#timesup. #metoo. #Blacklivesmatter. Harvey Weinstein. Bill O’Reilly. Charlie Rose. Matt Lauer. Roger Ailes. Mark Halperin. Roy Moore. Al Franken. Louis CK. Many others.
This is no time to be an older white man. It is especially tough to be an older liberal white man.
The siege is justifiably on against men in power of a certain age. It is a massive and long overdue correction of injustices and abuses permitted to be carried out in silence for a very long time.
Some push back has been attempted, but it is a feeble stream against the tidal wave of accusations against men who have indeed engaged in serious “sexual misconduct,” and against some whose transgressions were far less extreme.
Actor Michael Douglas issued what is being called a “pre-emptive” denial of an expected accusation from a former employee that he masturbated in front of her 30 or so years ago.
A group of some 100 French women, including actress Catherine Deneuve, signed an open letter stating their belief that the MeToo movement is going too far, denouncing a "hatred of men and sexuality" and stating that the recent torrent of accusations against many was depriving men of their "freedom to pester," which, the letter said, is "indispensable to sexual freedom.”
(I’m not sure “freedom to pester” is in the US or French constitutions, and think these French academics, entertainers and businesswomen could have come up with more creative language. Either way, their statement was immediately slammed, and it wasn’t going to get very far in this climate anyway.)
For the most part, the push back has been minimal and dwarfed by moments such as Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech at the Golden Globes.
I have a daughter and a granddaughter. I never want them to be subjected to the kind of behavior exhibited by Weinstein, O’Reilly and their confederacy of pigs who can threaten to ruin women’s careers, lock women in their offices against their will, walk around naked in front of women, and in some cases, rape women.
I also have a son and two grandsons, and while I of course hope they never comport themselves in ways these men mentioned above surely have, I also want to make sure that they are never collateral damage to a tsunami that envelopes the innocent with the guilty, or even the far less guilty.
There will be accusations that are indeed untrue. One need only refresh one’s memory of the Duke lacrosse case to know that. The accuser in that case was mentally unbalanced, and ultimately went to prison for murdering her boyfriend, but false accusations happen, and the mood these days is, if a few innocents get flushed away with the many guilty, that barely begins to make up for the thousands of women who never spoke up about the abuses they suffered at the hands of powerful men.
I get that. I do. The injustices visited upon women were unforgivable.
Harvey Weinstein
But despite what New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says, there are degrees of difference between Al Franken’s stupidity and Harvey Weinstein’s criminality. Once we decide it’s okay to lump everyone into the same category of sexual abusers, we are on a treacherous path. Stealing a loaf of bread may be a crime, but it is not an armed home invasion.
But yes, the collateral damage to older white men will be a blip compared with what these women endured, almost always in silence, fear and ridicule. If we err on the side of believing rather than doubting, that’s a trade off we will have to live with for awhile.
For those of us liberal older white men, it is particularly agonizing to watch what is happening, because we are empathetic to the deep wounds inflicted on these women, but we know the pointlessness of yelling, “we are not all alike” - especially since a considerable number of the worst offenders were old liberal white men.
So, the urge to send us en masse out onto an ice floe never to be heard from again is unfortunate, but wholly understandable. We old liberal white men all kind of look alike anyway.
The sins committed by the offenders far outweigh the collateral damage to those innocent or less egregious who get swept away.
No one should feel sorry for us. Nor will they.