I appreciate your feedback, Mike, and see a fair amount of merit in what you have to say though I…

We still have far too narrow an understanding of what rape “looks like” — such that, as you mentioned, assaults committed by women are all…

I appreciate your feedback, Mike, and see a fair amount of merit in what you have to say though I disagree with some of it. I don’t think, for instance, that the problem with #MeToo is that it’s too bloated. I’m glad a large number of people in a variety of industries have spoken out. If anything, the problem is that we haven’t done enough to give people a nuanced, complex understanding of the causes and mitigating factors involved in sexual assault.

We still have far too narrow an understanding of what rape “looks like” — such that, as you mentioned, assaults committed by women are all but ignored. That, to me, does not suggest that #MeToo allegations were too widespread, but rather than discussions about rape and assault have not been wide (or deep) enough. The backlash is not the movement’s fault — it’s largely the fault of people who oppose its goals latching onto every possible excuse imaginable to doubt victims and hand-wring over assailants meeting consequences for the first time in their lives. And even those consequences, for the most part, have been temporary and middling.