Feminists Disrespecting Women

When will feminists learn to respect women?

Today, we have the high priestess of social media, one Sheryl Sandberg, hard at work-- not at Facebook, not at home-- but leading a social revolution.

Sandberg has just discovered what most of us have known for a very long time: that the #MeToo movement is hurting women. It is making life more difficult for them in the workplace.

Sandberg is shocked to learn that #MeToo has not advanced women’s career prospects. I am guessing that she is the last to know.

Thanks to #MeToo women have become a threat to men. Many men prefer not to hire attractive young women. If they do hire attractive young women, they prefer not to be alone in an office with them. They prefer not to have lunch or dinner meetings with them. Why risk life and family when you have so little to gain.

What is the Sandberg solution? The Wall Street Journal reports:

Ms. Sandberg’s suggestion: Treat all your colleagues equally. If managers are uncomfortable having dinners alone with women, they should stop having dinners alone with men as well. “Group lunches for everyone,” she said.

This is dumber than dumb. Sandberg believes that she can issue imperial edicts and control the everyday behavior of men in the workplace. If such were company policy, how could you enforce it? Would two company men be allowed to play golf together? And, how can you prevent men from feeling antagonistic toward women who believe that they have the right to police social behavior. It means that Sandberg should keep her day job.

Sandberg and other ideologically driven executives should not believe that their mastery of social media makes them expert players in the marketplace of ideas.

Sandberg believes that female underrepresentation is a problem. Funny thing, I had thought that corporations were supposed to be making profits, not engaging in dubious forms of social engineering:

Women remain underrepresented within companies at every level, Facebook Inc. FB +1.55% Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and other senior leaders said—despite the #MeToo movement.

Where did anyone get the idea that corporations should have staff that demonstrates proportional representation? It is not the case at Facebook. It is not the case in Silicon Valley. Worse yet, it disrespects women. Sandberg assumes that because she wants to wield corporate power, that all women want the same thing. And she believes that bigotry is the only thing that stands in the way of women’s proportional representation. Thus, the purge of abusive men ought, by her lights, lead to more women being promoted in the corporate world.

Perhaps Sandberg-- a single mother, by the way-- has nothing better to do with her time than work, but many women prefer to spend more time with their children and less time on the job. It is their choice. Shouldn’t we respect their decisions? Don’t we know that most women take their responsibilities to their children very seriously? Should we not respect their decisions?

Reducing it all to sexual harassment, making it appear that men are the problem… this ideologically driven narrative disrespects women and makes them look like marionettes.