In Which I Express Some Unpopular Opinions

I'm taking a huge risk by writing this post. I will express, as the title shows, some very unpopular opinions regarding the current #metoo hysteria and the Kavanaugh drama. Today's political climate has made it nearly impossible for me to express these opinions anywhere on social media because no matter how clear or concise my points are when I make them, there will always be those who take what I say to mean something different, or worse, those who take what I say and accuse ME of the very behavior of which I am speaking. That being said, I will no longer remain as silent as I have been on these issues, and so I've dusted off the old blog and have expressed those unpopular opinions here.

This all started back in 2017 with the exposure of Harvey Weinstein and several other Hollywood personalities who had been committing horrific sexual crimes against other Hollywood personalities for decades, and had worked together to either ignore the events, or actively cover them up. Weinstein was, after much drama and media attention, deservedly pilloried for his behavior when several Hollywood actresses, including Alyssa Milano, Gwenyth Paltrow, Rose McGowan, and reportedly dozens of others came forward and corroborated each other's stories regarding his behavior. Weinstein has since become Persona non grata in Hollywood and has faced indictment for criminal sexual assault charges, according to the Washington Post. With the revelation of Weinstein and other Hollywood personalities engaging in such behavior, a new movement arose, christened Me Too, whose original goal was to expose such behavior within Hollywood, and encourage solidarity between victims of sexual assault using the hashtag #metoo as a rallying cry.

It wasn't long before things began to spiral out of control within the ranks of Me Too. On February 10 of this year, the New York Post published an online article entitled "When the #metoo Movement Goes Too Far." Right away, I can see that some who read this may take the title of that article and immediately dismiss it as something it is not. Those who do ironically prove the actual points of this post.

We have forgotten, it seems, that allegations and accusations are not proof of wrongdoing. In the age of social media, the court of public opinion appears to have taken precedence in the public mind over the court of law. In today's political climate, all it takes is for one person to accuse another of some form of sexual misconduct if they have no evidence. This has made itself known most prominently in the drama surrounding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Most of you who are reading this are no doubt at least SOMEWHAT familiar with that news item, as it's been everywhere and everyone all over social media seems to have an opinion on the matter. The internet appears to be divided into two factions, for and against. Those who believe Kavanaugh's story claim that Ford's accusation is full of holes, and those who believe his accuser seem typically to default t to the justification that we must, no matter what, believe those who claim to be survivors of sexual assault.

That more than anything is the crux of the matter. Being the horrific crime that it is, we see rape as a crime that no one, supposedly, would ever lie about it. Ever. Unfortunately, the evidence for such false accusations is prominent and prevalent if you know where to look. For proof, we need only look back as far as the Duke University Lacrosse case. A decade ago, they accused three players on the Duke University LaCrosse team of raping a student. The details are all over the internet but the long and short of it is that the players were eventually exonerated and they found it was due to misconduct and inconsistencies in the accuser's story; the players were innocent of the crime. Unfortunately, the fallout from the accusations and the media frenzy regarding the case destroyed the reputations of the players in the eyes of the public. Besides being accused of rape, we branded them racist, sexist, misogynist, and many other pejorative terms until the case finally fell off the radar years later.

Fast forward ten years to #metoo, and we see the same thing happening to others that happened to the Duke players. It has gotten so bad, in fact, that people who defend those accused, whether or not that accusation is accurate, are pilloried for daring to suggest that there might be two sides to a story. Lena Dunham, for example, defended a producer on her now-cancelled show "Girls" when he was accused, and the backlash was so severe that she apologized, even though she'd done nothing except dare to suggest that a man accused of a crime might be innocent of said crime. This brings me, after much long-winded commentary and setup, to my first unpopular opinion: The #metoo movement has become a twisted mutation of itself. It has grown so far beyond its initial intentions that now it doesn't matter if a person is guilty or innocent. If we accuse them, they are to be shunned. Period. End of story. Guilty until proven innocent and sometimes not even then.

President Trump, a man who is no stranger to being accused of various wrongs by his detractors, has echoed these sentiments. From the New York Post:

“People's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation,” Trump wrote. “Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

Many on the side of the #metoo movement do not woverant to answer that question, yet we must answer it. Whatever happened to due process? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? When did it become okay to accuse ANYONE, man, woman, child, black, white, Asian, gay, straight, or what have you, of ANY crime and pronounce them guilty with no evidence to support that fact? To hear the media tell it, it became okay the moment they nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. People have pointed to his accuser's accusation as the main reason he shouldn't be confirmed, yet those individuals have either forgotten or never knew that even well before Kavanaugh's nomination, the left would do everything they could to stop Trump from confirming another justice no matter WHO it was. When petitions came out declaring that "we must stop the nominee" there was a blank space where the nominee's name would have been. Those who wrote it release it, apparently, without being checked by an editor. For two months, well before the accusation came out, leftist politicians were calling for the American people to "stop Kavanaugh" by any means necessary. Which brings me to my second unpopular opinion: The reason Kavanaugh is undergoing such a hit job from the Democrats is because of one thing and one thing only: Abortion.

Kavanaugh's judicial record has placed him firmly in the Constitutional Constructionist camp. His Catholic upbringing has also squarely placed him as a pro-life judge. Kavanaugh being a pro-life judge means that it is likely that, should they revisit the case, and should they should confirm him, the infamous Roe v. Wade court case could be overturned and abortion's legality left to the individual states. This and this alone is the real reason the left wants to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation. They want nothing to happen to abortion as it now stands, and they've cloaked it in the usual "women's right to her body" rhetoric that is always used to shame other pro-lifers into silence regarding this issue. Two months ago that was all anyone was talking about. If Kavanaugh got confirmed we'd be thrust into a real-life version of the Handmaid's Tale, and the only way to stop it was to #stopkavanaugh. This is patently untrue for various reasons. One, Kavanaugh by himself, if on the Supreme Court, does not have the power to just magically revisit Roe v. Wade. There is a process to which theym ust adhere, and they will adhere to it. Arguments have to be made, the case has to be presented, the judges ALL have to confer, and only then would it come to a vote. The idea that Kavanaugh's confirmation to the court will just magically end Roe is ludicrous fear-mongering, nothing more.

There. Now that that's out of the way I can make my third and final point: The drama surrounding Me Too and Kavanaugh has resulted in many on the right and in the middle wondering just how far is too far regarding accusations of sexual assault. Incidents like the Duke Lacrosse case have given rise to the idea that it is becoming dangerous for men to make sexual or flirtatious advances towards women for fear of those women coming back and accusing them of sexual misconduct or rape. Many people, men and women both, speculate that because of incidents like Duke Lacrosse that we could construe even such things as innocuous as a look across the room or a flirtatious comment as "sexual misconduct." And you know what? I think they're right.With feminist activist bloggers declaring that the act of placing penis into vagina is "always rape" and  U.S. senators declaring that "men need to shut up", not to mention people profiting off of shirts with such lovely messages as "men are trash," I am inclined to believe the veracity of this claim.

Therefore, I am worried for the next generation of fathers, brothers, uncles, male cousins, and sons. I am worried that they will enter a world that hates them for being men. I am worried that the phrase "toxic masculinity" will become so prevalent in use that men EVERYWHERE will soon be ostracized for daring to have committed the crime of being born with a penis instead of a vagina. I am worried that a high school freshman who wants to ask a girl on a date will have to defend himself against false accusations of rape and misconduct years down the line and have his reputation destroyed. That is what I worry about: a modern day Salem, Massachusetts with today's generation of men standing in place of the women who were accused of witchcraft.

There it is. Hate me, insult me, unfriend me on Facebook. It will say a lot more about those of you who do so than it will about me.