Women Are Reportedly as Angry as They Were at the Start of MeToo. The Media Wants Them to Blame Men; They Should Also Blame the Democrats (And Their Media)
Now that MeToo has been revealed as a corporate-driven sham that predominantly helped the wealthy, liberal corporate media needs to find someone else to blame for its failings and shortcomings.
A new poll released by Gallup last week, written up by The Washington Post and syndicated around other corporate print media outlets, indicates American women’s feelings about the treatment of their gender is at the lowest point since MeToo exploded in the fall of 2017.
Of course, these feelings relate to more than how society reacts to allegations of sexual misconduct, though The Post article takes pains to connect the opinion stats to the trajectory of MeToo, as well as the apparent callousness of men. Here’s the headline: “U.S. women are largely disastisfied with how they’re treated. Most men don’t see a problem.”
The demographic breakouts are mostly unsurprising. Republican women (in fact, a sizeable majority) consider the treatment of women to be satisfactory at twice the rate that Democratic women do. White women report higher rates of satisfaction than Black and Hispanic women. The percentage of men who think their own gender is being treated fairly is dropping as well, but whatever, who cares about them? 61 percent of men are satisfied with women’s treatment in society (compared to 44 percent of women), but that figure drops once you ask men under 50 (55 percent), Black men (41 percent) or Hispanic men (50 percent). Oddly, Asians and Natives were apparently not consulted for this poll.
About midway through the article, the writer makes a sneaky little sleight of hand that probably most people won’t pick up on (bolded for emphasis):
While #MeToo has drawn greater awareness around misconduct and harassment, Balakrishnan believes the pandemic has also exposed the burdens placed on women in particular, contributing to the all-time low in their satisfaction with societal treatment of their gender.
Whoa, whoa, whoa - what’s that? AWARENESS? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought MeToo was a great societal RECKONING? At least, that’s what liberal journalists, academics, celebrities, and cultural warriors spent the last several years breathlessly telling us. Was it possible to read an article about MeToo from late 2017 until the beginning of 2020 that described it as anything less than a historical reckoning?
A few notable things happened to MeToo since the start of 2020: the public watched as the liberal activist and the liberal corporate media class - more than a little overlap between the two - attached a wildly different standard to Joe Biden (and, for a while, Andrew Cuomo) than every other man accused during the height of MeToo. They watched a Democratic Congresswoman who had to step down for her own MeToo scandal paint herself as a blameless victim and be rewarded by corporate interests for doing so. The public was informed the leader of Times Up privately helped Andrew Cuomo smear one of his accusers. Roberta Kaplan did step down from Times Up after being met with public pressure to do so, but she continues to represent Moira Donegan in The Shitty Media Men lawsuit, a fact that corporate media reporters, in a stunning conflict of interest, do not mention in any of their stories about the shortcomings of Times Up.
All these hypocrises are damning, no doubt, but they’re only part of the problem. For working class women, what did MeToo accomplish? Sure, it’s great that Harvey Weinstein is in jail, and that R. Kelly is likely to receive a hefty sentence as well following his recent conviction. It’s good that hundreds of powerful men in influential fields have been held accountable and deposed. But how much did it change the lives of your average woman, beyond some vague sense of awareness that things might improve? Even The New York Times had to admit earlier this year that MeToo hasn’t manifested much progress in the legal system, where prosecution rates for rape remain low. Of course, your average bougie Times reader would just conclude the only solution is more reckless callout culture and flattening of offenses, though this isn’t a viable solution for most women.
So, yes, MeToo was a reckoning for people who operate in high-status, public-facing jobs and industries and corporations (and on Twitter) where liberal values predominate. It was a reckoning for upper middle class and wealthy white women, who by far reaped most of the benefits of little to no scrutiny and questioning being attached to their claims of harassment and abuse. It was a reckoning for representation in TV shows, movies, music, and corporate boardrooms. It was a reckoning for middle class and wealthy men, most of whom desperately hoped they wouldn’t be outed and threw those who were under the bus regardless of what they actually did.
One might think all of this reckoning, and the departure of Donald Trump from the White House, would make liberal and minority women feel better about their place in society. But nope, this is all just background noise and lip service compared to material conditions, which only improved for a fortunate - and in some cases opportunistic - few. Are working class women helped as the professional-managerial class absolves itself of widespread abuse? Are they helped as the PMC and ruling class make themselves more diverse by race, gender, sexuality, as well as more outwardly righteous on identity issues? Not a whole lot. The PMC strengthens its position and helps the interests of capital and powerful industries while working class women are left with… awareness.
Corporate liberal interests stoked a moral panic (yes, it was about a valid issue, but a moral panic nonetheless), propagandized at you that it was a societal reckoning so you wouldn’t question it, recklessly destroyed some good and innocent people (while telling you cancel culture doesn’t exist), protected any accused man vitally important to them, swept any missteps under the rug, then a few years later… they tell you it was just to raise awareness all along.
What a crock of shit.
This Gallup poll and its write-up do another sneaky thing: they introduce affirmative action for women as the next battleground in the gender wars. But who has always benefitted most from affirmative action? You got it: middle class and wealthy white women.