President Trump proclaimed to his viewers at a press conference outside the White House a few months ago that, due to the #MeToo movement, it is a very scary time to be a man right now. Pushback like this against the #MeToo movement has continuously exploded over social media.
I even saw a video, created by a group of mothers, warning against the #MeToo movement, eliciting fear and sympathy from viewers about the possibility of their sons being falsely accused of sexual misconduct- despite the fact that it is far more “inevitable” that their daughters will be sexually assaulted. I wondered, where is that same desire to protect their daughters?
The fear of false accusations is a real fear. It is terrifying to consider the possibility of your life unraveling due to a completely false allegation (even though the justice system is still stacked in your favor). That truly is scary, and for those to which it happens, it is devastating. I’m not trying to invalidate it. But, there is a glaring issue with the way many men’s reactions to the #MeToo movement have played out. It’s a term called “weaponized victimhood.” Weaponized victimhood occurs when someone who has either enacted violence or benefits from systemic power flips the script and claims to be the victim of that very violence or system of power.
Men like Trump have found and used the most powerful tool they could possibly wield in order to push back against the #MeToo movement: claiming that they themselves are the victims of it. This makes men so afraid of false allegations that they are willing to sacrifice the well-being of the vast number of women and survivors of all genders who have been harassed and assaulted.
After all, fear is the most efficient tactic for enforcing an ideology. Trump knows how to offer victimhood to those who have the least claim to it. He does this by insinuating that survivors are not the real victims of the #MeToo movement, men are.
This message connects with men because the fear really does exist. It plays off of this fear and gives men a reason to band together in opposition to the #MeToo movement. It is a very powerful tool, because it paints the idea of a false accusation as something almost inevitable.
Actually, it is quite the contrary. According to a statistical analysis done by the Crown Prosecution Service, it is estimated that false accusations make up only 0.62 percent of rape cases in court.Picture it this way: if we gathered a room full of hundreds of people, and asked all of the men who had been falsely accused of rape to raise their hands, there would most likely be none, maybe one.
If we asked all of the women, not to mention the trans and non-binary people, to raise their hands if they have been sexually harassed, made to feel sexually unsafe, groped, sexually assaulted or raped at some point in their life, almost every single hand in the room would go up.
Statistically, your fear as a cisgender man of being falsely accused is much less likely to be realized than my fear of being raped. Even more frighteningly, your fear of being falsely accused as a cisgender man is actually less statistically likely than you being sexually assaulted yourself.
I know it’s scary to worry about the possibility of being falsely accused, and it’s okay to feel that fear. But it’s important to understand that men are not the victims of #MeToo. The narrative of power has been deliberately flipped, but it is survivors of all genders who have finally experienced some form of liberation and justice through #MeToo.
And so, I have a question for these men to consider: why do you care more about the few men who will be falsely accused than about the majority of women who will be and are, every day, harassed at work, cat-called, groped, assaulted and raped?
Well, this aged like milk.
Yeah, get punished in the family courts for years, lose your kids, your home, be financially destroyed… then, be subjected to a ridiculous child support order for kids you cannot see because somebody harnessed a broken system to take everything from you, and be told “get your ass to work, this is how much you need to earn, and be forced to give 25-50% to the person that has done it to you so they can use it to keep doing it to you or GO TO JAIL. Rinse and repeat until your kids are 18, and good luck finding somebody new, IF you can ever trust anybody again? Here’s the part where I might surprise you, I don’t entirely blame the women doing this. I think it’s natural when separating to be concerned for the future and want to come out of it OK. This is where to filthy divorce attorneys and crooked family courts step in to harness people’s hurt and fear. First they separate you, then they take your money to fight with each other. they frighten you, and tell you how to game the system as they are gaming you. One day, once they’ve taken everything from both of you, your children have grown up in turmoil, and you been squeezed for every drop, they simply move on to the next unrealized disaster. It’s an awful system of hurt and pain, but somebody needs to let them in, and that’s not always a woman, there’s some terrible men out there too, but women initiate 80% of divorces, so without pinning it on one side, the “balance” in heavily slanted in the age of #MeToo. We may be a minority in the grand scheme of things, but try it some time, it’s brutal, and can go on for more than a decade. High conflict divorces with child hostages don’t end anymore, not even when the kids turn 18. In many cases those arrears will follow you another 5-10 years, if you survive?