Problems with “The Warlock Hunt”
Why it’s wrong to say that “Me Too” has gone too far
A friend recently shared an article from The American Interest called “The Warlock Hunt,” which argued that the “Me Too” movement is an example of mass hysteria comparable with the witch trials. Like other articles of its kind, it was written by a trained writer, which meant that her “apologist bullshit,” as one Facebook commentator called it, was cloaked in a veneer of well-formed turns of phrase and skillful argument construction.
Apologist bullshit nonetheless.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing this author wrote was that she didn’t like how, in the analyses of alleged sexual harassment, the experience of a terrified or sickened woman was given more weight than the supposed playful, innocent experience of the man who harassed her.
In particular, she disliked the idea that the woman’s post-event feelings would dictate the seriousness or wrongness of an act of alleged harassment, while the feelings of the man involved don’t matter.
There’s a certain comedy to this concern that we are over-privileging the experience of the victim, in a world where, even now, in the midst of the “Me Too” accountability movement, most victims are not believed, most harassers and abusers and rapists not brought to justice. But it is also a very, very serious thing. Because when it comes to humans harming each other, it is crucial that we privilege the experience of the victim.
There are circumstances in which a person claims that another has wronged them and it doesn’t make sense to actually assign the accused any blame. But, as one friend of mine pointed out, while “someone might say someone hurt their feelings or wronged them in other instances to protect their ego, their worldview, or as a form of manipulation, there’s no psychological reward for identifying an experience as assault or harassment.”
Instead, victims of assault or harassment are psychologically motivated to deny the assault or harassment because of the pain associated with confronting it. On top of that, they are socially motivated to keep quiet because of the shaming and denial which inevitably follow. One of the beautiful outcomes of the “Me Too” movement is that many victims feel greater support in coming forward, which helps to protect them from the negative consequences.
As for the experience of the men accused of harassment or assault, we have to acknowledge that their experience doesn’t tell us what happened.
People can harm others without realizing it. People can harm others and realize it and lie about it later. People can harm others and enjoy it. People can harm others and realize that they are harming others but still think it is moral to do so. A member of my extended family can make racist comments throughout dinner, fail to notice my discomfort, and become awkward the following day when he meets my partner and realizes that person is black. Police officers can shoot a man to death who is helpless on the ground and begging for his life and not perceive or acknowledge that their actions are wrong. Perpetrators of genocide can think they are cleansing and healing the human race. Child soldiers can rape and murder whole families and, in the moment, feel nothing.
And women get raped by college friends and acquaintances who don’t realize they are doing it.
We can not and should not as a society try to prevent all forms of harm at all times, but we should use harm as an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the difference between right and wrong. In other words, a mass outcry from women in our society saying that they feel terrified and sick — that is, that they are experiencing suffering and harm — should tell us something about the actions that created that experience for them.
It’s actually one of the deep flaws of our culture that men are socialized to hurt women and not realize it. We are trained — through the cultural stories we tell through film and other media, by the examples adults set, and sometimes by direct instruction — to pay less attention to women and their desires and, to the extent that we bother about female desire, to assume that women want to be dominated and pursued even after they have rejected attention.
I’ve been trying to imagine any woman I know making a sexual advance on a man who feels terrified and sicked and her not noticing. The fact that some men genuinely feel playful and innocent while touching a terrified and sickened woman is a massive cultural problem. That kind of disconnect with how another person is responding to your actions is terrifying.
It’s either scary or reassuring that most of these men who harass women are not sociopaths. They are merely men, a category of person who in this society is typically socialized to privilege his own desires over the experiences of the women around him, to — at best — require mere consent from his sexual partners while his own standard for sexual activity gets the much higher bar of enthusiasm.
In addition to being confused about whose experience is more important in a situation of harassment, the author of “Warlock Hunt” is confused about what makes society more equitable and just. She is concerned that when women demand to be asked before being touched by their bosses and coworkers that men will find it too difficult and unpleasant to even be around women, and that this will lead to women being excluded from more spaces and having less power.
We have power now, she says. We don’t want to go back to the time when men couldn’t talk about sex in front of us, she says.
There never was such a time, of course. Only someone who buys wholeheartedly into the version of society presented by novels of manners could believe that we ever lived in world where men were never vulgar in the presence of women. Some men, of course, didn’t talk about sex in front of their daughters (some still don’t), but many of those same men talked dirty while raping their servant women in the pantry.
Of course, the author also points to our movies as evidence that as recently as a a few years ago, we didn’t believe that actions we are now terming “harassment” were wrong. So she is someone who routinely swallows the version of society presented by fiction.
I’m not arguing that our fiction doesn’t tell us about ourselves and our society. That may be its main function. But Hollywood movies, not incidentally written, directed, and produced primarily by men, and not just any men but men like Harvey Weinstein, have never told the true stories of women’s sexual experiences. I don’t disagree with the author’s observation that movies taught us that harassment and stalking and non-consensual and barely-consensual and this-is-really-tricky-gray-consensual sexual activity wasn’t wrong, and actually that it’s sexy.
I just disagree that we should believe them.
The author points as evidence to women who talk about how it wasn’t until this “Me Too” movement that they even realized what they had experienced over the years was harassment. She talks about how scary it is for men that women can come to these post-facto conclusions and take action and create repercussions.
Yes, it is scary for men. It is scary when you lose your immunity for the harmful things you did to others in the past.
I have noticed a worrying trend in rape apology where the fact that many women don’t process their experiences of harm in the moment of that harm — and the fact that they may not use language like “rape” until sometimes years later — is used as ammunition against taking their experiences seriously.
This is very, very wrong. Any therapist who has worked with abuse victims can tell you that it is a classic pattern for trauma to cause confusion, that it is a classic pattern for victims of abuse to justify or deny that abuse even to themselves while it is happening and sometimes for a long time afterwards. This is true even in the most black-and-white situations you can imagine, like when men beat their wives up so badly they end up almost dead and in the emergency room.
Trauma is fog. The fact that many women are reinterpreting their past experiences as harassment or abuse in this moment is not evidence of mass hysteria. Coming to terms with past experiences is one step in processing trauma. If you have a tendency to disbelieve women when they speak of their experiences, talk to a combat veteran who has gotten EMDR therapy.
If women — no, people — could process their traumatic experiences instantaneously, there would be much, much less acquaintance rape. Victims would have the clarity in the moment to communicate their “no” clearly.
But we don’t process trauma instantaneously, and the onus is on people not to rape people, not on people not to get raped. Similarly, the onus is on people not to harass, rather than on people not to get harassed. The author thinks this is hard and unfair, because it’s really hard to tell if a woman wants to be kissed, and it’s “insane” if you think otherwise.
It’s only insane to think you can know what someone else wants if you buy into the Hollywood narrative that sexiness and play is only possible when verbal communication is minimized. How interesting, then, that the communities most dedicated to “play” in sexuality, most creative and expressive in their sexual play, are also the communities that recognize, value, discuss, and respect consent the most strongly.
The author may not be familiar with any kink subcultures. In “The Warlock Hunt,” at least, her language is very hetero- and monogamy-normative. But it would be very worthwhile for her to have a conversation with someone from one of these communities.
It would also be worthwhile for her to talk to someone who has experienced harassment, assuming she is willing to actually listen to that person. I got the impression reading her article that she simply hadn’t bothered. She is not only dismissive of the public apologies given by harassers; she actually finds them creepy, and even compares them to the forced public apologies of oppressive totalitarian states.
This is actually a really sad perspective. Apologies can be incredibly powerful. For a woman who has experienced trauma from harassment, abuse, rape, etc., a genuine apology from the perpetrator is meaningful and healing. I have spoken with victims of abuse who say that what they want very strongly from the person who hurt them is for that person to come to terms with the harm they caused, to apologize genuinely, and to stand against that harm from themselves and others in the future.
Perhaps the authors deepest confusion is about power. She likes the “power” she and her cleavage have over men who are sexually attracted to her. That’s a fragile power. Only circumstance protects her from men who, resenting that power and finding an opportunity, would take it from her by force.
Perhaps the tipsy mentor that grabbed her ass at the Christmas party was observant and empathetic and correctly read her signalling that she would be amused and flattered. Perhaps he didn’t bother to read her because it wasn’t about her and he only thought of his own desires and he did that to other women who were terrified and sickened and the author’s “power” was just an illusion at the end of the day.
Regardless of which story is true, I suggest that the author consider instead the benefits of organized political power. Women are an interest group that, if united, could transform the world.
I don’t think “Me Too” will transform the world. There are too many people left outside of its sphere of power, and I know the counterwave is coming. In a small way, this author is a part of that counterwave.
She certainly participates in the classic hyperbole of defenders of the status quo, comparing the “Me Too” movement with the mass hysteria of witch hunts, in which human beings were literally burned alive. By contrast, the consequences of “Me Too” for alleged harassers and abusers have been quite minor. Some people have lost their jobs or had their reputations damaged. Harvey Weinstein, who had ex-intelligence agents protecting him while he systematically collaborated with other Hollywood power brokers to repeatedly rape and assault women over the course of many years, is a free man.
But Roy Moore will not be a U.S. Senator, and I think “Me Too” had something to do with that, and that’s not nothing. And I think that the author is right, that was have made progress as a society, and that women do have more power now. Women have their own checking accounts, and raping your wife is illegal (even if we aren’t in a position to actually hold anyone accountable for it), and there are female Supreme Court Justices and powerful male allies. I think women have enough power that if Johnny says, If you don’t let me touch you I won’t play with you anymore, women can respond:
Well, then, take your toys and go home.
