I read the National Review, but I don’t subscribe (although maybe I should). Since non-subscribers can’t comment on their articles, I thought I might respond here, as this article by Rich Lowry struck a cord.
In it, Mr. Lowry posits that Atticus Finch would surely have been on the (morally) losing side in the #MeToo world of today due to his defense of a man accused of rape. Who cares that he was black, or infirm, and could not have committed the crime; his testimony would have been discarded even before he gave it. (And no matter that he was convicted anyway for having the gall to be guilty of being a black man.)
I will be the first to say that anyone — even a grossly privileged and oddly indignant elitist such as Lowry– deserves the presumption of innocence, especially absent any facts or corroboration to the contrary.
But this is beside the point.
What Mr. Lowry misses is the reason why we are where we are today. Why is it, Mr. Lowry, that the #MeToo movement is so angry? So willing to convict (and perhaps even lynch) a white man based on an accusation alone? So ready to destroy a man who has not had an opportunity for due process in a court of law?
Perhaps it is because women who have been sexually assaulted have not been believed. Not on the whole. And certainly not when the situation is ‘he said’ vs. ‘she said’. (‘He’ usually wins.)
Perhaps it is because women who have been sexually assaulted feel that their only option is to keep it to themselves. [1]
Perhaps it is because a plurality of men still sees women as subordinate and subservient.
Perhaps it is because society still believes in ‘boys will be boys’. Even the women. And the mothers.
Perhaps it is because unless and until we recognize that sexual assault in any form is both abhorrent and unacceptable, we are enabling otherwise ‘decent’ boys and men to commit crimes of which they have little understanding or responsibility.
Perhaps it is because we don’t recognize just how damaging any event of sexual assault, regardless of whether it is ‘attempted’ or ‘insignificant’, can be to women and to girls.
Mr. Lowry may very well claim innocence of both recognizing this and enabling it. And he is right to do so. After all, he did not rape these women, nor did he attempt to, and perhaps he did not befriend any of those who did.
But that does not absolve him — nor any one of us — from the recognition that society has enabled men to treat women in whatever way they please. And this must come to an end.
Perhaps the end will come peacefully, and with a mutual understanding. But perhaps it will not. And there will be fire and fury and destruction.
[^1] Before you say anything to me about assumptions, let me tell you that I know these women. And more than one of them.