How the #MeToo Movement Harmed (and Continues to Harm) Women

Commentary Like inflation, the effects of the #MeToo movement will be felt for years to come. The author and public speaker Margaret J. Wheatley once said that without reflection, “we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” She wasn’t talking about the #MeToo movement, but you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. What started off as a valiant attempt to address sexual harassment in the workplace quickly morphed into something truly insidious. It all started with a seemingly innocuous tweet from American actress Alyssa Milano. “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status,” she suggested, “we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” The rest, as they say, is sordid history. Contrary to popular belief, the social movement, which started in 2017, is still very much alive. #MeToo quickly became synonymous with the idea of “toxic masculinity,” a scientifically unsound notion that seeks to pathologize a number of qualities associated with men. This insatiable urge to demonize manliness has directly contributed to America’s current crisis of masculinity. Females are more empowered than ever before. While men drown in a sea of despair, women soar high above, ecstatic in their new-found freedom. The truth, though, paints a much different picture. Demonstrators participate in the #MeToo Survivors’ March in response to several high-profile sexual harassment scandals, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Nov. 12, 2017. (David McNew/Getty Images) Not only has the #MeToo movement harmed men, but it has also, on the whole, done a great deal of harm to women. As researchers at Harvard have previously shown, the backlash to the movement has been severe, with many men and women saying they would be less willing than previously to hire women, especially attractive women. Moreover, in the coming years, both male and female respondents said they expected to see more women excluded from work-related social interactions, such as office parties and after-work drinks. Men expressed a strong reluctance to have one-on-one meetings with women. Sadly, the “Mike Pence rule” (never, ever be alone with a woman other than your significant other, unless you want to be accused of ungodly things) is now the American rule. More recently, the academic Marina Gertsberg published a fascinating paper discussing the many ways in which #MeToo continues to punish women by turning workplaces, once places of genuine collaboration, into combat zones. This is particularly evident in academia, she noted, “where the perceived risk of sexual harassment accusations for men is high.” Not surprisingly, universities, places where academese reigns supreme, are home to the most “ambiguous” policies imaginable, noted Gertsberg. This exposes men to a whole host of claims and accusations. The social movement, she suggests, has strongly “disadvantaged the career opportunities of women.” The law of unintended consequences is very much real, and it’s very much alive in the world of academia. As Gertsberg added, the lack of collaboration has done more harm to women than men. A bitter pill to swallow for many female readers, no doubt. Once normal occurrences, like approaching a female colleague at work or approaching a female at a bar, are now risks that an increasing number of men are simply not prepared to take. Although dangerous men exist and sexual harassment is a real problem, the #MeToo movement pitted men against women, encouraging them to embrace adversarial roles. The movement, in more ways than one, created intersexual warfare. This is a tragedy of epic proportions. Men and women have different strengths and different weaknesses. When we unite, we tend to complement each other. Throughout history, competition has mostly been intrasexual in nature. That is, males have competed with males for access to females, and vice versa. We are, to this day, still driven by this deep-rooted impulse. Men still perceive other men to be their greatest threat. Similarly, as the magnum opus “Mean Girls” (and science) has taught us, other women are, more often than not, a woman’s worst enemy. In fact, according to research carried out by the American Psychological Association (APA), women “tend to cooperate more than men when interacting with the opposite sex.” Alas, largely because of the #MeToo movement, opportunities to collaborate with men are now at a premium. The workplace has become a veritable minefield of misunderstandings and misgivings. Has the #MeToo movement hurt women more than men? Professionally, the answer appears to be yes. On the whole, though, both sexes have been badly damaged. More worryingly, we, as a society, may never fully recover from the effects. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.