Scarlet Letters

While the #metoo movement is an encouraging sign of cultural and social enlightenment, it comes with a price.

Women gain support from sharing with each other, and the rest of us, stories of inappropriate sexual treatment by men, but this naming and shaming has consequences. Certainly, the world should know about those who have committed crimes, those whose abusing patterns are continuing, and the institutions that have enabled them: Weinstein, Cosby, Fox, etc. But this is a spectrum, and there is what’s happening at the other end of it that bothers me. These days, as soon as an accusation comes out, some men feel compelled to quit their jobs, if the institutions they work with haven’t already fired them, for behavior that happened in previous decades. Once a woman has put this label on a man publicly, it is indelible. There is no washing it off. Bankers and investment professionals who have taken millions from clients through theft or neglect, or even misapplied principles, largely remain in their posts. But a man accused of a sexual misdeed is toast, pure and simple.

Thanks to Nathaniel Hawthorne, I have a billion-dollar idea, if someone modern hasn’t already thought of it: a line of T-shirts for men with a big red “A” on the chest (yes, the A can be for a*hole or whatever other definition applies). Women can send these to their abusers. In the case of crimes, the men can be compelled by courts to wear them. Since we’re in the cold months now, we can add sweaters to the clothing line. The question is, do the men ever get to take them off? Is reform or redemption possible, or is it, once an a*hole, always an a*hole?

Look, I am not trying to defend bad behavior here. But there is something very French-Revolutionary these days about how easy it is to turn heroes (or the once-admired) into villains. What’s being done, at least in some cases IMHO, is creating a second set of victims where there was just one, providing little or no healing for either.

And it’s far from over. We haven’t even gotten to those at the “knew or should have known” level. We’ll leave that to the lawyers, I guess.