Does the success of the "Me Too" movement ground on an abuse of presentism?

Great Debates
1

I’ve always been a feminist. I find it unconceivable to think a person inferior on gender grounds.

The other day someone on TV was arguing the recent manifestation of the #MeToo movement is an abuse of presentism. It is wrong to use today’s criteria and standards to issue moral judgments about what people did a generation or two ago. A waitress being patted on the posterior by an authoritative figure didn’t use to be frowned on, while the guy could even get arrested if it happened today.

Of course the legislation that applies in these cases is relatively the same; what has changed is only its enforcement. Even nowadays there may be clear Penal Code articles on public intoxication, vagrancy or jaywalking, but people can get way with breaking the law because it is condoned behavior.

Society was more patriarchal fifty years ago than it is today. The country I live in is in many respects still patriarchal and misogynistic. There was little reverberation of the #MeToo movement here and an important reason is that they say it would be an anachronism to judge what someone did in the 80’s based on today’s morals.

So now I wonder: Do you think the “Me Too” movement is, at least in part, an abuse of presentism?

2

No, because for every “dude patted me on the ass” there are a hundred thousand “dude grabbed my ass”.

3

…would you care to offer some examples from the #metoo hashtag that would go to prove your case? Because in almost every story I’ve listened too people aren’t talking about being “patted on the posterior.”

4

No. Just because some behavior was accepted in the past does not make it acceptable.

5

Society being more patriarchal and misogynistic in the past doesn’t mean that back then that the morals of the time accepted sexual harassment. It means that the people who had power could get away with it more easily.

Yesterday’s morals for someone getting sexually harassed said what was happening was wrong. Why should we ignore them?

6

Before we even begin to think about the answer to whether “presentism” is a problem in the Me Too “movement,” you need to take a much more careful look at “presentism” itself.

I think you have mis-characterized or misapplied it.

The thing is, “presentism” isn’t a simple thing, even in the particular instances where it is a legitimate criticism. It is really only a legitimate concern to raise, when the subject under consideration is why something WASN’T OBJECTED TO STRENUOUSLY AT THE TIME. It does NOT apply when discussing whether or not the activity itself was good or bad, positive or negative, abusive or not abusive at the original time.

Abuse of any kind, is always abuse. When a society tolerates or expects or even calls for abuse to occur, it doesn’t result in the people being abused, feeling wonderful about it, it just results a general lack of attention and publicity to whatever it was.

In the recent case of “negative appreciation” of a thirty year old man, chasing young girls still in High School for sex, the majority of people who disapprove of it, didn’t do so because they thought that it used to be okay and healthy, but that humans had changed, and that it was now not a good idea. They decided that it had ALWAYS been a bad thing.

Recognizing this dynamic, is the key to understanding why people are coming forward now, about things that happened long ago, that they didn’t object to at the time it happened. People aren’t complaining now, just because it’s popular to fuss now, even though they enjoyed it at the time. They are complaining now, because AT THE TIME IT HAPPENED, they were tremendously upset, but felt that they could not complain, due to general public opinion not being in their favor.

That’s not “presentism.” Not even remotely.

7

Yeah, which men are being demonized for patting a waitress on the butt 50 or 60 years ago? Maybe it was considered “OK” 50 or 60 years ago (I’m not sure, but it might have been), but it wasn’t “OK” in the 80s.

8

nm seabtbiabof

9

I’m skeptical of the claim that “A waitress being patted on the posterior by an authoritative figure didn’t use to be frowned on”. Best as I can tell, it was always frowned on and looked at as lecherous and somewhat jerkish. Wasn’t done by respectable people, or if they did, it was a failing that they weren’t proud of.

The only “evidence” I can remember offhand is from the book Cheaper by the Dozen where the protagonist, who disliked all ministers, claimed that some waitress on an ocean liner had told him that after a group of ministers traveled on that boat, her behind was so sore she couldn’t sit down for a week. But this seems consistent with other things I’ve read.

I agree that it most likely wasn’t looked at nearly as severely as it is now. So I think the question is still there, but it’s a bit more complex than if it were considered acceptable at the time.

10

I suppose there would be an argument to be made of “presentism” if we could find examples of perpetrators being called out for offenses that only occurred 40 some years ago, but I don’t think that is the case. Instead we are seeing reports where the offenses may have started 40 years ago, but continued to the near present.

But stepping back from that - what would the OP consider a sufficient cut-off, or statute of limitation for discounting the reports: 20 years ago? 15? 10? Because I can say from my own experience that at least 25 years ago we were being instructed in the avoidance of sexual harassment in the workplace. So, the recent reports of bad behavior are well withing the time frame that there was awareness of this being an issue, at least in employment situations.

11

That’s not being a feminist. That’s being a decent human being.

12

Presentism is based on the premise that the behavior was acceptable at the time it occurred. That’s not the case here. The men who were sexually harassing women were aware that what they were doing was wrong. They just thought they powerful enough to get away with doing it anyway.

13

That’s not completely true, because there are a lot of things we now think of as ‘sexual harassment’ which were considered part of a reasonably normal male-female courtship dance not that long ago.

Take wolf whistles. I can remember commercials in the 1980’s and maybe even the 1990’s aimed at women that showed a woman getting wolf-whistles as she walked by a construction site, and later she explained her ‘secret’ for getting all that lovely attention. These were ads for women’s products, targeted at women. I want to say one of them was for L’eggs pantyhose, but I’m not positive. It’s been a long time. I do remember a time though, when women took a wolf-whistle as a compliment.

I can also remember a common depiction in movies and on TV of men casually swatting women on the bum, and the response being a giggle, or perhaps an admonishion to not be quite so ‘fresh’.

Now, you could say that all this material was likely written by men, and hated by women who kept silent because of the ‘times’. Even if that’s true, it still means that men believed the behavior was normal and acceptable, and maybe even desired by women.

I haven’t read any of the #metoo posts, so I would hope that the ones getting any traction describe events much worse than the above. Because even back in the day, there was no tolerance for grabbing a woman’s breast without permission, or for giving her a lewd proposition, or showing her your junk without asking. That type of behavior has been universally condemned in our society for pretty much ever.

14

But men aren’t being called to task today for “wolf whistles” on construction sites. As for what we see on films or TV, that’s not necessarily relevant. We still see the “she says no, but she really means yes” meme depicted on film even today. That doesn’t mean our society thinks it’s OK to to keep trying to get it on with the girl or woman after she tries to push you away.

15

It would also mean that women didn’t, as you say in your first line here. Yet the first line of your post focuses solely on what you consider here to be the “male” position and ascribes it to people back then in general.

16

Well, since those ads were targeted at women, you’d think a competent ad agency would have done focus groups and such to see if women responded to it.

Remember the Nair commercials? “Who wears short shorts? We wear short shorts! If you dare wear short shorts, Nair for short shorts!” We are talking shorts so short that women had to worry about pubic hair sticking out. Just who do you think those short shorts were for?

17

I don’t find: “I saw it in a commercial, so I figured it was acceptable behavior” to be a particularly convincing defense, even in the court of public opinion. YMMV.

18

Well…

Wolf-Whistling could be made illegal under new European Convention

The big debate: Should wolf whistling be criminalised in Britain?

France is debating laws to combat sexual harassment - Whistling is in the firing line

To be sure, I think wolf-whistling is boorish behavior. I’ve never done it But there’s no way in hell it should be criminal behavior, any more than picking your nose in public or other disgusting or rude habits. My point, however, is that it was considered reasonably acceptable behavior not that long ago. I would hope that if a video of a politician wolf-whistling some woman 30 years ago surfaced, it would not destroy their career. And to be honest, today I don’t think it would. But given the speed with which social change is happening, who knows? We won’t know until the video surfaces and the social media outrage crowd has a go at it. We’re at the point where you never know where the next moral panic will emerge.

19

Really? Because I would think such things could be used as evidence of what ‘cultural norms’ were at the time, which would in turn indicate whether your behavior was outside of those norms or something that a reasonable person might understand to be harassment.

There were countless ads in the past decades which showed women walking past men and being ogled, whistled at, commented on, etc. Then the woman would smile and wink at the camera and we’d find out what her ‘secret’ was for attracting all that male attention. I don’t remember protests against these commercials, by women or men. And apparently such ads worked with women, as they ad companies kept it up for decades.

However, there have never been ads showing men groping a woman because she was wearing short shorts, or exposing his junk to a woman because her perfume drove him mad. Because that kind of behavior has always been wrong.

20

But that’s still missing the central point; the current situation in America has nothing to do with wolf whistling. You’re avoiding the real topic.