On Sunday, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally announced his long-anticipated bid to become the next mayor of the Big Apple. Speaking at a carpenters’-union event, the 67-year-old touted his record managing the pandemic while flanked by his daughters, who also introduced him at the venue. It was a striking choice of imagery, since Cuomo’s gubernatorial career was cut short in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Ultimately, the Department of Justice concluded that Cuomo had harassed 13 women.
On the day he resigned, 10 August, 2021, Cuomo was famously photographed, coffee cup in hand, entering a helicopter alongside his daughter Michaela. His mayoral campaign launch visually called back to that moment. It’s a testament to how rapidly the cultural atmosphere has shifted: though Cuomo remained largely unapologetic, at one point blaming his handsiness with women on his Italian heritage, he did resign. Now, a little more than three years later, the ex-governor is more brazen, expecting forgiveness for his sexual lapses.
He isn’t alone. In 2017, the comedian Louis CK was accused of masturbating in front of female comedians. But since being cancelled, he has toured the country, appeared on several podcasts, and sold out a show at Madison Square Garden. Today, tickets to his upcoming Los Angeles performance are going for several thousands of dollars. #MeToo, it seems, is sunsetting along with the woke era.
It would be tempting to look at this turn of events and conclude that #MeToo failed completely. It would also be wrong: the movement succeeded in dethroning big-time, violent abusers and in raising barriers to the sort of harassment that used to be routine in many workplaces. However, the path to redemption created by the movement has been less than satisfactory, especially for accused men without the benefit of money and fame.
The re-election of Donald Trump and events since his inauguration have confirmed the decline of wokeness. For many people, that means no longer living in fear of the Left’s lifestyle and language police. While #MeToo is in some ways a different phenomenon from woke, the two were blended in the public mind, as part of the same culture of accusation and interrogation. But no more. Comebacks like Louis CK’s and Cuomo’s will proliferate amid the vibe shift, even as the collateral of the #MeToo movement is still settling.
Seven years since the movement first emerged, the men accused in #MeToo fall into three categories: the imprisoned, the forgotten, and the forgiven. Those who have been accused, tried, and convicted of the worst crimes, such as Harvey Weinstein with his numerous assault charges, have been managed and dealt with. The forgotten include men who weren’t all that relevant to begin with, like the actor Scott Baio; men only relevant to niche corners, like the former Paris Review editor Lorin Stein; or men we don’t even recall being accused of in the first place, like Morgan Freeman. However, it’s the third category, those whom we’ve “forgiven” — or at least, those men allowed back into the public eye, men who continue to be afforded opportunities, visibility, and money — that we continue to reckon with.
Most of the biggest villains of #MeToo, those accused of drugging and raping women, remain either in custody or entirely shunned from society. We felt the ripple effects of those men in more recent exposés about Neil Gaiman and Sean “Diddy” Combs. But for some of the rest — those who perhaps made unwelcome advances upon women, made them uncomfortable, exploited their position of power for otherwise consensual sex, etc. — the cultural and political gates have re-opened.
When we look to how our culture has reintegrated men whose transgressions have largely been nonviolent and semi-consensual, perhaps we can begin to trace #MeToo as a broader project, one that remains unfinished. As a movement, #MeToo has succeeded thus far in reorienting how we view both perpetrators of sexual violence and victims. It is indeed harder now for men in positions of power to quietly continue hurting people thanks to that power. For this, #MeToo should be considered a triumph.
Which brings us to the downsides of #MeToo. In some cases, these have been either been overestimated or largely remedied — with some critical exceptions. There is a dominant cultural narrative among #MeToo’s critics that the movement’s biggest impact has been in making young men more fearful of approaching women and pursuing romance. According to Gallup data, however, this has not panned out: young men report being unaffected by #MeToo, while the share of women who “often or sometimes” worry about being sexually assaulted has risen 15%.
As Daniel A. Cox at the Survey Center on American Life explained: “#MeToo effectively undercut victim-blaming narratives that perpetuated the idea that sexual assault is the result of poor decisions, miscommunication, or unlucky happenstance…. In the wake of #MeToo, there was recognition that sexual assault and harassment were pervasive problems in American society. Many have come to believe it could happen to anyone”.
“It is indeed harder now for men in positions of power to quietly continue hurting people thanks to said power.”
This, too, is a triumph, but one that requires more interrogation. Women are now more fearful of sexual assault. Are they right to be? Has the awareness element of the campaign made us any safer? Are we ultimately any less likely to be assaulted, and are those who commit assaults any more likely to be caught?
Our legal system rarely convicts rapists, and reporting your boss for sexual misconduct is very different for someone without the resources of some of Weinstein’s famous accusers like Gwyneth Paltrow. But the kind of justice found outside the legal system, in the social isolation of being cancelled, has had awful consequences for normal people, like the Oxford student Alexander Rogers, who took his life after being ostracised for a bad sexual encounter.
Stars with the platform to do so can rebuild their image. In certain cases, like Louis CK’s, their cancellation can even serve as material for their redemption. A politician like Cuomo, meanwhile, will no doubt persuade some voters to overlook his personal shortcomings to save their city from its crises. Whether Cuomo has a good case to make in this regard is a different question. As it is, his pitch amounts to: forget about my personal lousiness — Gotham is going to hell.
Not everyone is so lucky. #MeToo travelled a long way beyond the rich and famous. In our anti-woke era, we have mostly turned away from the routine of cancellation the movement brought out, but the instinct from which it emerged — our desire to uncover and arbitrate the most personal details of someone’s life and to place them under moral scrutiny accordingly — endures. It isn’t just women of Hollywood who experienced sexual violence or threats of it, and it isn’t just famous people whom we place under this culture of surveillance. Perhaps celebrities can be uncancelled now. But what about the nameless?
