complicity may be found. I think it’s making us think about our role in a toxic, dangerous and violent culture, and how prepared we are to change it.
Some people are not prepared to do that. And so they declare #MeToo a failure, to eschew the challenges it poses. They declare it a failure because they wish that it were true.
They are undoing their own work. Declaring #MeToo a failure is making a valuable contribution to #MeToo.
For in their declarations, they are revealing themselves. Exposing the limits of their empathy and self-awareness and belief in equality.
They are giving us a sense of the magnitude of the problem.