I hesitated before writing this, then realised my hesitation only helped those who should not be helped. So here we go.

I recently received an email from a publicist asking if I would like to meet to talk about his clients. I often get these requests, but this was different: I knew the publicist.

When I was 18, he was one of my university lecturers. It was just silly things at first: staring at me, touching me under the slimmest of pretexts. At a loss as to how to respond, I did nothing. This was apparently taken as encouragement, and the touches became notes asking for dates. Not daily notes. But more than a teacher should give to a student, which is any number from one upwards.

I knew this was not a big deal – I’d watched the Anita Hill hearings, I knew what real sexual harassment was. And yet I couldn’t see how to get out of this without risking either my grades or his career. I worried about him. Maybe he, the teacher, didn’t know the rules the way I, a teenager, did.

In the end, nothing happened. The course finished, he moved on and so did I. But I occasionally thought how embarrassed he must be now. Pestering a student for dates! He must feel so bad.

But apparently not. His breezy email said that he remembered me as “a sparky student”. He had “greatly enjoyed our encounters”. Really, we must do lunch. And I realised something then that should have been obvious to me all along, which was that he didn’t feel bad now, because he didn’t feel bad then.

It’s almost a year since Harvey Weinstein was first publicly accused of harassment and rape (charges he denies), kicking off the #MeToo movement that was supposed to change gender relations for ever. Various US publications have inadvertently marked this anniversary by publishing plaintive personal essays – not by the victims of sexual harassment, but by the accused themselves.

Jian Ghomeshi arrives at a court in Toronto with his lawyer, Marie Henein. Photograph: Mark Blinch/AP

In the New York Review of Books (NYRB), the former Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi writes that he’d always been a good guy – he interviewed Gloria Steinem! – but success had made him a “lothario”. This, I guess, is the new name for someone accused of harassment or assault by multiple women. Up to 20 women have accused Ghomeshi of slapping, punching, biting, choking or smothering; none complained of him being a “lothario”. In 2016, he was acquitted of four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking, relating to three women. Another charge was dropped after Ghomeshi apologised for “sexually inappropriate” behaviour. He denies all the allegations.

The Fall Of Men is the NYRB’s coverline, although men don’t seem to have fallen so far that they won’t get commissioned to write 3,500 words about how great they are. In Harpers magazine, the American journalist John Hockenberry, who was accused of sexual harassment and bullying, has written a 7,000-word article in which he claims he is merely guilty of “being a misguided romantic”. In the article, he admits propositioning colleagues, but denies coercion or bullying. He also complains that “only one of my accusers reached out”, as though it were their job to stop him feeling bad. Rarely have the limitations of a personal essay – as opposed to an interview – been more exposed: claims go unchallenged, inconvenient details are omitted.

“Nobody has quite figured out what should happen in cases like [Ghomeshi’s],” NYRB’s editor, Ian Buruma, has said, “where you have been legally acquitted but are still judged as undesirable in public opinion... That’s an issue we should be thinking about.”

Rest assured, Ian: we are. Almost as soon as these men left the stage, people have been discussing how quickly they could return. (Ironically, Buruma himself has now stepped down as editor, saying he has been ‘publicly pilloried’, aka held to account.) As a “lawyer close to the White House” said this week, in response to the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (which he denies), “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man should be worried. We can all be accused of something.” Look what you’ve done, women: you’ve made men feel bad. (Or maybe not that bad: Louis CK has already returned to standup.)

Imagine the narcissism required to be told, by multiple women, how bad you made them feel, and respond with: “I should now write about me.” It takes more than a hashtag to break that kind of entitlement. So while #MeToo has made some men re-examine their behaviour, plenty of others who thought their behaviour was fine before clearly still think it is fine now.

The storyline should not be about male redemption, or men’s feelings. So I wrote back to my former lecturer and told him I did not want lunch and, in fact, I did not want to see him at all, ever. Because it is not my responsibility to make sure he’s OK.