Friday, February 16, 2018 ~ EDITORIAL ~ by Mary P Brooke: No place for blind belief or vigilante justice in #MeToo
People deserve support if they have been victimized. But how is it that society has in the past year or so allowed for a huge chasm to manifest between emotional support and a process of determining the facts? Just because someone says something happened doesn’t mean that it did. And even with any validation there is still the need to explore context.
This comes sharply to light with the pushback by renewed Ontario PC leadership contender Patrick Brown whose self-restoration to running in that province’s June 7 election is a poignant example of someone having the courage to stand up to what may well be found out to be malintent. Put in that same camp the highly talented Canadian rock band Hedley whose entire sparkling career has in one short week been sent tumbling down without any confirmation of the facts.
Yes, the #MeToo movement has evolved as a backlash for the torturously long time that women have suffered in the modern workplace at the hands of a subculture that allows for the emotional and sexual aspects of human nature to be preyed upon.
It’s been women in most cases bearing the brunt of this horrible phenomenon, in terms of lost opportunity and income if not also reputation and well-being. We live in a culture that promotes enhanced personal appearance, a form of visual playfulness. But bottling up the natural inclinations of people by this — combined with the pathological thirst in North America for political correctness in all things — is just asking for the sort of trouble that workplaces and institutions across North America struggle with now.
The well-intentioned #MeToo movement has gone too far when people just stand back as lives are seriously impacted and damaged by the whim of others who hurl unsubstantiated accusations and those who bleed their hearts out with ‘we believe you’. An intelligent cultural approach will seek the facts from both sides, and follow a process of ascertaining what may have really happened. ~ MPB
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