As the #MeToo movement has spread from the upper echelons of Hollywood to the halls of Congress, what has most struck me is the startling disconnect between the movement’s feverish sensitivity to sexual impropriety, on the one hand, and women’s eager embrace of our nation’s sex-drenched popular culture, on the other.
For example, in 2017—the year #MeToo came to public attention—hip-hop/rap surpassed rock for the first time as the most widely consumed genre of pop music. Americans are now avid consumers of a form of music that demeans and hyper-sexualizes women. Yet far from protesting, Hillary Clinton agreed to appear at the 2018 Grammy awards in a video mocking President Trump that featured raunch-rappers Snoop Dogg and DJ Khaled.
Movies, television shows, and video games routinely depict women as male playthings, and women willingly buy into it. Indeed, the world’s best-selling women’s magazine, Cosmopolitan, coaches them in how to project sexual desirability and availability to men—how to make themselves “hot.” In 2012–13, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey—written for a female audience—burst onto the publishing scene. Fifty Shades glamorized sadomasochistic abuse of a vulnerable young woman by a powerful man. James earned $95 million by “selling more copies” of her book “faster than any other author in history,” according to Forbes. The #MeToo movement has made one thing incontrovertibly clear: Contemporary America is confused and conflicted at the deepest level about sex, sexuality, and social norms that should guide men’s and women’s intimate relations. Sometimes these schizophrenic tendencies are on vivid display in the same person. Read More
This article reminded me of the comment that a classmate made in regards to the sexual activities of the young women living in her dorm and an outbreak of STDs that swept through the dorm. She casually denigrated herself and the other female residents of her dorm as "whores."
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