#MeTooism

I was uncomfortable with the #Me Too campaign right out of the gate. It seemed like an answer to Harvey Weinstein's publicist's prayer, spreading the blame around so thin that his scandal would become unimportant. As he is so closely tied to Democratic and liberal causes, most especially the Clintons, I wondered if this might actually be some astroturf campaign cooked up by one of the many DC firms that specialise in engineering the news. Perhaps it is.

I had several women I am quite fond of post "Me too" on their FB pages, and once it's gone that far, I wouldn't be just declaring an opinion if I were critical, I would seem to be undermining them.  I didn't want to be dismissive.  I like them. They are not the sort to make mountains out of molehills. I did mention pretty quickly that I did not want the pain of my PTSD clients (mostly female, but male as well) to be inadvertently buried by making harassment the equivalent of rape. Responses to that were varied, but no one seemed too put out by my cautioning in that way.

I resigned myself to simply watching the whole campaign deteriorate in to one of those over-politicised nonsense affairs where the perps got to sneak into the background while the professional victims - who are seldom the greatest sufferers, in my biased opinion - got to commandeer the cause for their "larger" goals of culture, justice, and political demands. (I have trouble viewing things as "larger" than individual justice.) After One Great Hour of Moaning, it would all recede to the victims still hurting without much support or encouragement, accompanied by one more turn of the ratchet in the culture wars. Shrug. Sigh. It is the way of the world.

I think it's actually turning out a little better than that.  I concede that all those manipulative political things are happening. But I think it is weaker than the diluters hoped, and something more positive is happening as well. The circle of accusation against specific perpetrators is growing.  Some of it is of only mild importance when compared to rape or violence or extortion. Some of the accusations are probably untrue or exaggerated as well, and innocent (or fairly-innocent) people will have to exert all their effort to beat back unfairness. Perhaps I am naively optimistic that justice will 75% prevail in 100% of individual cases. Yet some of this is criminal behavior being brought to light, and hypocrites being exposed.