a difference of opinion

Daphne Merkin’s opinion article for the New York Times, “Publicly,We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings” takes the position that though many women find the #MeToo movement useful to combat sexism and harassment in the workplace, they fear that people may be taking it too far and leading us into a cultural climate that represses sexuality, paints women into an almost Victorian role of frailty and victimhood, and that women are also wary to express these opinions publicly due to a repressive climate of political correctness.

Necessarily, as this is a subject that doesn’t have a lot of hard data or statistical analysis associated with it, this argument must leave logos by the wayside for the most part and focus instead on pathos and ethos.

Merkin does a good job establishing ethos; she is, after all, a woman involved in the publishing industry, which is one that is perceived to have its fair share of harassment present, and also to be generally politically/culturally progressive. If her friends that she says have private concerns about #MeToo are from liberal social circles, we can expect that these are people who don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to #MeToo as we would assume more conservative folks would. In fact she characterizes many of her friends making skeptical statements about #MeToo as feminists.

She establishes pathos in many of her points and arguments by using emotionally impactful words/terms like “witch hunt,” “life-destroying,” “religious zealots” and “inquisitorial.” These are powerful words and phrases and are employed tactfully and not in an inflammatory or accusatory way. It’s a more measured approach that plays well to the audience of the New York Times, a paper that (to me anyway) appears neither excessively liberal nor conservative.

One argument I found interesting was Merkin asking us to “Consider the fact that the campaign last month against the Met to remove a Balthus painting that shows a young girl in a suggestive light was organized by two young Manhattan feminists.” This is a good example of playing to a rhetorical warrant that most readers would find the campaign to remove this painting ridiculous or bordering on artistic censorship. Tying the fact that this campaign was, in part, inspired by the development of the #MeToo movement lends some credence to Merkin’s argument that the movement has the capacity to go “too far.”

            Another statement that I found strong is “Stripping sex of eros isn’t the solution. Nor is calling out individual offenders, one by one. We need a broader and more thoroughgoing overhaul, one that begins with the way we bring up our sons and daughters.” The last sentence of this is something that the audience can almost certainly get behind and makes the two previous sentences sound almost factual in their strength. It’s also a bit of a call to action that, as I said, the audience of the article is probably already in agreement with.

            All in all I found this article well-constructed and persuasive, though I don’t necessarily agree with all the points Merkin makes.