Is the #MeToo Movement Leading to Vigilante Justice?

Canadian author Margaret Atwood, best known for her novel the Handmaid’s Tale, has recently gotten herself in trouble for comments that she made opposing the #metoo movement.

Primarily, Atwood’s concerns focused on where the #metoo movement is going, and how the accused will be treated by the general public. She cites a recent incident, involving professor and fellow author Steve Galloway, as a reason for her concern.

In 2015, Galloway was accused bullying and sexual harassment. This prompted members of the Canadian literary community, including Margaret Atwood, to stand behind him in support. Many then retracted this support, however, when further allegations came out – including bullying, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. Galloway was dismissed from the University of British Columbia, where he taught, but is facing no criminal charges.

Margaret Atwood claims that Galloway’s dismissal was unfair, and she fears that the #metoo movement will lead to vigilante justice.

Galloway, however, is not the only man to be dismissed from his job due to claims of sexual assault. In the media, we have seen this happen time and time again. Harvey Weinstein was fired from the Weinstein Company following allegations of sexual assault. Kevin Spacey was fired from television series House of Cards following similar allegations, and Louis C.K. was fired from Secret Life of Pets 2. So is this also unfair? Is this also an example of vigilante justice?

There have been some who would say so; who would say that, yes, these are bad men, but they are good at their job. They are talented artists (or, in Galloway’s case, professors), and they should be allowed to continue doing their jobs.

I disagree.

In Weinstein’s case, I feel the reason why he should be let go is fairly obvious; Weinstein’s job put him in a position of power, and a sexual predator can and will abuse that power – as Weinstein did again and again. His job is directly connected to his being a sexual predator – he wasn’t the right one for the role. He wasn’t the sort of person who would do that job without abusing it. He was, quite frankly, bad at his job.

And in the case of Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey, who were similarly put in a place of power and adoration and then abused that power, they are both part of industries that have no shortage of competition. There are hundreds of talented comedians and actors in this world who deserve their shot at the job – comedians and actors who don’t happen to be sexual predators.

But let’s talk about Galloway for a moment, because the thing that I find interesting about this particular story is that this is a profession that isn’t part of the media. This is a more everyday profession, and while Galloway most certainly does have a system of support and adoring fans, this is to a lesser extent than what a Hollywood celebrity has. This is moving more into the mundane.

And was Galloway’s dismissal from his job unfair? Was this an instance of vigilante justice?

Well, quite frankly, no. I don’t think it is. I think that, if a person is poorly qualified for their job, then they should not have their job. And a bullying sexual predator is not the right candidate for a professor.

There is another story that came out of Canada recently, this one focusing on George Brown college in Toronto, where several former students of the acting program have come forward to discuss suffering abuse, humiliation, and harassment from the faculty of the school. These are people who wanted nothing more than to pursue their dreams, to become qualified in the job that they so desperately wanted, and instead, they were belittled, picked apart, and abused to such an extent that it affected both their mental and physical health – and all of this was caused by the very people who were supposed to help them. This was caused by their professors.

Professors have a huge task to fulfill – as all teachers do. Professors are there to teach people. They are in control of their students’ grades and education and, yes, even their lives, to a certain extent. A bad professor can very easily hurt a person’s chance at getting the job that they are working so hard to get, or they can kill a person’s self-esteem and motivation.

And, yes, Galloway’s first victim to break her silence was, in fact, a former student.

But what about the fact that Galloway faced no criminal charges? Is he being punished for a crime that the law hasn’t recognized that he committed? Well, this is where the argument gets complicated.

Just because Galloway hasn’t been charged with anything, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t guilty. Out of every 1000 rape cases, after all, only 7 will lead to a felony conviction, and this is not because the majority of allegations are false. It is estimated that somewhere between 2% and 6% of allegations are false. So, yes, that does mean that the majority of sexual predators will go without any legal punishment for their crime.

Does that mean that we should turn to vigilante justice to fix this problem? No, that isn’t what I am trying to say here (although we do desperately need to fix a legal system that allows the vast majority of sexual predators to walk free and go unpunished). What I am trying to say is that the University of British Columbia is under no obligation to keep a man under their employ when all evidence points to the fact that he is not good at his job and should not be allowed to keep it – especially not when allowing him to keep his job would send a message to his victims that what he did to them was okay. And sexual assault is already a rampant problem in colleges and universities.

So, no, from what I have observed thus far, the #metoo movement is not leading toward vigilante justice. What the #metoo movement is creating is a society where sexual assault and sexual harassment is taken more seriously and discussed more prominently. There was once a time when a man like Galloway might have been allowed to keep his job, and continue to harass, assault, and bully students that are simply seeking an education. But times are changing, and we are no longer willing to accept these things. We are creating a world where a woman might be allowed to seek an education without fear of being treated differently or unfairly by her teacher.

And, hopefully, this influence can continue to spread to all industries.

Why Men Need to Discuss Gendered Violence

Women’s issues have been discussed much more prominently in our society lately.

We recently saw the #metoo movement take place, followed by the #timesup movement. Celebrities have been showing their support for these issues, while many other celebrities have been discussing their own issues surrounding sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape culture, and the wage gap.

And that’s all great; we should be talking about this. But there is another side to all this that we should be talking about as well.

For the most part, this discussion has been focusing on the women’s side of the matter (or, at the very least, the victims of sexual abuse and harassment). And though we’ve outed a few of the perpetrators and punished them (minimally), we haven’t really been discussing the perpetrators all that much.

And, on the one hand, I get it; women need to know that they aren’t alone. We as a society need to understand that these issues are prevalent, that they still exist, that there are battles that need to be fought. We need to know that we aren’t alone.

And at the same time, we need to stop this from happening ever again. And giving women a voice and the confidence to speak up when it does happen is a beautiful thing that should not be underestimated, but that won’t stop it from happening in the first place. And if we are ever going to reach a place of equality, we need to stop this from happening in the first place.

And how are we going to do that?

Well, to begin, we are going to have to talk about who the perpetrators in these issues are.

Sexual assault and harassment is typically discussed as a gendered issue, although there are some who have taken offence to that. After all, despite this pervasive myth in our society that men cannot be raped, it does happen, and it happens more frequently than you might think. Approximately 3% of American men will be the victim of either an attempted or a completed rape at some point in their life, and when men are raped, they face very different problems from female rape survivors.

But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this remains a gendered issue.

Although men are raped, women are eleven times more likely to be the victims of sexual offences than men are. Women make up 92% of victims of police-reported sexual offences, and when they are assaulted, they are more like to sustain injuries than men are (25% of women compared to 15% of men).

And, more important to what we’re discussing, 99% of the perpetrators are men.

And, I know, I know, half of my readership just tuned out. Nobody likes to feel accused of something that they feel that they are innocent of. I am not trying to say that all men are rapists. But I don’t think that we can ignore the fact that the vast majority of rapists are men. I think that this is something that we should discuss if we are going to get to the root of why this issue exists in our society.

And I’m not the only one who has suggested this before.

Scholar Jackson Katz, for example, has gone forward and said that gender-related violence should not be treated as a women’s issue, but rather, as an issue that involves us all, in one way or another. “Calling gender violence a women’s issue is part of the problem,” argues Katz. “It gives a lot of men an excuse not to pay attention.”

In other words, if we discuss sexual harassment, sexual assault, or any type of gender-related violence as a women’s issue, then it gives men an excuse for ignore their part in all of it. And men have a part in this.

But why are the majority of rapists men? Why are there not more female rapists? What can this possibly mean?

Are men just naturally more predatory than women? Is a man’s natural state to be a rapist?

Well, no. I don’t believe this, and neither does Jackson Katz.

Katz argues that the reason why men become violent toward women – the reason why men objectify women, overly sexualize women, catcall women, and so on and so forth – is because we live in a society that normalizes all of this.

We live in a society that encourages men toward violence to prove their masculinity. We live in a society where many of our most iconic male fictional characters solve their problems by punching people and forcing things to go their way through brute strength. We live in a society where romantic comedies argue that when a woman says “no”, what she really means is, “keep harassing me until I change my mind”. We live in a society where men are not allowed to be emotional, or talk about their feelings, or come forward when they’re dealing with aggression or mental health issues, meaning that there are many men who do not know how to deal with their emotions or the emotions of others in a healthy manner.

And when all of this is normalized to us and we are not encouraged to think critically about it, then we just accept it. And not only do we accept it; we enforce it.

And if we are going to end this issues – truly end them, not just talk about them and raise awareness about them – then men are going to need to get involved. Men are going to have to look at their own role in this issue, and ask themselves whether or not they have ever harassed or assaulted a woman (or a man). Men are going to have to challenge their ideas of violence and assertiveness being connected to masculinity, as well as this idea that having emotions is natural weakness. Men are going to have to be an active agent in this discussion, and work alongside of feminists, preferably as feminists themselves, in order to end this problem.

And there are men who have discussed this already. I mention Jackson Katz in this article for many reasons, one of them being that he is considered the founder of the ‘bystander approach’ to ending gendered violence – which essentially means that, if you see it happening or suspect that it might be happening, then it is your responsibility to speak up. If you do not, then you are communicating the message that this is normal, and you allow the problem to continue.

Right now, we have many women who are speaking out – many survivors, but too few bystanders. That needs to change.

But if you want to help that change, then one resource that I can point you toward is called the White Ribbon Campaign – a group of men and boys who, according to their website, “pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls.” They seek to spread awareness, create discussion, and create a more compassionate vision of masculinity.

It is wonderful that we are talking about these issues in our society, but I want to take this opportunity to invite more discussion. More specifically, I invite men to become part of this discussion, because we need men to be on board with this. We need men to commit to becoming part of the solution, to thinking critically about these matters. We need men to help us in this issue – because as much as women are amazing and fully capable, we cannot change the world single-handedly when we make up only 50% of it.

#MeToo, now #TimesUp

In 2017, we saw the #metoo movement.

I think that we are all aware of it, in one way or another. Maybe you participated, by writing your own story of sexual assault or harassment. Maybe you didn’t feel safe or comfortable enough to publish your story, but you read through them and related, adding to the issue in your own way. And maybe you couldn’t relate personally, but you scrolled through your social media pages and felt that punch to the gut that we all felt when we realized just how prevalent sexual assault or harassment really is. That it is something that affects our friends, our family, and our loved ones – not just faceless strangers on the internet or television.

Now, I have to admit, when the #metoo movement first began, I was both optimistic and concerned. Optimistic because, well… good. Sexual assault and harassment are issues that we need to talk about. They are important, and historically speaking, we haven’t talked enough about it. We haven’t talked enough about the fact that 1 in 3 women aged 18 to 34 report being sexually harassed while at work – and 71 percent of these women admit that they did not report it. We haven’t talked enough about the fact that 1 in 3 Canadian women will experience sexual assault in their adult life – and this statistic changes depending on such factors as sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ability, age, and so much more. We haven’t talked enough about the fact that only 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators will end up in prison.

So, yeah, I could bore you with statistics until the cows come home, and then I can bore the cows, but I think I’ve made my point here: this is an issue that we need to talk about.

But, that being said, when the #metoo movement first began, I was a little bit concerned, just because this wasn’t something that I wanted to be trending on Twitter for a couple of weeks, and then it vanishes into obscurity like we never said anything. This is an important issue; we need to keep talking about it.

But, much to my delight and surprise, the #metoo movement didn’t quite fall into obscurity. Instead, it took on a sort of life – over and over, we started to recognize the faces of sexual assault and harassment. Not only did multiple celebrity victims begin to stand up and explain their experiences – like Rose McGowan, Salma Hayek, and Anthony Rapp – but multiple celebrities found themselves accused of widespread sexual assault and harassment as well – such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K. Now, we were not only talking about these issues – we had faces to put to these issues.

And, again, I was both encouraged and pessimistic. I mean, yay, not only are we talking about this now; we’re naming names. We’re calling the perpetrators out and holding them accountable for their actions. But my problem was, we’re only calling some of the perpetrators out.

Sexual assault and harassment are widespread issues. Issues that don’t happen exclusively or even primarily to powerful women in the public eye. In fact, while sexual harassment is pervasive amongst all industries, it is especially common in low-wage service jobs. There is also plenty of research that suggests that women who work in male-dominated fields experience harassment more frequently than women who work in balanced or female-dominated fields. And this is just in the workplace; this doesn’t even cover sexual assault in the home (roughly 25% of rapes are committed by a romantic partner), at school, at social gatherings, or on the street.

Sexual assault and harassment are not Hollywood issues. They are global issues. They affects all of us, and we all need to be talking about it. So as much as I’m glad to see abusive men who are addicted to power, like Weinstein and Spacey, get punished for their crimes, we cannot stop at them. We can’t get so caught up in what’s happening in Hollywood that we forget that it’s happening here to.

And then 2018 came. And with 2018, we got something new: #timesup.

You can visit the movement’s website here, and read more about what it stands for. And, yes, it is a movement that has been promoted and headed by celebrity women, but the intention is not only to spread awareness about sexual assault and harassment in the entertainment industry, but in all industries.

The purpose of the #timesup movement is to say, definitively, that time is up. As the website states, “The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace. It’s time to do something about it.”

No more watching a strange man groping a women on the bus and pretending you didn’t see it.

No more shrugging catcalling off as a ‘compliment’.

No more doubting victims when they come forward, and saying that they “just want attention”.

No more giving rapists lighter sentences, just because it might have a “severe impact” on the disgusting criminal’s life.

We are done with this. We are demanding change. Time is up, and I am now convinced; we will no longer be silent on these important issues.

And to those who reacted against the #metoo movement, calling it a ‘witch hunt’ and complaining that they can’t even hug women anymore, I have only this to say: this is not a witch hunt. This is not randomly accusing innocent people (it is estimated that only 2 to 6 percent of sexual assault accusations are ever false). This is starting a discussion that we should have had centuries ago. Because my whole life, rape culture has just been accepted and tolerated. My whole life, I have seen girls blamed for the invasive actions of their male peers, whether it be a little girl scolded by their teacher because a little boy wouldn’t stop tickling her (“what sort of message do you think that sends to him?”), or grown women being asked why they didn’t just dress or behave differently to avoid being raped. We need to talk about this. We need to think about this. And if someone asks us not to hug them because it makes them feel uncomfortable, or if someone tells us that something we said offends them in this time of change, then we should take a moment before that knee-jerk defensiveness kicks in to ask ourselves why they feel this way. They might have a valid and important reason that deserves to be considered.

This is not a witch hunt. This is not unfair. If someone has never sexually assaulted or harassed anyone, then they will not be accused. If they have sexually assaulted or harassed someone, then they deserve to be accused and held accountable for their actions. That’s the way this should work, and the way that it hasn’t worked for too long. But the world is changing now. Society is so accustomed to letting these perpetrators get away with their crimes, but they won’t any longer.

Now, time is up.