Asia Argento, victim blaming, and #metoo

The plot thickens with the Asia Argento situation. As I mentioned in my last post, former child actor James Bennett accused Argento of raping him just two months after he turned 17. Argento and Bennett now 22, settled out of court. The settlement occurred while Argento made news when she accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of rape.

Argento initially denied the allegations against her. However, within a few hours the media reported that Argento claimed her late husband Anthony Bourdain pushed her to settle the case with the alleged victim.

How unfortunate that Baourdain is no longer here to respond to such a claim. Granted, it is possible that he made such a suggestion and it is common for celebrities to pay out settlements rather than risk unwanted criminal cases and negative press. It does seem unlikely, however, that Bourdain would make such a suggestion if Argento could prove she did nothing wrong.

If it only ended there, Argento would merely look scuzzy for tarnishing the reputation of her late husband. TMZ, however, published texts allegedly from Argento about the incident. According to the texts, Argento is the victim:

Asia Argento has her own #MeToo moment

When #MeToo becomes #NotYou

As is true with most feminist-driven hashtags, it was only a matter of time before the #Metoo hashtag became an attack on men. The hashtag gained prominence after actress Alyssa Milano tweeted using it. The hashtag went viral, although given how political Twitter has become, it is possible that those running Twitter simply boosted the hashtag to the top of the list.

Regardless of that, the hashtag prompted numerous women to write about their experiences of harassment and sexual violence. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. What makes it peculiar is that this comes in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein fall-out. One would think the focus would center on the people Weinstein and other powerful Hollywood moguls abused. Instead, the focus shifted to talking about random instances of butt-grabbing and cat-calling.

As the hashtag became more popular, the feminists moved in and quickly shifted the focus to men. According to those feminists, men need to listen and believe and change their ways because of the “proof” the #MeToo provided of how much sexual violence women face.

Men were told to they needed to challenge their own sexist, abusive behavior, regardless of whether they have ever acted in such a way. They were encouraged to tweet #IDidThat and #HimThough in solidarity to women — and only women — who faced sexual violence.

Men were reminded that “It Was You” and told, after so many articles encouraging men to use solidarity hashtags, that hashtags were not good enough.