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Let’s make another thing perfectly clear: I am not condoning for a New York minute the actions of Harvey Weinstein, or any other male in a position of power in the acting, political, business worlds or even government who wield that power to get sexual favours. It’s about time women spoke up (although one wonders why the likes of Meryl Streep and Oprah sat by for so long and allowed it to happen).

And I’m certainly not saying a clearly ambitious Patrick Brown, the newly resigned leader of the Ontario PC party, showed great judgment when, as federal MP, he not only partied with barely legal young ladies but took young women back to his home.

I won’t defend any of those actions.

But what I will say is that when I endured that boss who wanted to have dinner with me or the colleague who stalked me or even the sexually suggestive comments in the ’80s and ’90s (and even the lackadaisical response of the police to my sexual assault 13 years ago) it was a vastly different time when that kind of behaviour was not only acceptable but often subject to bragging rights.

I can’t help but wonder — as I watch the #MeToo circus unfold — if the pendulum has been permitted to swing to the point where #MeToo has become more “#MeToo I want to get in on the action” as in “I want to get even with whomever allegedly wronged me (due to many more factors than a power imbalance).”

It would come as no surprise to me to hear that the anti-patriarchy man-haters (the same cast of allegedly oppressed characters I observed at that Women’s Day rally in Toronto last March) are rubbing their hands with glee at the idea of bringing men to their knees (no pun intended).

But making men afraid to give a compliment in the workplace or have a business lunch with a female associate or even being caught alone in an elevator should not be the end-game of this exercise.

It should be about giving women the courage to be their best selves and to compete/interact/associate with men on an equal footing — without being pegged, as we heard so often in the narrative of yesterday, “ballbreakers.”

We as women must ask ourselves: How many times more can we expect to “cry #MeToo” before we’re tuned out?

slevy@postmedia.com