The #MeToo Backlash Is Coming

I tweeted some thoughts about the impending certain-to-come backlash to the "recent revelations*" that lots of men, left and right, are sexual predators, harassers, and rapists.**

1/? Add'l thoughts on this piece from yesterday, and in light of the cascade of revelations we're still seeing about male sexual predators: https://t.co/asKeCJSJDd

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) November 1, 2017

To summarize, while we currently have momentum, we also need to prepare ourselves for the male-dominated mainstream media to begin pushing back harder against these revelations with new, adapted silencing mechanisms.

We will see the usual smatterings of concerned people suggesting that while the recent revelations have been "shocking" and "necessary," hasn't it all "gone too far"? Men will write pieces with detached airs of presumed reason about all the womanly hysteria. Anti-feminist women will be paid to write think pieces confirming that yes yes, the women have gone cray-cray, thus liberating rape culture enablers from charges of misogyny.

This backlash will come, and likely very soon.

See, for instance, the following take. Apparently, women have two, and only two, options for living in society with men: (a) be assaulted and shut up about it or (b) don niqabs:

The most extreme misogynists will begin testing the backlash waters first. It's less that they create misogyny and rape culture and more that they quite easily tap into what is already pre-existing in society. Other men - "good men" - will then feel comfortable writing the aforementioned "objective" "devil's advocate" pieces wherein the misogyny is more subtle and coded.


*Recent revelations deserve scare quotes, since many of these revelations were apparently "open secrets."

** "We told you so." - ancient feminist proverb.