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| A reminder to men who only see their own pain – #MeToo is not about you | A reminder to men who only see their own pain – #MeToo is not about you |
| (4 months later) | |
| Introducing Jian Ghomeshi, New York Review of Books contributor. My loss, no doubt, but I had never heard of Ghomeshi until last week, when the literary magazine published his mournful confessional essay Reflections From a Hashtag. But he might yet come to be widely known as an inspiration to opponents of #MeToo. | Introducing Jian Ghomeshi, New York Review of Books contributor. My loss, no doubt, but I had never heard of Ghomeshi until last week, when the literary magazine published his mournful confessional essay Reflections From a Hashtag. But he might yet come to be widely known as an inspiration to opponents of #MeToo. |
| The piece, dwelling on public disgrace related to recorded sexual misdemeanours, appears a year after the allegations that gave rise to the #MeToo tide of disclosures and as a principal attraction in an issue whose cover line is “The Fall of Men”. Since the magazine’s newly departed editor, Ian Buruma, expressed disquiet about “a general climate of denunciation” brought about, he suggests, by #MeToo, it seems fair to conclude that the magazine indeed intended, under his leadership, to portray the moment when women collectively spoke out about male harassment as yet another misfortune for his long-suffering sex. | The piece, dwelling on public disgrace related to recorded sexual misdemeanours, appears a year after the allegations that gave rise to the #MeToo tide of disclosures and as a principal attraction in an issue whose cover line is “The Fall of Men”. Since the magazine’s newly departed editor, Ian Buruma, expressed disquiet about “a general climate of denunciation” brought about, he suggests, by #MeToo, it seems fair to conclude that the magazine indeed intended, under his leadership, to portray the moment when women collectively spoke out about male harassment as yet another misfortune for his long-suffering sex. |
| As for Ghomeshi, the NYRB’s contributors page identifies him as “a broadcaster, musician, producer and bestselling author. He was the host and co-creator of the cultural affairs programme Q on CBC radio and TV from 2007 to 2014.” | As for Ghomeshi, the NYRB’s contributors page identifies him as “a broadcaster, musician, producer and bestselling author. He was the host and co-creator of the cultural affairs programme Q on CBC radio and TV from 2007 to 2014.” |
| So the only way an NYRB reader unfamiliar with this Canadian would have known that the loss of that prestigious job was triggered by the Toronto Star’s fact-checked allegations of serious sexual misconduct was if the author had been honest or if the magazine, under Buruma, had supplied the relevant context (including complaints by more than 20 women, a court case, a formal apology). | So the only way an NYRB reader unfamiliar with this Canadian would have known that the loss of that prestigious job was triggered by the Toronto Star’s fact-checked allegations of serious sexual misconduct was if the author had been honest or if the magazine, under Buruma, had supplied the relevant context (including complaints by more than 20 women, a court case, a formal apology). |
| Instead, Reflections From a Hashtag, which ignores or misrepresents complaints against Ghomeshi (20 becomes “several”), dwelling piously on his lessons in loss and public disgrace, is plainly intended to read as a kind of Twitter-age De Profundis. The real victim of his mistreatment of women is, the reader learns, Ghomeshi himself, another harmless butterfly broken on the pitiless wheel of #MeToo. Although, as he playfully points out, in an unusually accurate aside: “I was the guy everyone hated first.” | Instead, Reflections From a Hashtag, which ignores or misrepresents complaints against Ghomeshi (20 becomes “several”), dwelling piously on his lessons in loss and public disgrace, is plainly intended to read as a kind of Twitter-age De Profundis. The real victim of his mistreatment of women is, the reader learns, Ghomeshi himself, another harmless butterfly broken on the pitiless wheel of #MeToo. Although, as he playfully points out, in an unusually accurate aside: “I was the guy everyone hated first.” |
| The scale of the factual misrepresentation and of Ghomeshi’s unfortunate tonal lapses, where the circumstances demanded both rigour and sensitivity, raised obvious questions of editorial judgment. Slate’s Isaac Chotiner asked Buruma about the serious allegations – including punching women in the head – against Ghomeshi. “The exact nature of his behaviour,” Buruma said, “how much consent was involved – I have no idea, nor is it really my concern.” He wanted, he said, to “help people think this sort of thing through”. | The scale of the factual misrepresentation and of Ghomeshi’s unfortunate tonal lapses, where the circumstances demanded both rigour and sensitivity, raised obvious questions of editorial judgment. Slate’s Isaac Chotiner asked Buruma about the serious allegations – including punching women in the head – against Ghomeshi. “The exact nature of his behaviour,” Buruma said, “how much consent was involved – I have no idea, nor is it really my concern.” He wanted, he said, to “help people think this sort of thing through”. |
| If so, why not further assist people by supplying the necessary information? For a man who had done nothing wrong, as Ghomeshi implied, except to be big headed and a wee bit inconsiderate, the loss of his livelihood might well seem to justify, to any reader who didn’t Google him, his sub-Wildean meanderings about public scorn. | If so, why not further assist people by supplying the necessary information? For a man who had done nothing wrong, as Ghomeshi implied, except to be big headed and a wee bit inconsiderate, the loss of his livelihood might well seem to justify, to any reader who didn’t Google him, his sub-Wildean meanderings about public scorn. |
| But for a man who’s admitted, on the other hand, to groping and obscenities at work, Ghomeshi is surely fortunate to find himself, a threatened lawsuit abandoned, with a redemption opportunity in the NYRB. That his apologia should not, unlike his victims’ accounts, have been through rudimentary fact-checking might suggest, in fact, that his reputation survives in better shape than theirs. | But for a man who’s admitted, on the other hand, to groping and obscenities at work, Ghomeshi is surely fortunate to find himself, a threatened lawsuit abandoned, with a redemption opportunity in the NYRB. That his apologia should not, unlike his victims’ accounts, have been through rudimentary fact-checking might suggest, in fact, that his reputation survives in better shape than theirs. |
| Buruma, having selected the whitewashing of Ghomeshi as the hill he wanted to die on, resigned from the NYRB, saying he’d been “convicted on Twitter”. But by which bit? To judge by another wing of the echo chamber, the perceived addition to their ranks of a bona fide intellectual, claiming persecution by the mob, has energised fellow believers in male victimhood, from the familiar gone-too-far/is-this-the-end-of-flirting? alliance to people who can somehow connect Buruma’s tin-eared obduracy with the deplatforming, by PC’s ever present censors, of Steve Bannon. | Buruma, having selected the whitewashing of Ghomeshi as the hill he wanted to die on, resigned from the NYRB, saying he’d been “convicted on Twitter”. But by which bit? To judge by another wing of the echo chamber, the perceived addition to their ranks of a bona fide intellectual, claiming persecution by the mob, has energised fellow believers in male victimhood, from the familiar gone-too-far/is-this-the-end-of-flirting? alliance to people who can somehow connect Buruma’s tin-eared obduracy with the deplatforming, by PC’s ever present censors, of Steve Bannon. |
| Local martyr Toby Young, for example, was quick to reattribute Buruma’s departure to “sexual McCarthyism”. By which he means, presumably, the politically orchestrated persecution of the entirely blameless, on trumped-up charges. Back to De Profundis. “I can sympathise with Buruma,” Young volunteers. “I felt obliged to stand down from various charities at the beginning of the year after a social media outrage mob called for my head.” To save yet another anti-#MeToo activist the trouble of denouncing the sexual McCarthyism that robbed our universities of Young’s mentoring, it’s probably worth quoting – since he doesn’t – one of the many tweets for which the educationalist “unreservedly apologised” last year: “The women here are smoking hot. There should be an award for best baps.” | Local martyr Toby Young, for example, was quick to reattribute Buruma’s departure to “sexual McCarthyism”. By which he means, presumably, the politically orchestrated persecution of the entirely blameless, on trumped-up charges. Back to De Profundis. “I can sympathise with Buruma,” Young volunteers. “I felt obliged to stand down from various charities at the beginning of the year after a social media outrage mob called for my head.” To save yet another anti-#MeToo activist the trouble of denouncing the sexual McCarthyism that robbed our universities of Young’s mentoring, it’s probably worth quoting – since he doesn’t – one of the many tweets for which the educationalist “unreservedly apologised” last year: “The women here are smoking hot. There should be an award for best baps.” |
| A lover of romantic poetry, Hockenberry's typical approach went: 'Want to get a hotel room?' or 'Let's get you drunk' | A lover of romantic poetry, Hockenberry's typical approach went: 'Want to get a hotel room?' or 'Let's get you drunk' |
| Even before Ghomeshi’s lament, the publication in US Harper’s Magazine of a yet more absurdly self-serving account – by a disgraced radio presenter, John Hockenberry – had demonstrated the lasting incredulity, in some “cultivated” circles, that the exposure of serial molestation of women by powerful men could be anything but a tragedy for the molesters. | Even before Ghomeshi’s lament, the publication in US Harper’s Magazine of a yet more absurdly self-serving account – by a disgraced radio presenter, John Hockenberry – had demonstrated the lasting incredulity, in some “cultivated” circles, that the exposure of serial molestation of women by powerful men could be anything but a tragedy for the molesters. |
| That offering, in which Hockenberry reflects, with an indignation worthy of wronged Dreyfus, on an ordeal inflicted by the “inchoate anger of #MeToo”, is entitled “Exile”. Though Hockenberry seems further to feel the injustice, in Wildean terms, as an affront to his creative genius. He’d won an Emmy award, for goodness sake. Plus, contrary to any impression created by the allegations that prompted his sacking, he reveres Romantic poetry. In far-from-inchoate victims’ accounts, the typical Hockenberry approach went: “Want to get a hotel room?” or: “Let’s get you drunk”. | That offering, in which Hockenberry reflects, with an indignation worthy of wronged Dreyfus, on an ordeal inflicted by the “inchoate anger of #MeToo”, is entitled “Exile”. Though Hockenberry seems further to feel the injustice, in Wildean terms, as an affront to his creative genius. He’d won an Emmy award, for goodness sake. Plus, contrary to any impression created by the allegations that prompted his sacking, he reveres Romantic poetry. In far-from-inchoate victims’ accounts, the typical Hockenberry approach went: “Want to get a hotel room?” or: “Let’s get you drunk”. |
| From the start, the very proliferation of such reports, protesting any molestation short of rape, simply confirmed to participants in the #MeToo backlash that it’s all hype, hysteria, the work of anti-flirting man-haters. According to this narrative, Buruma’s departure, like the recent stories about Brett Kavanaugh, can only be further evidence of a #MeToo-created “climate of denunciation” (to borrow the former’s elegant synonym for witch-hunt), as opposed to indicating how much more there is yet, after a whole year, to learn. | From the start, the very proliferation of such reports, protesting any molestation short of rape, simply confirmed to participants in the #MeToo backlash that it’s all hype, hysteria, the work of anti-flirting man-haters. According to this narrative, Buruma’s departure, like the recent stories about Brett Kavanaugh, can only be further evidence of a #MeToo-created “climate of denunciation” (to borrow the former’s elegant synonym for witch-hunt), as opposed to indicating how much more there is yet, after a whole year, to learn. |
| • Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist | • Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist |
| #MeToo movement | #MeToo movement |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Women | Women |
| Sexual harassment | Sexual harassment |
| Men | Men |
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