Also this week, Harper's Magazine published a heart-rending, confused and maddening essay by former public radio host John Hockenberry. Appearing in the magazine’s October issue, it is bleakly titled “Exile.”

In August 2017 — months before the Harvey Weinstein story broke — Hockenberry departed his job as host of “The Takeaway,” a morning news show on public radio. At the time, his reason for leaving was unclear, but in December, the writer Suki Kim published a story in The Cut in which several women accused Hockenberry of sexual harassment. (Kim also reported her own uncomfortable experiences with him.) According to a report by WNYC, which co-produces and airs “The Takeaway,” a confidential allegation of harassment had been lodged against him before his contract was terminated, and for years, people he worked with had warned station executives that Hockenberry “bullied colleagues, creating a hostile work environment.”

Public vilification was clearly traumatic for Hockenberry. He writes of going from “someone recognized on the streets of New York City as a journalist, author, and advocate for people with disabilities” — he is a paraplegic — to a man terrified of public reproach. At some points in the essay, he takes responsibility for bad behavior toward female colleagues, some of whom he propositioned. At others he explains it away, ascribing it to out-of-fashion Byronic romanticism. But the most frustrating parts of “Exile” are where he casts himself as the victim of the women who spoke out against him.

“Only one of my accusers reached out or responded to my heartfelt queries,” he writes. (Why would they?) Elsewhere he describes his children’s experience of his disgrace as a “pain I wish on no one, not even my accusers.” He invokes his children repeatedly, furious at the toll the scandal is taking on them. Maybe he behaved offensively toward women, he allows, but asks, “Is a life sentence of unemployment without possibility of furlough, the suffering of my children, and financial ruin an appropriate consequence?”

Luckily, his unemployment isn’t total; he is writing for a major magazine after enduring nine months of obscurity. But in the nearly 7,000 words of his essay, as he demands that we consider his misery and embarrassment, he never really grapples with the misery and embarrassment he caused, never thinks deeply about how he affected the lives of the women who changed jobs to escape his advances. Similarly, Maher mourns the loss of Franken in the Senate — as do I — but seems to lack empathy for the woman who is discombobulated by suddenly feeling the hand of a man she admires on her backside.

Reading Hockenberry’s essay, it hit me: I feel sorry for a lot of these men, but I don’t think they feel sorry for women, or think about women’s experience much at all. And maybe that’s why the discussion about #MeToo and forgiveness never seems to go anywhere, because men aren’t proposing paths for restitution. They’re asking why women won’t give them absolution.

I’m not interested in seeing these #MeToo castoffs engage in Maoist struggle sessions to purge their patriarchal impulses. But maybe they’d find it easier to resurrect their careers if it seemed like they’d reflected on why women are so furious in the first place, and perhaps even offered ideas to make things better. What ideas? I don’t know, but they’re the ones who are supposed to be irreplaceably creative, and they’ve got time on their hands.

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