The #MeToo movement continues to fluctuate, dipping and swelling with the news cycle, identifying powerful members of the media, politics, and corporations, abusive enough to garner a slanderous lead but perhaps not enough to receive a guilty verdict. The origins of the movement initially seemed pure and pointed: Could anyone doubt Harvey Weinstein was an abuser? However, with proven guilty verdicts and jail time has also come an onslaught of women accusing former friends or partners of everything from rape and sexual assault to verbal abuse, catcalling, and unwanted flirting.
While there is not a lot of daylight between these things, there is some. It is precious, it’s little, and it’s a shade of gray, but there’s enough difference and the #MeToo movement needs to find it, label it, and identify a plan to deal appropriately with each variance. Allowing all these situations to continue to blur together is to let some men off the hook when they shouldn’t be, and to allow other women (who have simply been scorned or on the other end of a bad date) to falsely accuse a man, altering his reputation forever.
Take, for example, the recent news report that the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, had sexually assaulted a previous girlfriend. Further reports showed that in actuality, the man had grabbed the rear end of a friend at a party in his home, the two had remained friends, and months later, the friend called the police on Frieden. I’m no defender of pervy men or unwanted butt-grabs, but did this warrant a charge of sexual abuse? Christina Hoff Sommers — defender of boys, men, and wrecker of radical feminism — calls the accuser a #MeToo artist, and it’s easy to see why.
Look again at the news stories developing around Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is also deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison is smack-dab in the middle of a run for Minnesota attorney general. Despite moving in with him three years ago, Karen Monahan, a previous girlfriend, is now accusing him of verbal and emotional (specifically narcissistic) abuse. Narcissism is a real disorder, as is the abuse someone with that learned disorder dishes out, but with many stories lumped into the #MeToo movement, this too causes pause — both for the movement and the media which covers it.
First, while some members of the media are covering the Ellison story, it’s been downplayed significantly compared to Republicans also accused of various kinds of abuse. This bias is commonplace now, but still worth noting. If abuse is abuse and women are to be believed, political affiliation should be ignored and the media should be dedicated to covering it regardless of party.
Second, and more importantly, embedded within the story of Keith Ellison and many other high-profile but perhaps not exactly A-list romances lay a series of uncomfortable questions the right and the left need to answer: What is emotional abuse? Does being abusive preclude someone from office? If so, we need to identify the difference between abuse and a bad breakup. How? How can the media, political parties, and other corporations be consistent? When does abuse revealed become exploitation of a movement?
Typically these things would not be for the public or the media to determine, but often people in emotionally abusive relationships can’t see the toxicity of the situation and need help from friends on the outside. Further, if these people are presenting themselves as public servants and trying to garner the votes of thousands to win office, what was perhaps an issue between two consenting adults becomes an issue about which the public needs to know.
Men are no more monsters than women are completely innocent and virtuous. The media and particularly the political playground fears nuance more than a slow news story. Finding the middle ground in the #MeToo movement, however impossible that seems to be, must happen. Otherwise, innocent lives will be forever marred by false accusations, and actual victims will forever live in the shame and fear that their accuser went free for no good reason other than that he or she was labeled a liar.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
