"Me Too" and the Logic of the Vigilante

Women have been harassed in many ways at the workplace, from outright rape to far less aggressive ways, comments about their bodies, their scents, or simply comments from men about their own desire for those women who have to work with them every day.

Atwood

The "Me Too" movement has succeeded in raising awareness of this serious and pervasive problem.


But "Me Too" has also embraced a mode of the vigilante--punishment without trial.
The argument made by "Me Too" advocates has been the legal system, and corporate systems run by Human Resources, have failed to protect women and failed to deliver justice, and given the failure of established institutions to redress their grievances, women are justified in going to the press, to social media to exact revenge by public shaming.


This is always the way with the vigilante: The argument almost always involves at least three elements:
1/ The established process of judges, juries and trials is too slow.
2/ The legal system often fails to convict guilty parties, who get off "scot free."
3/ Women need protection, but the legal system in its failure to protect is complicit in the crime.

"The Oxbow Incident," written decades ago, shows how this can play out. In the end, three innocent men are hanged for a crime which, it turns out, was never committed.


As Margaret Atwood has asked: "Do Good Feminists believe that only women should have such rights?"  She adds, "I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice."


Yet, that is exactly what the "Me Too" women would deny the men they've accused.
Atwood outraged "Me Too" by referring to a witch hunt.
"There are, at present, three kinds of "witch" language. 1/ Calling someone a witch, as applied lavishly to Hilary Clinton during the recent election. 2/"Witchhunt," used to imply that someone is looking for something that doesn't exist. 3/ The structure of the Salem witchcraft trials in which you were guilty because being accused.  I was talking about the third use."

Accusation is Final Judgment

She goes on to note that Me Too is a symptom of a broken legal system. I would add that it is the symptom of the perception of a broken legal system. Doctors and many swept up into the criminal justice system have known for decades our justice system is any thing but.


"All too frequently, women...couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions including corporate structures--so they used a new tool: the internet...This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake up call. But what next? If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers?"


Will we have tumbrils rolling through the streets of Hollywood and New York and Madame Dufarge knitting names into her cloth?

Duke Lacrosse Falsely Accused

Examples of false accusations have been noted: The UVA fraternity rape that wasn't; the Duke lacrosse team rapists who committed no rape and no crime; the comedian whose accuser went home with him, got naked and didn't like what followed.

Lurid detail. Lies.

And then there is the case of Al Franken, who was likely boorish, stupid, unfunny but hardly a rapist or even much of a bully. More a stupid adolescent who has no idea how to approach women in a way which they might find attractive, not to mention acceptable.


The very range of complaint, from the man who puts up a Playboy pin up at his work station next to the work station of his female coworker, is hardly the same sort of harasser as  the TV star who has a button on his desk which locks the door to his office, so the woman cannot escape and he can rape her. Those are two very different offenses in my mind, but not, apparently in the mind of Me Too.


Some Me Too folks say it's not even the individual man who is the problem but the systematic oppression of women by a patriarchy. Really? Where are we now?


Those who argue the airing of accusations in the press is just, argue that in the respectable press, the accused are given the opportunity to respond, but thus far most of those accused have not denied the accusations, which proves they are guilty. Of course, those who refuse to comment have likely been admonished by their lawyers to say nothing, presumably because even the innocent in denying inexpertly may open themselves up to new charges.


In the case of Harvey Weinstein, we had that old "I'm entering therapy" which is in fact, an admission of guilt,  at least to some of the charges. But in the case of Al Franken his denial was that he remembered things differently, and that was taken as an admission of guilt as well.


Hardly.


The other Me Too trope is while there have been some clear instances of women bearing false witness and accusing men who had not wronged them, those unjustly strung up in the court of public opinion are "collateral damage," and their fate is justified by the need for revenge on the part of all those women who have been wronged for whom there was no other option to seek justice.


The result has been, to my eye, something akin to mob justice. That is the alternative to a dysfunctional legal system.


An accusation of harassment must be taken as a substantial act, an act of aggression. It may be warranted, but it is aggressive. It should be subject to question, to cross examination. In any system of adjudication, the punishment and judgment should fit the level of offense: The rapist belongs behind bars; the guy who puts up the Playboy pin up is a jerk, but does not belong behind bars.


What you have to ask yourself is this: Can a legal system be fixed, improved, righted? 


Then ask: Can mob rule ever be made just?


So it comes down to this: Do you prefer law or the mob?