Optimus Prime
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Thought this was a good article
Every progressive movement leads to backlash
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Dressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king.
He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.
Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers.
Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates.
White, a Trump ally and Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: “Welcome to the States, boys.”
The next day, the Tates were back for a mixed martial arts fight night. This time, they were joined in the crowd by the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Mel Gibson – another Trump ally, who once pled no contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge.
It was a show of manpower, in every sense of the word. And it’s the kind of head-spinning display that has become a fixture of US politics.
Eight years ago, the words “#MeToo” was thumbed out more than 19m times on Twitter.
Pundits feared that a single, unproven allegation could vaporize a man’s career. Now, the Trump administration seems to treat such allegations as a job requirement.
Two members of Trump’s cabinet stand accused of sexual assault, while another allegedly enabled the sexual abuse of children.
Elon Musk, whose “department of government efficiency” is now shredding federal agencies, has been said to treat women like sex objects “to be evaluated on their bra size”.
And, of course, there’s Trump himself: a man who has gloried in “grabbing ‘em by the pursey”, been found liable for the sexual abuse of one woman and faced accusations of sexual misconduct from dozens more. (All of these people deny wrongdoing, except White, who has admitted to slapping his wife.)
Meanwhile, famous women who say they were hurt are torn apart on the internet. Even Twitter is gone, cannibalized by Musk into X.
How did this happen? How could the United States, so recently the beating heart of a global movement to stop sexual violence, go so thoroughly – and brutishly – backwards?
Over years of interviewing sex and sexual violence researchers, educators, activists, pollsters and scores of ordinary Americans under 30, I have heard all kinds of thoughts and theories about sex and gender relations in the post-#MeToo US.
Overall, people agreed, there is far more cultural awareness of sexual misconduct. Dozens of states have moved to protect people from workplace harassment, while nearly 30 have loosened their statutes of limitation around allegations of sex abuse, allowing people to pursue lawsuits that would have once been off-limits.
These are not small victories, but they are limited ones. Many of the #MeToo movement’s demands were never cemented into policy.
But those demands, and the cultural strides that accompanied them, have proved enough to spark a revenge campaign that is not only setting fire to hard-won rights for women, LGBTQ+ folks and people of color but also sending young men careening to the right.
These men are finding a home in the manosphere, that burgeoning online realm that is at best uninterested in women and at worst interested in violating them.
The sweeping nature of the backlash to #MeToo – playing out in our federal government, on our screens, in our communities – can feel so all-encompassing as to be overwhelming.
Did it have to be this way? As Americans struggle to respond to the whiplash, the #MeToo movement’s legacy reveals some much needed lessons about how progressives and feminists may move forward in a deeply uncertain time. For starters: talk about class, and talk to men. Indeed, these may be the same lesson.…….
www.theguardian.com
Every progressive movement leads to backlash
======================
Dressed in his trademark sunglasses and a skintight black T-shirt, Andrew Tate strode into a Las Vegas arena like a returning king.
He was there to watch Power Slap, a UFC offshoot where people slap each other in the face with such force that doctors say it could lead to brain damage and death.
Days earlier, Tate and his brother Tristan had been in Romania, their assets seized, awaiting trial on human trafficking charges. But following reported conversations between Romanian officials and the Trump administration, the Romanian government lifted a travel ban on the brothers.
Now, as a heavily male crowd watched men slap one another so hard they collapsed, the UFC president, Dana White, warmly embraced the Tates.
White, a Trump ally and Meta board member who was once caught on camera slapping his own wife, smiled at the Tates, looked them in the eyes, and told them: “Welcome to the States, boys.”
The next day, the Tates were back for a mixed martial arts fight night. This time, they were joined in the crowd by the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Mel Gibson – another Trump ally, who once pled no contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge.
It was a show of manpower, in every sense of the word. And it’s the kind of head-spinning display that has become a fixture of US politics.
Eight years ago, the words “#MeToo” was thumbed out more than 19m times on Twitter.
Pundits feared that a single, unproven allegation could vaporize a man’s career. Now, the Trump administration seems to treat such allegations as a job requirement.
Two members of Trump’s cabinet stand accused of sexual assault, while another allegedly enabled the sexual abuse of children.
Elon Musk, whose “department of government efficiency” is now shredding federal agencies, has been said to treat women like sex objects “to be evaluated on their bra size”.
And, of course, there’s Trump himself: a man who has gloried in “grabbing ‘em by the pursey”, been found liable for the sexual abuse of one woman and faced accusations of sexual misconduct from dozens more. (All of these people deny wrongdoing, except White, who has admitted to slapping his wife.)
Meanwhile, famous women who say they were hurt are torn apart on the internet. Even Twitter is gone, cannibalized by Musk into X.
How did this happen? How could the United States, so recently the beating heart of a global movement to stop sexual violence, go so thoroughly – and brutishly – backwards?
Over years of interviewing sex and sexual violence researchers, educators, activists, pollsters and scores of ordinary Americans under 30, I have heard all kinds of thoughts and theories about sex and gender relations in the post-#MeToo US.
Overall, people agreed, there is far more cultural awareness of sexual misconduct. Dozens of states have moved to protect people from workplace harassment, while nearly 30 have loosened their statutes of limitation around allegations of sex abuse, allowing people to pursue lawsuits that would have once been off-limits.
These are not small victories, but they are limited ones. Many of the #MeToo movement’s demands were never cemented into policy.
But those demands, and the cultural strides that accompanied them, have proved enough to spark a revenge campaign that is not only setting fire to hard-won rights for women, LGBTQ+ folks and people of color but also sending young men careening to the right.
These men are finding a home in the manosphere, that burgeoning online realm that is at best uninterested in women and at worst interested in violating them.
The sweeping nature of the backlash to #MeToo – playing out in our federal government, on our screens, in our communities – can feel so all-encompassing as to be overwhelming.
Did it have to be this way? As Americans struggle to respond to the whiplash, the #MeToo movement’s legacy reveals some much needed lessons about how progressives and feminists may move forward in a deeply uncertain time. For starters: talk about class, and talk to men. Indeed, these may be the same lesson.…….
Sexual assault allegations seem to be a badge of honor in Trump’s America. Was #MeToo an epic failure?
The push to end sexual violence has sparked a revenge campaign setting fire to women’s rights and pushing young men to the right. But organizers can learn from the movement’s losses
