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I like to think I am as defensive and obtuse as your average straight white male, with a healthy dollop of paranoid libertarianism for good measure.

So ever since the #MeToo thing arose I have been waiting for the promised descent into excess, the feminist reign of terror wherein perfectly decent chaps are hauled off for the kinds of minor indiscretions — the misconstrued remark, the harmless flirtation, the moment of madness in an otherwise blameless life — of which anyone might be guilty. I am still waiting.

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With perhaps one or two exceptions, all of the cases of which I have read have been mercifully unambiguous.

The stories emerge not from the shadows of the dark web, but from meticulous reporting in mainstream news outlets. There are, almost invariably, not one but multiple accusers, unrelated to each other, who in most cases told someone about it at the time; the behaviour alleged is not debatable or borderline, but of a kind nearly everyone could agree was way over the line. And, as one has learned, where there is room for doubt, it is best to wait: the first-day story is almost never the end of it.