Has the #MeToo movement become a witch-hunt to a significant degree?

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TheAmazingGrace said:
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HarryStotle:
I would argue that taking the prime responsibility for having your own children and accompanying them and your spouse faithfully through every aspect of their lives actually develops moral character far more extensively than not having children.
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That’s your opinion.
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Sure, but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth.
 
HarryStotle said:
Everything you say here applies to Jesus’ moral injunction to love and care for our neighbours.
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Except that parenthood is not actually mandatory for all Catholics (although chastity is) in the same way that loving our neighbor is.
HarryStotle said:
How is aversion to suffering conducive to moral courage or doing the right thing in the face of pain or even the insinuation of minor inconvenience?
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It’s problematic that your example (childbearing and parenthood) is one of the most difficult things that typical people do.

It’s like saying, “Young people today don’t even want to run marathons!”

Here’s another counter-example to the idea that young people today are extremely pain averse: the recent vogue for home births.
HarryStotle said:
I would argue that taking the prime responsibility for having your own children and accompanying them and your spouse faithfully through every aspect of their lives actually develops moral character far more extensively than not having children.
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Traditionally, Catholics have had a special place in our hearts for celibate people.
 
Here’s a thought about the main topic and “snowflakes.”

As we’ve seen from MeToo, there have been decades of silence and tolerance of intolerable behavior. Then, along come the “snowflakes”–and it all starts falling apart. Rich, powerful sexual harassers and rapists started falling, one by one, and it is becoming clearer and clearer that in the social media age, it’s not going to be possible to permanently silence victims anymore.

So, go snowflakes!
 
None here have suggested Jules could have/should have done anything differently. It’s all on the Youth Pastor. Did you read otherwise in posts?

Even your framing only tells part of the story and may also be misleading. Adele appears to have had sex with her boyfriend and decided it was rape over a year later. We have no details on what happened and whether there was reasonable consent.
 
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Theo520 said:
Adele appears to have had sex with her boyfriend and decided it was rape over a year later. We have no details on what happened and whether there was reasonable consent.
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I was quoting Zippy Catholic’s response, which is the least sympathetic possible reading of the story. Here’s the story he was responding to from Simcha Fisher’s blog:


I’m not going to quote the actual sexual assault account because it’s probably not CAF appropriate, but anybody who wants to have an opinion should read Adele’s account, which should answer your questions. Here are some surrounding details:

–Christendom had extremely strict PDA rules at the time. Couples weren’t supposed to so much as hold hands on campus.
–Christendom has a huge homeschooled population, so it has a lot of young women (and young men) from very sheltered backgrounds.
–“Smith, who was then a sophomore, says she was so naive, she didn’t even know to use the word “rape” until many months later. She told her friends, “He had sex with me, and I didn’t want to.””
–I realize that that is going to sound stupid or suspicious to our more worldly male posters–but up until you’ve been sexually assaulted, rape is something that happens to other people, and certainly wouldn’t involve that nice young man you’ve gotten so fond of. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance when the perpetrator was close to you.
–And again, there’s no billboard reading YOU’VE JUST BEEN SEXUALLY ASSAULTED! after sexual assault. It doesn’t come with labels.
–Here’s an important piece of evidence in favor of Adele’s story–she broke up with him the next day.
–“When you’re Catholic you’re taught that your virginity is one of the best gifts you have, a gift you can give your husband,” Smith said. “I had been a virgin. I had been waiting for marriage."
–The college did find that the young man was guilty of repeatedly harassing Adele afterward and he was punished for it with being made to live off campus one semester and not being permitted to contact Adele. The repeated harassment is consistent with Adele’s story of him raping her.

I strongly suggest that you read Adele’s account, especially before continuing to float the “regretted sex” narrative. Bear in mind that if you say that it was just regretted sex, you’re saying that she’s a liar and a fabulist–which is at least as serious an accusation as saying that someone is a rapist.

I think it is possible to read her account and believe that she said no to some of the stuff he was doing but then her anxiety kicked in and she froze and wasn’t able to verbally say no to actual sex–but she’d already said no to a lot of things without him stopping what he was doing.

Also, why wouldn’t she just keep silent if it was regretted sex, especially on a super duper conservative campus? Why not keep her mouth shut and preserve her reputation and privacy?
 
Consider that if Christendom has a lot of sheltered young women who are waiting for marriage (and presumably it does) and if certain young men there have no interest in waiting for marriage (and some obviously don’t), that’s a potentially very dangerous situation for those young women. Saying “no” is in some ways more dangerous than saying “yes.”

One of the very disheartening things about these discussions has been the apparent disbelief by certain posters on this thread that some young women are waiting for marriage. It’s like those women don’t exist at all.

One more piece of evidence in favor of Adele’s story: Christendom (which presumably has a lot more information than we do) has made a general apology and is promising to do better.

https://www.christendom.edu/2018/01/24/college-extends-support/
 
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Xantippe said:
I’m not going to quote the actual sexual assault account because it’s probably not CAF appropriate, but anybody who wants to have an opinion should read Adele’s account, which should answer your questions. Here are some surrounding details:
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I’ll summarize the detail that was missing before.
  • she said “No” repeatedly yet her 'boyfriend persisted and over powered her.
From her recount it is clear she was raped by her boyfriend. I don’t think anyone here would fault her actions for what led up to the incident. She consented to kissing, that’s all.
 
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I just came across the following (which CAF informs me I’ve already posted):


We have a paradoxical situation where fertility is down, but the percentage of women who are mothers is up.

“A baby bust. The fertility rate at a record low. Millennials deciding not to have children. There has been a lot of worry about the state of American fertility. Yet today, 86 percent of women ages 40 to 44 — near the end of their reproductive years — are mothers, up from 80 percent in 2006, reversing decades of declines, according to a new analysis of census data by Pew Research Center on Thursday. The increase has been especially steep among groups of women who hadn’t been having as many babies: those with advanced degrees, and those who never marry.”

There’s a chart in the article showing the percentage of women 40-44 who are mothers over 40+ years starting in 1975. Around 1980, the percentage was 90% (those women would have been born from 1936-1940–a very high fertility cohort), but then the percentage goes down down down, bottoming out at 80% around 2006–and it’s been up and up ever since. We’ve bounced back to mid-1980s levels of motherhood among women 40-44.

In this context, 86% is a very high number and doesn’t accord well with HarryStotle’s theories about selfish, pain averse young people avoiding parenthood.
 
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Xantippe said:
In this context, 86% is a very high number and doesn’t accord well with HarryStotle’s theories about selfish, pain averse young people avoiding parenthood.
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I don’t know this guy’s theories but people often do delay starting a family for selfish reasons, and I don’t use that word in the negative context. Wanting to focus on your career or wait for longer as a couple before giving away all your freedoms is technically selfish but in no way indicates a completely selfish person.

I think most people make better parents when they start with greater life experience.
 
Rozellelily said:
@harrystotle,

I sympathise with you that it can be hard to not follow the crowd when it comes to issues where it’s unpopular now to hold certain views due to the current social narrative-eg:voting against gay marriage.
It’s something I struggle with often as on one hand I want to agree with what God says,but then on the other hand I don’t want people to dislike me,or form negative impression of me,think I’m a hater or a bigot etc.
It’s probably something quite a few people here in Australia struggle with as here religion (all types) and religious views are quite unpopular and most people don’t like talking about religion and it isn’t talked about in everyday life unlike in America.

I’m not sure though what this has to do with the Metoo movement or cosmetics though?
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Good question!

Social conformity is a powerful incentive. If individuals only have the fortitude to do the right thing as a function of prompting by society and their peers, that would mean individuals will increasingly not do what they know to be right if that is opposed by their society.

This is particularly true when the society itself has taken on the mantle of being the determiner of morality – i.e., where the society has set itself up as the final arbiter of right and wrong.

This is the direction that modern western societies are rapidly moving. That is, using social conformity as the big stick to keep dissenters in line. We currently see that “big stick” of political correctness being waved about quite threateningly in many ways.

I suspect #MeToo as another method of getting individuals on board the conformity train. I also see that train increasingly having effect in day to day life where the loud and outspoken use the prevailing social narrative to belittle and berate others they are convinced ought to be silenced.

You admitted as much yourself when you said, “…religious views are quite unpopular and most people don’t like talking about religion and it isn’t talked about in everyday life.”

It isn’t just religious views that are reproved and disallowed, it is increasingly views on all kinds of issues. There needs to be push-back on the intimidators and bullies who are attempting to mould society in their image and solely according to their beliefs.

What ever happened to diversity (of opinions) is our strength?
 
Xantippe said:
But far more US women have babies (including multiple babies) than the percentage of US men who suffer battlefield injuries.

About 1/3 of US births involves the baby being cut out of the woman’s belly.
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Xantippe said:
In this context, 86% is a very high number and doesn’t accord well with HarryStotle’s theories about selfish, pain averse young people avoiding parenthood.
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Several things:
  1. I suppose the telling feature of whether pain averse young women are avoiding motherhood isn’t whether they have one child, since they couldn’t really judge the severity of the pain until they actually experience giving birth. So the real criteria would be if they are willing to put themselves through the rumoured “excruciating” pain repeatedly.
  2. It could be argued that the proclivity towards divorce or bailing out of marriage (or only tentatively or conditionally entering into relationships) is evidence that the last couple of generations are averse to putting up with suffering, unease, boredom, inconvenience or any other of the negative states attending marriage. The moral implication is that authentic morality requires or obliges specific correct action, while the current vogue of moral relativism has no such binding or obligatory assumption. The simple fact that when the going gets tough, the supposedly “tough” in recent generations simply pack up their things and get going to where the going is easier.
  3. I wasn’t the one who that claimed that giving birth constitutes an unbearable form of suffering. You have me confused with @TheAmazingGrace. I was merely contending that aversion to suffering is a moral deficit as it potentially interferes with individual willingness to do the good or right thing, including bearing children.
  4. The fact that women in the past bore upwards of a dozen children and willingly bore that “burden” with grace (pace @TheAmazingGrace) and aplomb implies that childbirth isn’t anything like suffering severe battlefield injuries, which often tore apart bodies permanently. Many of those were so traumatized that they could not ever speak of the experience again. That isn’t true of women and their birthing experience.
 
HarryStotle said:
Social conformity is a powerful incentive. If individuals only have the fortitude to do the right thing as a function of prompting by society and their peers, that would mean individuals will increasingly not do what they know to be right if that is opposed by their society.
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We need to do a lot of different things, and some of those are going to be specifically what society wants us to do.

For example, my husband and I would probably have a prairie instead of a lawn if left to ourselves, but society (i.e. the neighborhood) has expectations, so we do the minimum.

Likewise, I am not excited about doing certain kinds of school volunteering and would do very little if left to my own devices, but it’s my duty, and it would look bad to others if I shirked too much, so I do it.
HarryStotle said:
This is particularly true when the society itself has taken on the mantle of being the determiner of morality
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Society is always going to be a determiner of values and morality.
HarryStotle said:
This is the direction that modern western societies are rapidly moving. That is, using social conformity as the big stick to keep dissenters in line.
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There have always been some social pressures to do bad things. For example, a couple hundred years ago, men would be under huge pressure to fight duels to defend their reputation, even if they personally thought it was stupid and immoral. Likewise, there is probably a lot of social pressure in some Islamic countries to do honor killings.

But at the same time, there have always been social pressures nudging people toward doing the right thing.

You’re never going to find a society that has moral values that line up perfectly with Christianity, but at the same time, no functioning society is completely wrong in its values.
HarryStotle said:
I suspect #MeToo as another method of getting individuals on board the conformity train.
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Whether or not conformity is bad or good depends on the content of the behavior that people are being encouraged to adopt. For example, would you quibble if women suddenly started conforming to your ideas of modesty?
HarryStotle said:
There needs to be push-back on the intimidators and bullies who are attempting to mould society in their image and solely according to their beliefs.
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There are all different kinds of bullies.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
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HarryStotle:
I am certain that being torn apart by shrapnel or a grenade on the battlefield would qualify as “being roughly in the same ballpark” as childbirth.
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Women have gotten torn apart by shrapnel, too. Men don’t have the monopoly on wartime suffering.
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And pretty much any of those women would prefer childbirth.
 
Xantippe said:
Whether or not conformity is bad or good depends on the content of the behavior that people are being encouraged to adopt. For example, would you quibble if women suddenly started conforming to your ideas of modesty?
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Yes.

And there’s really no point in non-conformity for the sake of non-conformity. “I won’t wear business clothing to work because conformity is bad!” is a teenaged attitude, not a Christian one. Western business clothing isn’t inherently immodest - uncomfortable and a bit silly perhaps, but it’s how we in our society are expected to show that we take our jobs seriously.

Wedding attire is another good example. In a western wedding, it’s considered quit inappropriate for female guests to wear plain white dresses - even though wearing a white maxi dress on other occasions would be considered perfectly appropriate. But if I went to a wedding in India, I’d be expected to refrain from wearing red (for similar reasons as the white here). And of course in neither case should I show up in a t-shirt and jeans, even though it’s also not inherently immoral for me to wear that. But following the cultural norms is how I communicate my respect for the occasion.
 
But they sustain the vast majority of it. Women just tend to go with the flow, even if that means obliging new conquerers.
 
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