The #MeToo Fallout: Sex Segregation

I have often predicted that the #MeToo movement would backfire on feminists. The picture of angry women retaliating against men for sex crimes, real and imagined, made for compelling media drama. Of course, no one is really empowered by destroying other people… especially people with wives and daughters. And by delighting in the fact.

The backlash has not been long in coming. Men are now refusing to meet alone with females in the workplace. They are no longer willing to have private work dinners or to travel with women. Feminists have increased the risk without increasing the potential reward. 

Kyle Smith offers some examples in his New York Post column today:

Consider what’s happening in the capital of Florida. Female staffers and lobbyists have found “many male legislators will no longer meet with them privately,” reported The Miami Herald. “I had a senator say, ‘I need my aide here in the room because I need a chaperone,’ ” lobbyist Jennifer Green told the paper. “I said, ‘Senator, why do you need a chaperone? . . . Do you feel uncomfortable around me?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘anyone can say anything with the door shut.’ ”

“I’m getting the feeling that we’re going back 20 years as female professionals,” said Green, who owns her company. “I fully anticipate I’m going to be competing with another firm that is currently owned by some male, and the deciding factor is going to be: ‘You don’t want to hire a female lobbying firm in this environment.’ ”

As for the tech world, where James Damore was fired for writing an insensitive memo about gender differences, here is the latest:

This kind of thinking is catching on in aggressively P.C. Silicon Valley, where men are taking to message boards like Reddit to express interest in sex segregation — sometimes labeled “Men Going Their Own Way,” or the “Man-o-Sphere.” How will that work out for women in the tech industry, where they already face substantial challenges?

Sex segregation… who would have imagined such a thing? Then again, if men in the workplace really behave as badly as feminists say, why would women want to associate with them anyway?

Smith continues:

Across industries, “Several major companies have told us they are now limiting travel between the genders,” Johnny Taylor, president of the Society for Human Resource Management, told the Chicago Tribune, citing execs who tell men not to go on business trips or share rental cars with women co-workers. UCLA psychologist Kim Elsesser, the author of “Sex and the Office,” sees a nascent “sex partition.” If men start to back away from women, at least in professional settings, it’s difficult to see how that will aid the feminist cause.

Of course, this will not aid the feminist cause. It’s almost like self-sabotage… performed in a blind rage by people who insist that anyone who sees them as more emotional than men is trafficking in an invidious stereotype.

As if that were not bad enough, filling the airwaves and people’s minds with images of women being sexually assaulted and harassed makes it that much more difficult to see women as competent professionals. And, dare we say, women who march around wearing pussy hats should not be surprised that the male gaze, when looking at them, does not hone in on their minds.