The thing that was immediately disappointing and baffling about the rapid downfall of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was the hypocrisy of it all. A Democrat who had set himself up as a champion of the #MeToo movement, he had spoken out on domestic violence and was publicly looking into how the Manhattan district attorney’s office initially handled sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
And so, when Schneiderman resigned almost immediately after allegations that he hit, choked and otherwise abused several women while in relationships with them, it seemed like a defeat. It you can’t trust a man who brandishes his feminist credentials, what man can you trust?
What’s received less attention was the positive side of the equation. For months, naysayers have predicted the #MeToo movement would result in a severe backlash. But that hasn’t come to pass. If anything, claims of harassment and other bad behavior are taken more seriously than they were even a few months ago.
That’s the good side of Schneiderman’s three-hour downfall.
Politics, after all, has long had a problem with sexual harassment. In many ways, the profession leads to it. Lots of legislators, a predominantly male group, live away from their families, either in state capitals or in Washington. Every year brings a new influx of wannabe staffers and assorted political players, many of them young women at the start of their careers. There are after-work events, and meetings in bars and restaurants. Alcohol flows freely. This environment is all but a petri dish for sex and relationships.
Much of what takes place is consensual, but some of it is not. And almost all of it went all but unacknowledged — until the events of the past year.
#MeToo upended this uneasy dynamic. Since the New York Times published its investigative blockbuster on Harvey Weinstein, a sudden burst of attention has focused on politicians. We are more likely than ever before to believe the women making the claims of sexual violence and assault, not the lawmakers, candidates and officials who claim their innocence.
This has not come without controversy. Many do not want to believe the worst about the politicians they believe are on their team. Some Democrats angrily opposed the move to push Al Franken out of the Senate over allegations that he groped a number of women. On the right, columnist Mona Charen needed a security escort at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February after criticizing the party members who supported former Alabama senate candidate and accused pedophile Roy Moore.
But Franken is no longer in the Senate, and Alabama voters declined to elect Moore to it. Slowly but surely, it’s becoming harder and harder for politicians to rally behind members of their own party under these circumstances. Take Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who is scheduled to go on trial next week for invasion of privacy, after he allegedly tied up a woman with whom he was having an affair, blindfolded her and took a picture without asking permission. (She also alleges he hit her without permission, as well as coerced her into performing oral sex on him.) Many prominent Missouri Republicans have demanded he resign, and state legislators are looking into impeachment. Yes, it will take months, but it’s being taken seriously.
Social change happens when what used to be tolerated in the recent past becomes unfathomable to us. It seems possible that #MeToo is reaching that stage. Schneiderman’s supposedly quick political end was actually years in the making. It demonstrates how rapidly the conversation has changed around sexual harassment and violence — in the past year alone. Make no mistake. That’s progress.