The half-truths, repeated, authenticated themselves.

Joan Didion, from The Women’s Movement 1972.

A recent article in The Hindu by Vaishna Roy titled Negotiating the Faultlines undertakes, what seems at first sight, a tough self-critique of #MeTooIndia by admitting to opportunist allegations, lies, and false accusations within MeToo as “unravelled by a series of Tweets over the last few weeks.” Roy’s article introduces a conversation into #MeToo, if not about MeToo.

It is no mea culpa, but Roy admits that “not all women had been entirely honest when jumping on the #MeToo bandwagon;” that “at least one had played a leading role in the “amplifying” of complaints (amplifiers being those “who call for accusations, collect, and broadcast them”. This unnamed “amplifier’s” own story has , we are told, “now been challenged.”

The absence of veracity in many, many of the MeToo stories is not new, nor is it news. Linguistically, ideologically, and contextually mangled self-exculpatory blame narratives about sexuality, about misdirected provocations, opportunist exaggerations that screen out context, desire, vulnerabilities, dilemmas and affection have been heard over and over again in MeToo narratives. Also, smear campaigns conducted through gossip and slander. Roy’s example of “a woman who deleted her part of an online chat to make it seem like a one-sided solicitation, and another one about “concealing what might be a history of consensual sexting” are not“questionable narratives” to be brushed aside lightly. They are viciously manipulative lies, deceit, and falsehood.

Validation instead of verification has been media’s role here. All MeToo accusers were praised for their courage in coming forward with their stories while also represented as “victims,” while the MeTooed have been simply outside representation.

Roy’s essay is also a masterpiece of grammatical passivity, so there are no protagonists, no names, no agents. For example, here is the justification offered for the false accusations: “It looks now as if many young women felt forced to submit questionable narratives just to participate in a heady moment in history.” No personal responsibility here? Forced by who? Forced by unfathomable, invisible historical forces? Forced by social-media feminism 4.0? Or, forced by affluent Hollywood celebrities?

After New York Times outed the serial sexual harassment of Hollywood media Mogul Harvey Weinstein — the most open secret in Hollywood, the linguistic activism of the MeToo movement emerged within the post-90s context of the victim as a central figure in International justice formations and NGOS, which sought to organize justice outside the courts via social-media testimonies, for example, movements like #SaveOurDaughters.”

#MeToo was quickly mobilized with the articulated goal of creating a space where women could “call out” their harassers publicly and expose them to public shaming in order to bring, as it were, “the conversation about sexual harassment to the front and center.” A conversation is not exactly what occurred, but the strategically named phrase “calling out your abuser” is the rhetorical political genius of #MeToo hashtag activism.

When you think about it, it is a tectonic shift in justice, that what counts is not the substance of the accusation but rather the multiplicity of MeToo hashtag appearances.The media convicts, and the burden of proof is reversed, so that the accused have to prove their innocence. No conversation, and yes, a “mud-fest” with the added real bonus of bringing down the careers of many difficult and demanding bosses, editors, journalists in the workplace.

Roy is right to emphasize the importance of diligence in verification of stories. As Michelle Malkin puts it:

The role of the press should be verification, not validation.

Rape is a devastating crime. So is lying about it.

It’s not victim blaming to get to the bottom of the truth.

Don’t believe a gender. Believe evidence.

Not only was there no verification by the “amplifiers”, the media aided and abetted many of the revenge-based and opportunist allegations within MeToo to generate one more sensational news-cycle. The role of hearsay, gossip, and slander within MeToo cannot be overestimated. The first rule of slander, as we know, is to throw the accusation in the loudest possible way in the hope that at least something will stick. The media has become the new broker of this sort of prosecution, with unaccountably vast powers. Social media has been the Grand Jury in relation to MeToo with the power to turn an assertion into truth, and an accusation into an indictment.

The grounding assumption of #MeToo is that the fixed reality of sexual violence supercedes the substance of the accusation so that all allegations are jointly true, hence #BelieveWoman is the rallying cry of #MeToo.

For example, let us look at the display at the Golden Globe Awards from December 2018:

He said. She said . . . . He said. She said. . . . She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said.

The truth has power.The truth will not be threatened. The truth has a voice.

— The New York Times.

The message here is that your story of harassment is mixed together with the million other hashtags so that every victim’s story is equally important and audible as that of the celebrities who have authorized the movement. It is like getting a general amnesty for accusation with no burden of proof. No need to worry anymore about “he said, she said” of the judicial process, it’s contested or complex truth. The linguistic activism of #MeToo has had no grounding other than inclusion and repetition. Every #MeToo accusation multiplied tens of million times is jointly “true.” Time has no bearing in the sense there is no date limiting when an accusation can be registered, as we saw in the case of Ms. Ford’s MeToo accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanuagh, an accusation 20 years old and beyond the statute of limitations in any legal court.

The unsaid political field of #MeToo asks no questions about the truth of accusations nor differentiates between legitimate grievances and opportunist allegations. Libby Emmons asks:

Where does that leave the average guy who has been #MeToo’d? . . . Perhaps if we valued real honesty and empathy, there would be a definitive path forward. For now, it appears things will unravel as quickly as they came together.

When it comes to rejecting slogans and hashtags in favor of evidence and context and the implications of an extrajudicial media-led shaming, Pooja Bedi’s MenToo movement and Michelle Malkin are the voices that introduce a conversation about MeToo. They emphasize the importance of giving the accused a chance to respond and emphasize the importance of using intelligence to consider evidence or burden of proof.

It is here that Roy’s article disappoints because while it acknowledges that MeToo narratives come from a certain demographic — middle class and upper middle class women — who have the ability to say “no,” the ability to fight back and say “no,” the article still has a deep investment in the #MeToo movement. The expedient use of the media and the belief that the media speaks for this demographic is the underlying problem.

This is exactly this point that Pooja Bedi makes about the misuse of #MeToo for revenge, for false accusations and frivolous allegations within #MeTooIndia. One of the stories is of an actress being told by her agent that she might consider MeTooing someone to get the attention of the Press.’ Within MeTooIndia, we also heard phrases like the “heinous crimes of sexual misconduct” while sexual assault and sexual crimes were waved away in a list-making phrase. There was no discernible principle on which sexual harassment charges were distinguished from one another. How was MeToo defining or redefining sexual harassment vs sexual assault vs sexual misconduct? MeToo seems to have lumped them all in one big net: rape, criminal sexual assault, sexual violence, sexual misconduct, groping, kissing, misdirected provocations, inappropriate comments, unsober behavior at a party, wounded feelings, and regret over bad sex? MeToo has been surprisingly silent about Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring.

#MeToo’s disregard for due process has been its most defining feature. The only defense available to men who were accused was either silence or an expensive defamation suit. Who speaks for the falsely accused? When Ann Wijepewski, writing for the Nation, approached an editor of a major newspaper, this is what she was told: “What’s a few hundred or thousands of untruths or half-truths if these arrows can bring down the power of sexist patriarchy?”

Is the MeToo finally looking at the MeTooed: at the gallery of men, of journalists, lawyers, poets who have been brought down, and whom no one wants to hear from again. Poets have had their book-contracts cancelled,radio-hosts their radio-shows cancelled, and several people have had their jobs terminated based on a smear-campaign. Due-Process is the most basic tenet of any justice system. #MeToo denies the most basic tenet of a justice system: the right of the accused to get a fair hearing.

Harvard Law Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen predicted in 2018 that #MeToo will eventually have to reckon with “due process:”

I don’t think we can accomplish those social justice goals, including justice for women and equality for women, through a path that undermines due process, fair hearing, fair consideration of evidence, fair decision-making, all of that being consonant with our constitutional values.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of accountability and culpability for sexual violence, sexual harrassers, and rapists and sexual predators sequestered in power. They should be made accountable and punished. But the innocent get run over when sexual-harrassment and rape-allegations go bandwagon.

Maybe, this is a good moment to put forward some questions for difficult conversations yet to be had : What is the sort of justice that social-media activism achieves? Do they achieve lasting goals for the victims, and what specifically are these goals? What can accountability look like in the PostMeToo workplace look like? What does PostMeToo sex look like? What about honest and trust-based conversations between young men and women about what seeking attention — both wanted and unwanted- is like-what its pleasures and risks are like for possible relationships and partners? What kind of trust and fellow-feeling and honesty is called for the safety of both partners in a heterosexual or homosexual sexual or romantic relationship? What constitutes sexual misconduct and sexual harassment and how is it different from unhappiness in a relationship?

It is worth looking at Catherine Deneuve’s signed an open letter in Le Monde translated by The Guardian:

Rape is a crime. But trying to seduce someone, even persistently and maladroitly, is not — nor is gallantry macho aggression . . . . Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs, when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss.

The corporations have taken to MeToo with gusto because it is productive for the workplace, and this is what can we expect to find in the PostMeToo workplace. As Libby Emmons puts it:

The #MeToo movement throws up daily illustrations of the consequences of trust abused. In response, the call goes out for more regulation of relationships between men and women in the workplace, on campus and on the street. There is no longer an assumption that men and women, as equals, can freely and spontaneously negotiate relationships on their own terms. Instead, people need to defer to rules, frameworks and codes of conduct, for their own safety. Those who refuse need professional re-education in consent workshops.

As it has been made clear, in the long run, public shaming cannot work. It is absurd to assume that public humiliation will teach men their boundaries. Shaming does not teach anything, morally speaking. Shame and shaming destroy human relationships and the very possibility of civil society.

Roy’s article ends by making a case that women need help and understanding as they navigate the new mores of casual-sex and sexting. Why only women? Why not men?

“Truthiness” will not do, the expedient language of a soft critique will not do. A simple and unfearful hashtag like #TruthMatters might be the only way to begin the PostMeToo conversation.

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