Questions About Alyssa Milano’s Hashtag Campaign? Me Too.
Is the problem lack of awareness, or is it simply selective awareness?
I see a few tentative questions floating around about the #MeToo posts. I have a couple as well. I don’t question the prevalence of sexual harassment or of sexual assault, (that is clear and has been for some time) but the social media trend concerns me. Granted, most social media trends concern me.
I wrote up my concerns, such as definition issues and inclusiveness problems, and then realized that one fundamental flaw stood out. Furthermore, unlike the other concerns, I had not seen this flaw mentioned.
The hashtag is designed to fix an awareness problem. Did anyone really not know, however, that sexual harassment or sexual assault are problems? Look at the news and events of the past few years and see that we do not have an awareness problem. What we have are significant reporting problems.
Reporters and social justice warriors (often one and the same in these days of advocacy journalism) are so determined to see the story they expect to see — say, of predatory frat boys — that they do not tell the public the stories that are there. They quash exposés on the cesspools that are Hollywood or DC. Then to fill the gaps, they make up stories about what they expect to see. Or, sometimes, authorities ignore evidence of predatory grooming rings because it is not politically correct.
In all of this, real victims have no cover, either because media or authorities won’t back them up or because media so hyped an empty story that victims without solid physical evidence have no credibility.
Women don’t stay quiet because no one knows it happens. Women stay quiet when no one will back them up. (Ditto for guys by the way, who hardly get any press or support at all because people generally believe that you can’t sexually assault a man.) We don’t seek truth. We seek confirmation of what we already believe.
Like so many hashtags before it, #metoo is a well-intended attempt to virtually connect in the actually disconnected digital age. But like all the hashtags before it, when it is over, what will it have accomplished?
We could say it is harmless commiseration and move on, but frankly, we do this a lot. Count me among the populace that does not think this is all that healthy. There’s another hashtag I heard the other day, while I was touring an all-but-forsaken part of my city. I heard it because it isn’t really a hashtag. It’s a play on hashtags. #GSD Getting S Done (use the s-word suitable to your cursing level).
