Surprise: Misbehavior Gets Punished

I've talked about the #metoo stuff before. As a general rule, #metoo achieved nothing. And now the backlash is clear.

By way of background, the #metoo thing was an attempt by a bunch of actresses who slept their way to the top to create a national movement as a front for clearing their names by screaming rape. It morphed into a bitch session for hypersensitive women, almost all of whom worked in television or film. Their goals were to (1) change society to create "guilt upon accusation" for "crimes" against women, (2) an end to due process, in particular the allowing of any sort of defense, (3) instituting a social death penalty for these crimes, including permanent unemployment, (4) lowering what constituted such a crime from rape-rape to "he seemed creepy" and (5) eliminating any sort of time limit so that women could now raise allegations decades later.

In the heady days of the beginning, it seemed that they would get these things. A handful of famous well-known bastards were accused, a couple resigned, a couple were forced out by their boards and several actors were brought down. Harvey Weistein was charged criminally for a dozen rapes. Attempts to defend these men were shrilly shot down. Even those claiming innocence pleaded how double-plus-good it was that they had been accused.

But then it all went wrong. People (particularly foreign actresses) called this stupid and defended these men. The automatic resignations stopped as did the automatic firings. Due process not only came back, it came back MUCH stronger than it has been in lieu of the college rape lowering of standards. At that point, the resignations and firings stopped. According to some studies less than 400 men were ever officially endangered and only a handful ever actually punished. Soon, it became clear that all the goals of #metoo failed. Even Harvey Weinstein looks like he's going to get off. In fact, the man who has been hit the hardest (apart from Matt Lauer who went down because he's an ass no one liked) is Kevin Spacey and his crime was preying on young gay men... not women. And even he's coming back.

Then the women running the movement were exposed in big bad ways. One was selling drugs. Another was caught doing the same harassing she was screaming about. Yet another is defending a son accused of rape. Soon they were all in-fighting and making claims and demands that flew in the face of this movement. Add the fact that it barely left Hollywood and this thing was not only DOA, it was counter-productive. Indeed, if anything this movement strengthened the defenses men could raise and increased societal doubt (a natural consequence of any movement going too far). Then they did things like defend Joe Biden using each of the defenses they claimed was invalid. Hypocrisy never plays well.

Now comes word of an even bigger backlash, one that should have been entirely expected, but shocks them nevertheless. A poll last month found that 60% of male manager are "nervous" about interacting with women in the workplace and won't engage in one-on-one meetings with them, won't socialize with them and won't mentor them. That's a rise from 32% before the #metoo movement. Surprise.

Now, as a general rule, you need to take polls with a grain of salt. It's easy to answer "yes" when you wouldn't really do that in the real world. But I think what we can take from this is that men are twice as likely now to be cautious around women in the work place that they think are likely to take advantage of this or women who are hypersensitive. In that end, that's good and bad. It's good if it weeds these women out and keeps them from becoming managers where they can mess things up for everyone. It's bad for other women who are not like these women and still will get caught in the blowback. Unfortunately, this is was group movements cause: they make people view the entire group with suspicion. And lest you think this means nothing, consider what Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks COO, said. She's a smart and insightful woman, and she worried:

"The vast majority of managers and senior leaders are men. If they are reluctant even to meet one-on-one with women, there’s no way women can get an equal shot at proving themselves. ... We’re in a bad place — no one’s ever gotten promoted without a one-on-one meeting, I feel confident in saying that. Senior men right now are nine times more hesitant to travel with a woman and six times more likely to hesitate to have a work dinner."

That's the legacy of #metoo: (1) a strengthening of due process for men, (2) an increase in societal doubt in harassment claims, and (3) a wedge between male managers and female employees. Nice work, ladies.