The #metoo movement was the worst left-wing movement I had ever seen. Not in terms of its politics, so much, but in terms of its organization. It was a protest movement with barely any protesting, it had no organization, it had no leadership, it had no specific policy demands, it had no lobbying arm, it had no media strategy except an organic and directionless one, and it was an amorphous nebula for a movement. A lot was said about its lack of due process but the entire movement was organic anecdotal cases going viral. There was no capacity for due process like an investigative committee that releases reports after due research like a real organization would do.
In retrospect, I have almost nothing but disdain for the #metoo movement and not because of its feminism but the precedents it set for activism. It was everything that they said was wrong with Occupy Wall Street except worse. Al Franken would not have gone down had a deliberative committee decided who to condemn and who to forgive. Not only was Al Franken’s fall insane; it was the product of the histrionic, recklessness, of an unorganized movement based on real-time internet activism. Cooler heads don’t prevail on Twitter; they prevail with committees having thorough and deep discussions.
I am truly shocked that the #metoo movement’s lack of organization and its amorphous nature were not brought up as problems. There is a massive decline in dating and increase in loneliness but there were not social scientists in #metoo movement who could design a strategy to have a feminism that didn’t ruin romance and dating. There are more reasons than feminism for that but feminism was a contributing factor. Well, there were social scientists in the movement, actually, but there was no strategy or executive committee they could speak to to design policies and tactics which would accomplish the feminist aims without sabotaging the dating scene.
For the #metoo movement to accomplish its political goals without collateral damage, they would need a sophisticated strategy informed by experts in various fields which all requires coordination and cooperation that necessitates an organization. The type of nuance and finesse needed to do this right was going to be wholly absent from a purely organic, nebulous, movement mostly made of people who are not experts in the relevant disciplines. They couldn’t reduce sexual misconduct through well-written policies because they didn’t study the relevant sciences. What their non-expert selves did understand was revenge which any stupid person could understand. They didn’t have the training themselves or in a hierarchy above them to do anything but seek revenge.
None of this answers the obvious question about why there was no organization. Why did they do everything wrong with Occupy Wall Street except worse? The simplest answer and one with a lot of truth is laziness and the internet. Physical organizing is hard and the internet’s quick responses gave them the false impression of accomplishment for doing almost nothing. The push notification made their subconscious feel like it was making progress when, in reality, little progress was made and the progress that was being made was dumpster fire with some good things and a whole lot of collateral damage. It amounted to a psychological illusion created by the internet feeling real and actual organizing being needless.
They didn’t feel they needed an organization, also. Dunning-Krugger and What You See is All There Is are cognitive biases that made them feel that they didn’t need to collaborate or learn or research the science. These were massively complex social phenomena and most of the women and male allies were wholly uneducated in the fields of study needed to diagnose and cure these issues but those women and male allies were oblivious to the fact they didn’t know. They were unaware of how much they didn’t know and therefore felt no compulsion to find out or work with people who did know. They did not know what policies to write or how to mitigate collateral damage and it became an unmitigated disaster that made romance radioactive and spawned a backlash of tradwives, manosphere fascists, and incels.
The Autistic Resistance 