'Me, too'

Didn’t that handle refer to dummy type that got in?

 

Is that right next to the file for "Annoying Debate Tricks People Use To Justify Their Law Degrees"?

 

Not as long as we -and the entire internet- have these screens to hide behind.

 

I have dealt with the aftermath of two outright rapes. One was an across the hall neighbor at the apartment I lived in who came home crying uncontrollably. She was walking on the sidewalk and someone stopped and asked her for directions. When she walked over to the car to talk to them she was grabbed and dragged into the car, driven away and repeatedly raped. Another was a girl who beat on a friend's apartment door while we were noisily watching football. None of us knew her, she'd just been dumped in the parking lot and came to a door with noise and activity. I drove her to the ER.

How many of my female friends or acquaintances have gone through something similar and I don't know it because of their shame, embarrassment, or unwillingness to make themselves vulnerable to slut shaming? How many have had to deal with handsy co-workers or bosses who wouldn't believe it or did but did nothing to break it up?

I was struck by something in a Weinstein story, where the woman who was trying to fend him off was 22 or so and just starting out. She said regarding reporting him, "The power dynamic was Harvey Weinstein 10, me 0."

Any woman with the guts to put up a "Me too" and expose herself to the shit that can come with making herself vulnerable on the internet and in her personal life has my respect and sympathy. Will it ultimately do any real and lasting good? Maybe not... although maybe if enough men see someone that they like, respect, and know not to be "a slut" put it up, maybe they'll stop and think a little about how easily this shit happens every day.

 

Ah, going personal. Love when that happens. Last refuge. And Dools with the validating “like.”

It’s simple critical reasoning. It applies outside the courtroom as well as inside of it. At least it’s supposed to.

I’m not using any “tricks.” I stake my narrow position and stick to it. The people who are deploying “tricks” are the ones who want to mischaracterize it so they can argue about something else, aka “responding to an imaginary post.”

Not for nothing, the person who wrote the “debate tricks” column is Hannah Rosin, who writes from a feminist point of view, but with honesty and without reflexive fear of a good give and take.

 

Yes, over time, they cumulatively change things.

IMO:

1. It happens more often than men (and perhaps some women) think, so the totality of stories create a greater awareness of it happening.

2a. Over time, it'll probably alter, in a positive way, how some men treat women. Even if those men come to resent what they're not allowed to do, it's better that they're not doing it.

2b. It'll also produce a chilling effect for some men who read all that online and want no part of the "trainwreck" women who post it. Which is sad. Being harassed/assaulted should not mark you as damaged, but, for some men - even "good guys" - it does. They figure "not worth the risk."

3. It also produces, over time, women's greater, cumulative dislike for men. As I've written before...I suspect men have never treated women better, and yet the perception is men have never treated women worse. This a paradox that men will just have to deal with, and deal with gladly, but it's a paradox nonetheless.

4. It deepens the conflict between an American culture that exalts liberty - especially sexual liberty - but additionally exalts victimhood, which gets thorny when men and women have differing definitions of permission and harassment. If a man asks out a woman twice, did he harass her the second time? If a woman rejects a man's advances, and then he criticizes her work performance in front of colleagues, is that backlash? When a woman has six beers, should a man who's had just two know better (IMO, yes) or proceed if she's given consent? And so on and so on.

None of this is profound, I know.

 

It seems every politician tells the cute story about how he asked his wife out 10 times before she finally relented.

 

Touch-eeeeee.

 

Seriously?

Seems like a pretty even-toned post to me.

 

meh, that's barely "personal." you're a lawyer and you pride yourself on your debate skills, which you use to often burrow down holes that succeed in nothing but scoring points with some imaginary debate coach. I don't think that's anymore personal than saying most lawyers are annoying assholes. But if you think it was unduly personal, I apologize.

 

Why am I supposed to move to a position I didn’t take and I don’t believe just so it makes it easier for you?

 

As an aside, I noticed that one of my sister's friends posted a "me, too" on FB. The same friend who told my sister that I, as a 8- or 9-year old, made sucking kissy noises and said "hey, baby!" to her at the public library one Saturday... which ABSOLUTELY DID NOT HAPPEN. First, I would have never done that to anyone. Second, I considered her to be one of the most repulsive hags ever, so I sooner would have fellated a dead donkey than "come on" to her. My sister yelled at me, told my parents of my fictional boorish behavior and I received some kind of punishment.

Now, some 40 years later, I am so tempted to unleash a loud and vehement "fuck you" on said hag's FB thread.