In the 1980s legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents—many laboring with the best of intentions—sought to put an end to child abuse in the United States. "Believe the children" became a catchphrase, and the legal system went to work. Babysitters, daycare workers, and any other adults entrusted with the care of children were scrutinized, and many became fair game. A catchphrase superseded due process. Among valid arrests and convictions, there were many centered on flimsy evidence, as moral outrage supplanted valid investigative techniques. Adults sometimes forgot that children make things up and that an imaginative child with a vivid imagination could be unduly influenced by an unscrupulous and rapacious lawyer, cop, or even a parent. The best of intentions sometimes fell to the basest of motivations. Today, we have improved laws and more awareness, but the journey to arrive there cost many innocent people their jobs, reputations, and self-respect.
Thirty years later the #MeToo movement followed a similar arc. There was a failing in modern male-centered society that, despite fair labor laws and equal pay advancements, frequently delegated women to a subservient position, one that brought with it sexual abuse, either overt or subtle, but sometimes violent. #MeToo was a shocking reversal of mores that was long overdue. The Hollywood "casting couch" had always been a euphemistic metaphor for the practice of soliciting sexual favors from a job applicant in exchange for employment, usually but not limited to the entertainment industry. It was a situation everyone winked at until #MeToo exposed it and eventually prosecuted the worst abusers.
But here also there was some collateral damage: the clowning of former senator Al Franken that prompted his resignation from Congress landed in the same category as Harvey Weinstein's forcing himself on countless women. Insensitive and often stupid behavior like Franken's was equated with sexual assaults, and the line became so muddled that women were once again on the defensive, not fending off male advances but the lawyers who accused them of lying. Early victims like Anita Hill and later ones like Christine Blasey Ford shared the same fate 40 years apart.
The #MeToo movement is not dead, and its lessons continue to reverberate, but its tendency to paint with too broad a brush has created a reaction that leaves us where we are today—with a patriarchal government permeated by unqualified men. Two of them, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. face questioning regarding sexual misconduct, and one woman, Linda McMahon has been linked to a company that enabled and overlooked sexual abuse of boys. Not one of these three deserves even a scintilla of consideration for a government post, but they'll get it from a Senate living in fealty to and fear of Donald Trump, Abuser-in-Chief, the man found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay five million dollars in a settlement.
A large segment of women voted for him, despite his rampant misogyny and archaic paternalism. #MeToo didn't create Trump and, in fact, worked to undo him in 2020, and that makes the backsliding of 2024 even more distressing: a Trump-Vance leadership model will eviscerate advances women have made in the past century, and their partners and husbands—those who love them—will not be spared.
Well-intentioned people worked to protect children and safeguard women, but we know from history and our own experiences that there is not a single positive that cannot be corrupted by greed, callousness, and indifference. And on January 20 at noon, Trump's Cabinet and other appointees will start checking all three boxes.
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