The end of the week brings us yet another hot take from Salon‘s Amanda Marcotte. We’ve discussed the Cornell frat party case before here, and knew it was only time before Ms. Marcotte broke things down.

Her take? #MeToo did not go far enough. Why? Well, Trumpism, of course.

The Cornell case shows, though, that far from going too far, the #MeToo movement didn’t go far enough. Much — if not most — of the time, alleged victims still face far more serious consequences than their accused assailants, and for many people and institutions, it still feels much easier to make the issue go away by suppressing accusations than dealing with these cases which are, admittedly, often complex.”-Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Complex, yes. But why didn’t #MeToo go far enough? Orange Guy, that’s why.

But the past decade of Trumpism has largely been built on stirring up male anger at women’s growing equality. Paranoid and unsupported claims that women have immense power to ruin men with false accusations have been the bread-and-butter of a MAGA media industry designed to exploit men’s resentment for profit. Their audiences yearn to hear that Jane Doe is the real bad guy here, and so attacking her without a single shred of real evidence against her is an opportunity that many right-wing pundits can’t seem to pass up.”-Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Let’s unpack here. In a nutshell, Mandy is stating that any claim contrary to the claim that this woman, Jane Doe, was brutally gang-raped at the Chi Phi fraternity is a dig at women’s “equality”? I seriously do not understand this woman’s logic. If “growing equality” means agreeing to drunken threesomes and snorting ketamine at frat parties, I say these modern women have set themselves back a few years. I am not saying she “got what she deserved” at all. These young men are poor excuses for humanity. They’re flat-out disgusting, privileged pieces of crap. I am not saying this young woman may have also suffered some trauma after the fact and some initial denial of what actually went down that night. Does this make her a bad guy, here? No. But, not every evening of drunken sex is, or should be, considered rape after the fact, especially after you text the guy after the night, agree to have another threesome and smoke weed and ask the brother to “like leave out the extra 5 billion men and ketamine.”

As its name suggested, that was the whole point of #MeToo: to create enough solidarity between victims and allies to make it safe for victims to speak out without their lives being destroyed. If the right really believes in the value of due process, then they would let it play out, instead of dogpiling and harassing accusers so that future victims are too scared to report crimes.”-Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Solidarity and performative bullish*t.

The white ribbons warn on the red carpet in 2018 were one the biggest displays of hypocrisy in our galaxy. They knew about the drug use, the casting couches. They knew about Harvey Weinstein and the slew of other abusers in Tinsel Town. They let the corruption go for years before coming “forward” when the platform suited them to do so. They took roles in Weinstein’s films, they have attended parties, they took pictures alongside of the mogul. For years, they, the people with the platforms and the loudest voices on the damn planet, did not utter a peep. So, spare me on the #MeToo, #TimesUp, whatever horse dung it is. THEY ALL KNEW and THEY SAT SILENT FOR YEARS.

Still, #MeToo did not go far enough, according to Amanda Marcotte. Could it be that the movement reeked of utter insincerity? Could it be that individuals of questionable character were peddling this nonsense? If you take a serious issue and use clowns to platform said issue, however do you expect people to take it seriously?

In this case, no one is required to have an opinion about the accuser’s character. They don’t know her history or her life or why she was even at the party, beyond her stated desire to have some fun. They could, like most decent people, consider the allegations and assume that, even if there is not a crime here, what is described should never happen to anyone. Shutting up is free.”-Amanda Marcotte, Salon

We’re not required to have an opinion, but many do. What I see here (I’ll say it again) is an insecure young woman who has suffered trauma from bad decisions in her desire to “have some fun”. If strolling to a frat house when one is already hammered to smoke some weed and have a threesome is defined by some girls today as “fun” (with no intervention from her “sisters”), therein lies the problem. If horny college guys see a woman upstairs at their frat and text the group that the p*ssy is “free” and call themselves “gentlemen of honor”, that’s a problem, too.

Have we’ve gone far enough in breaking this down? Don’t think so. But #MeToo is not the answer here.

And yes, we know shutting up is also free, Mandy. You first.

Photo Credit: surdumihail, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped