A Challenge to #MeToo

Rana Foroohar is a serious columnist writing for a serious publication, the Financial Times. This to warn you that her column sits behind a paywall.

In a recent column she tackled the #MeToo movement and America’s culture of entitlement. She understood that readers would take great exception to her serious views. Any woman who dares deviate from the feminist party line puts her career at risk.

Is #MeToo overblown? Has it shown women at their professional best or has it shown them to be h*********. In the interest of decorum, I will not spell out the h-word.

Anway, Foroohar opens thusly:

The personal is political. It’s a truism that’s been on my mind recently, as I’ve pondered why I haven’t been as enthralled by the #MeToo movement as some of my younger colleagues and friends. … the idea that there is a toxic epidemic of male power at the heart of most of the world’s problems, which seems to be the subtext behind much of the political energy that has infused #MeToo, I find harder to buy.

She is trying, valiantly and largely successfully, to drag #MeToo out of an ideological web and into reality.

Yes, there’s a gender gap. Yes, many women still face discrimination or harassment. … But you could also flip the argument and say that we’ve had a massive shift in gender roles in the past four decades — which is a relatively small sliver of human history. Maybe all the Sturm und Drang of the past couple of years represent the jagged ends of some tectonic plates that are still settling. Maybe things aren’t quite as bad as we think.

This tectonic shift has been unfolding for over a century now. The reason is not that complicated. A century ago life expectancy was around 50. Now, for women is it over 80. And consider infant mortality statistics. A woman who expects to live to be more than 80 and who can expect that her children will easily outlive her has far more options. A woman who would barely outlive menopause had more incentive to marry young and to have numerous children. Better sanitation and better medicine have made it that women do not feel obliged to have numerous children. And they do not feel a need to have children while young.

As for how to handle improper office behavior, Foroohar recommends rejecting it, clearly and decisively:

In the one vaguely #MeToo moment of my office career (not in media but during a brief stint in finance), a colleague patted me on the bum at the tea point. I turned around, laughed at him and said, “Are you kidding me?” He slunk away and I can’t remember ever seeing him again. Now, I understand that many women in the same situation wouldn’t have had the power or professional privilege to do this. But to those who do and find themselves in the same situation, I say give it a try. Tough can feel good.

Obviously, if you are fighting off a half-naked Harvey Weinstein this might not work. And yet, she is correct to suggest that a woman should do better than to feel that she is a victim of sexual assault every time she encounters an errant hand. And she is also suggesting that it is better not to overdramatize all unfortunate and unwanted innuendo. It is certainly better not to conflate it all and to pronounce it all as rape.

Foroohar adds another salient point, one that, in slightly different form, I have raised on this blog. Ideologues  believe that the New Jerusalem and the Kingdom (or Queendom) of Justice will not be realized until women are represented proportionally at all levels of the corporate status hierarchy-- as well as in politics and government and professional football.

They are wrong, for two reasons. One, many women simply do not want to do what they need to do to climb the corporate status hierarchy. The other, is that many women are not natural born leaders.

I was, for example, a terrible boss before I took myself off the management track, at which point I’m sure everyone on my team breathed a sigh of relief. None of them could write well enough, or report fast enough, by my impossible standards. I’m much better as a lone-wolf columnist. When an editor is snappy, it generally rolls off my back. Bosses who scream? No problem, as long as they respect my work.

For her part, she has found a career path that suits her talents and that allows her to spend more time with her children.

One under-explored issue in the glass ceiling, in my view, is that many women simply aren’t prepared to make the same sacrifices for office life that men are. I don’t think that’s a bad thing — I rather like seeing the children I’ve borne at breakfast and dinner. I also like to see friends, work on side projects and exercise. Many men I’ve known in top jobs simply put all that to the side. I wouldn’t trade places with them.

Think about it... she is proposing, as I have on this blog, that we respect women's free choices. She concludes with a line that ought to be sitting on every woman’s desk:

Complaining about the way things are always seemed less compelling (and effective) than making the system work for me.