A lot of #MeToo stories have been trending off lately. We know harassments have mostly happened with women and men have been guilty. While, there’s a different side to the story too. Physical assaults stories have come up from men too who were harassed by women and me. So, all we understand is that we need to blame the intentions and not the gender.
‘There are two sides to every story’ is an aphorism you don’t hear often lately. Ask anyone amidst a family row: most stories have more than two sides. But in the take-no-prisoners world of #MeToo, there’s only one side. All women are victims and all women are truthful. Any man here deserves a permanent social and professional banishment and is forever forbidden from saying a word in his own defence.
“Women are owning the internet today. Every woman we know are speaking up and reaching out, drawing others into the circle. They are all saying ‘Me too; I have been assaulted, too’. On the other side of the line, men are being uncharacteristically quiet. While women are raising their voices and implicitly asking if men will acknowledge their experience at our hands, we are saying nothing in return. Effectively, we are gaslighting women with our silence. We are pretending their experiences did not happen. We are implying that while there may be bad men, we must not be the men they’re talking about. We are acting as if all of the bad men stand on the other side of a line that we have drawn in the sand. We refuse to see that that line in the sand is a circle that we’ve drawn around ourselves.
Let me shout it out for those sitting in the back: there are no ‘good men’, gentlemen. There are no ‘bad’ men. There are no ‘gentlemen’. There are just men.
What women are saying today about men is obvious to me, and so, because I am a woman, I have no alternative but to acknowledge them but acknowledge them both. I have a list. It isn’t less long to know how badly and how many have been at pain and by that I mean both the genders. Whether we know it or not, whether we allow ourselves to admit it or not, every man has a list of times that he has violated a woman’s boundaries. Men are raised in a society that teaches boys that they are entitled to have access to women’s bodies. You may not be drugging women’s drinks in a nightclub. The game teaches men to assume that women want what we want. The game teaches women that they are supposed to want what men want. Men benefit from this, women do not, but the game is rigged to hurt everyone. The only way to end that cycle is to reject the game itself.
Now that we are older, we understand that. But for every man that learns, ten more boys are coming up. The men who have learned have a responsibility to own their past and share what they have learned so that the pain of that past isn’t wasted. It would unforgivable to hide the pain I’ve caused women simply because I was afraid that it would reflect poorly on me. It reflects just as poorly on me when shared as it would if I was the only one that knew.
Guys, let’s put our egos aside for a second and talk like men: if you think you aren’t a part of the problem, that you’re immune to the problem, or have transcended the problem, then you actually are the problem. Because it’s not a ‘problem’; it’s our society as a whole. Sexual assaults on women are the tide, and the tide is not receding. If we’re going to draw lines in the sand, let’s draw those lines so that they protect women from the men that would assault them, not to protect men from having to confront who we actually are.
If virtually every woman that you know has been assaulted, harassed, or has been a survivor of harassment, how many of the men that you know do you think have assaulted or harassed women?
Why #MeToo ?? Why not #NotMeToo ?.
It is all upto you to make the world a better place to live in
the #HIMTOO (Trying to acknowldge his stories too)
The #MeToo movement has received copious backlash: Survivors brave enough to speak up face harassment and doxing, while the media speculates about how being outed as an abuser will impact men’s careers. But until a few days ago, #MeToo hadn’t inspired a full-on hashtag-slinging countermovement.
Now there’s #HimToo. Like, I said “it’s not about the genders, but about maligned intentions”. The hashtag identifies accused men as victims, using the same power-in-numbers technique that made #MeToo a force to recast the movement as a widespread feminist witch hunt, forcing men to walk on eggshells.
The #MeToo movement is not only about women and girls. Men and boys have suffered sexual assaults, sexual abuse, harassment, and intimidation.
Here, men are sharing their pain.
#MeToo — “From ages six to 12, my seven-years-older brother solicited my participation in harassing . Secrecy was sworn.
“The results: Shyness as a kid in school, never feeling part of anything. Seeking similar experiences with my friends and rejected..
“Career unfulfilling, difficult with authority — unless I held the reins. Separated. Quit job, abuse ‘remembered’ all within days. Went to Alcoholics Anonymous, still sober after 13 years.
“Stuff that still dwells: A blurry line between the feelings of Like, Love and Lust.”
“I was in shock. I remember feeling like puking”.
These are some of the statements given by these men which are equally terrifying as women and we have sympathy and hearts up our sleeves for both.
HimToo has become the #AllLivesMatter of sexual assault, using the same tools as #MeToo to portray accused men as victims
Reality check: False sexual assault claims are exceedingly rare, and sexual assault is chronically underreported. Turning victim-blaming into a meme is a very 2018 sort of problem—it’s easy for extreme arguments to find a foothold within extreme partisanship, where it’s more important to win than to be kind, or even right. But, as a hashtag, #HimToo says a great deal about how people communicate and organize online. #HimToo has meant many things over the past three years, means several things now, and will probably mean other things in the future. Flexibility is crucial to a hashtag’s success: A tiny string of words must both mark individual thoughts and experiences and integrate them to a larger whole. That elasticity is especially important for online activism like #MeToo, where a hashtag ties together a disparate group of stories into a horrifying display of the scale of America’s sexual assault problem.
Hashtags are destined to be repurposed and expanded and, sometimes, co-opted by the ideological opposition. And maybe that’s to be expected: In periods of animosity, any two words attempting to sum up a painful and contentious human experience are going to be fraught with contradiction, and perhaps be an active battleground. That was before October 15, 2017, when actress Alyssa Milano began encouraging her followers to spread the #MeToo hashtag, a movement founded by activist Tarana Burke as a tool for survivors to share stories of sexual violence. #HimToo became part of that tweet frenzy immediately, as a reminder that there are male victims of sexual assault who face similar stigmas and also suffer privately.
This #HimToo movement inspired dedicated accounts for male victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Harrassment to anyone is filthy. And voicing out opinion is important to all, by all, for all. But, yes of course: the stories need be real or else washing hands into someone else’s waters maligns pure souls, which is so not done.
It is to make things transparent because people don’t realize sexual assault is a two-way street.”It feels amazing to hear women and men come out with their stories. They are stronger and the world belongs to stronger men and women like them. t has already started a change which may not be completely seen but has already arrived. The world has undergone a revolution for sure. The change is yet to come and is arriving…