Author: Matthew Barlow

Since around Sunday afternoon, women have been posting on social media that they have been victims of sexual assault and/or sexual harassment.  My Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of these brave posts, with the hashtag #MeToo.  But, almost immediately, the backlash came.  From men. Yes, men are the victims of sexual assault, too.  Around 10% of rape victims are male, and around 3% of men in the United States have been sexually assaulted.  This is a very real problem.  And the sexual assault of men does not get much coverage in our world.  To be a male survivor of sexual assault is alienating and lonely.  In fact, many of the same things women experience, men experience in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted. But. This male backlash to #MeToo smacks of an attempt to deny women their experiences. It also smacks of ‘All Lives Matter.’ A couple of years ago, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, white conservatives began the counterpoint: All Lives Matter.  Well, duh.  Of course all lives matter.  That was never open for debate. No one ever said that because Black Lives Matter, other lives don’t.  But the simple fact was that the discussion was about black lives, which were much more likely to be terminated at the hands of the police than other types of lives. In effect, saying ‘All Lives...

Harvey Weinstein is disgusting.  At the very least, he is guilty of being a lecherous, disgusting man.  At the worst, he’s a rapist.  His defence of coming-of-age in the licentious 1960s and 70s is bullshit.  Many men came of age then, and they don’t commit sexual assault.  Nor is Weinstein alone, I’m sure.  As my friend Matthew Friedman noted, he is certainly not the only Hollywood mogul who used his power to bully young women into places they didn’t want to go, to use his power to sexually abuse them.  Think of the long-standing and endless jokes about casting couches and the like.  Weinstein just got caught. After 40 years.  In many ways, Weinstein is like the president, who, of course, boasted on tape for Access Hollywood, how he commits sexual assault.  As Marina Fung noted in the Huffington Post, the Weinstein tape is the sequel to the Trump tape.  And, of course, let us not forget last year’s scandal in Canada, where Jian Ghomeshi was accused of similar things as Weinstein and walked.  And then, of course, there is Bill Cosby. Make no mistake, Weinstein, Trump, Ghomeshi, and Cosby are just the tip of the iceberg. And thus far, there have been no criminal consequences for any of these men.  Hell, Donald Trump was elected president.  Weinsten, Ghomeshi, and Cosby have lost their good reputations, so there’s that.  But that...