The 2nd Reckoning of the #MeToo movement
I recently watched “The Morning Show,” a fictional news TV show that interacts with real world events, primarily the Me Too movement. It starts with the firing of its male cohost for sexual misconduct allegations, similar to the real life example of Matt Lauer. While it portrays the typical revelations of the movement’s early awakening—women coming forward stating they were a victim, too—there’s another reckoning lying beneath the surface none of the characters want to face: I was complicit, too.
As much as all of the characters struggle to self-righteously believe they couldn’t have contributed to the problem, the one who struggles the most is the fired cohost. He loses it all: job, wife, kids, friends, social status, any future of a career. And he can’t help feeling, I’m not as bad as Weinstein, as the "first wave" of Me Too. He’s stuck in a victim mentality.
That is, until a dramatic twist at the end, when you see the amazing actor Steve Carrell portray the stunned, horrified, look of realization: I’m just as bad as the others. I’m an aggressor, too.
Savior complex
When we hear or watch these stories, it's difficult not to read ourselves into the role of the victim. Or, if not the victim, at least their savior. A classic example of this comes from the Hebrew tradition.
One of the most legendary Jewish kings of all time, King David, committed a horrendous scandal in which he forced the wife of one of his own soldiers to have sex with him. When she got pregnant, he ordered the soldier to be abandoned on the frontline so that he’d be killed in battle. His wife then became just another one of the king’s many wives.
He would have gotten away with it. Except, one day a prophet, Nathan, came to the palace and told King David a story:
“There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
King David’s reaction to this story, understandably, was immense anger. “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
And then, Nathan brings the mic drop: You are that man.
David imagined himself as the victim, and entered into this story wanting to be the savior, only to realize that he was the aggressor in real life.
David had his Me Too reckoning, his “aha” moment.
Both victim and aggressor
As a white woman, I am in the unique position in our current society of having the potential to be both the victim and the aggressor. As a woman living in a patriarchy, I can be the victim of unequal pay, not be believed in the face of sexual assault by a white man, and otherwise be dismissed, demeaned and belittled because of my sex. But as a white woman in America, I have the power to be the aggressor, to be believed over a Black, Asian, Latinx man or woman. White women from the times of Emmett Till to the now-trending “Karen” meme have been able to weaponize their “victimhood,” enabling the typically white men who run our society to become the aggressor against whomever we point our finger at.
[It’s this victim/aggressor conundrum that’s resulted in the Karen meme being used paradoxically by both anti-racists on the left and sexists on the right, which you can read more about here.]
So while many brave white women have stepped forward with other sisters in the #MeToo movement to announce their solidarity as victims, it is time for our second reckoning. We are aggressors, enablers, and oppressors, too. The truth is, we are not always the victim in our stories.
Maybe, in this complexity, we can move forward and learn how to reintegrate broken people—like us—back into society. Because right now we are stuck in a new sort of purity culture that crucifies you if you say something on social media or are caught on camera doing something that’s wrong or hurtful. Often, the mob mentality of the people doing the crucifying is to act as if they’ve never done anything wrong themselves. Leaning into my Christian tradition, it’s poignant that Jesus stops the stoning of a woman caught in adultery by challenging the crowd, “whoever is without sin, cast the first stone.”
Who of us is blameless? You? Me? Can you name a single person?
To return to King David’s story, after his visit from Nathan he wrote a poem/song (Psalm 51) in which he pleads with God for forgiveness. Interestingly enough, he acknowledges that God doesn’t want him bringing sacrifices or offerings to atone for his wrong doing, but instead desires “a broken and contrite heart.” There are still major, deadly consequences for David’s atrocious actions, but there is also a path forward for his redemption.
As much as we focus on justice and punishment to the aggressors of the Me Too movement (and other movements like Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, etc.), I believe what we really desire is for people to realize how they’ve wronged others and want to do better. Unfortunately, those examples of true contriteness are few and far in between.
That's why that realization has to start with ourselves. Everyone needs to have that "aha" moment when they realize they're not the victim in their story, but the oppressor. Only then can we experience true remorse, repentance, and redemption.
So no matter your sex, race, background, religion or identity, consider this: how have you used privilege to hurt others? How do you relate to the aggressor, not the victim or savior, in these stories? What's your “aha” moment?
Wow, a powerful reckoning. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteWhile your post was back in the Summer of 2020, your views about BLM protests as the second reckoning for Me Too rang true and being the villain in one’s own story is true.
ReplyDeleteMy “being the villain in one’s own story” was learning about how toxic masculinity helps facilitate racism and white supremacy per se, not just when racialized women are targeted. This process for me started in late 2018 but kicked into high gear in 2020.
I believe that BLM summer, in a way, was also a 2nd reckoning for American masculinity in addition to being a reckoning for white people. (It’s my opinion that the BLM protests of 2020 helped further awaken white women whose consciousness was first raised by Me Too and further pushed men to the right who were part of the Me Too backlash).
There were polls taken in the summer of 2020 showed men as less likely than white people and women as more likely than both men and Hispanic (but not black) people to believe racism was an American issue. 2/3rds of the BLM marchers were women, and 92% of the people that took part in the short lived antiracist book clubs were women.
The most devastating realizations regarding how masculinity interacted with police brutality and racism as a whole, not just its intersection with misogyny, were coming from not just Black women, but also white and to a lesser extent NBWOC who while not facing anti-black racism, could clearly see the role of male entitlement and toxic masculinity in American police brutality and the Blue Lives Matter counter protests.
And only part of what the non-black women were saying came from deflection from their white (or non black privilege). The other part was women recognizing patterns of behavior from patriarchy and applying them to white supremacy. They were recognizing the gender of the perpetrator rather than the race of the victim.
Being harmed by, but also responsible for, a situation isn’t a good feeling.
It is my opinion that BLM would have had even greater impact if it had focused more on the toxic masculinity behind American police brutality in addition to the racism. Hegemonic masculinity requires pecking orders, and these pecking orders include race and citizenship.
When Tyre Nichols was murdered by Memphis cops 3 years ago , people were perplexed that five out of six of the cops charged were black. However, listening to women of all backgrounds gave a different perspective.
Women on Twitter - including white women, and including women from Europe - could clearly see the toxic masculinity and patriarchal racism involved in Nichols’ murder. It was put forth that to combat police violence, male culture - not police culture or even white culture - must change.
“Patriarchy hurts men too “ applies to racialized men in America (and undocumented men caught up with ICE). I was privy to an online convo that was intended to be about white male cops that ended with the statement, “Any man can be a cop [or to bring it into 2026, ICE agent] and any man can be racist.”
Being the villain in one’s own story never hit so hard as it did then.
It is my belief that if this had been tackled earlier, we would not have the situation that we do with ICE, CBP, and DHS. Renee Good, and it can be argued, Alex Pretti, was murdered by patriarchy wearing an ICE disguise. It is also my belief that the only way for many white people to understand the dynamics of ICE is to understand its gender dimensions, as toxic masculinity asserting itself in the racial and xenophobic realm. Only then can they make the leap to the racial and citizenship dynamics. Their awakening as the racial villains will wait for later.
There was a poll taken recently showing people see gender as a more salient identity than race or religion, meaning that there are many people who are going to be more in tune with the gender dynamics of oppression and privilege than other dynamics. For the men, they will have to realize that those other dynamics are as oppressive as traditional masculinity. Your story is about privileged women realizing this.