WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH ALL THE MEN?

 AM I CRAZY OR have you noticed that there is a lot less attention paid to #MeToo these days. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that not everything that needs to be said is said, or needs to be done is done. The depth of damage going back millenia has left women so far behind that catching up is unimaginable. And yet we have to try.

As with many social movements, #MeToo has hurt a lot of people that it is supposed to help. An example would be the so-called sexual liberation of the sixties and the seventies. It was fun, but a lot  was just more pressure, and coercion, of women to give it up for free. I remember sitting at the bar in Maxwell's Plum in NYC. A guy sitting next to me was trying to pick me up but I wasn't interested in him. After a few polite rebuffs on my part he became angry. Accused me of being frigid, and worse, a Lesbian. What other reason could there be for not wanting to leave instantly and fuck him (not sure if dinner was on offer.)? This was not liberation at its finest, and I venture to say it wouln't have happened before. Or now.

A male psychiatrist told me, when I expressed my distress at being "admired" constantly on the street, that I should think of myself as a work of art.

What are we supposed to do with the men who have been called out, or those that haven't? Are we to deny them any afterlife? Do we count any good stories, movies, legislation they wrote as tainted? Is there a possibility of partial recovery? Is a legacy destroyed?

I'm not talking about true evil like Epstein and Weinstein, but more nuanced evildoers, like possibly Cuomo--although maybe he is really bad, too. I don't have the facts.

But what about Al Franken? 

A major disaster of #MeToo, for example, was losing a good senator. 

His comments about the hypocrisy of the GOP certainly rings true. 

As we wait for the other millions of shoes to drop.

Isn't it likely that most men have incidents that would clearly mark them for public castigation if only we knew?

Someone gave me a book of Woody Allen stories. They are funny. Can I never admit to enjoying a Polanski movie? 

Remember when many vocal feminists were up in arms because Hillary stuck with Bill after Monica?

What are we to do with all the men?

Most of them have simply not been caught. Are those, guilty but unaccused, to be treated as it they are blameless? The good guys? If by some stretch of the imagination we allow that maybe they have not offended, are they, we, not gulty of collusion for not calling them out? More urgent, for not calling out the system that fostered and protected the undermining of women at every turn?