Hoist with His Own Petard

On July 28, 1794, the guillotine claimed the life of Maximilien de Robespierre. As a leader of the Jacobin Club, he had helped orchestrate the French Revolution, been one of the most vocal supporters of the murders of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, and, as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, had been the chief architect of the Reign of Terror. The poetic justice with which he fell victim to the same gruesome fate he had decreed for others is best captured in the words that William Shakespeare famously put in the mouth of his Danish prince Hamlet in reference to his plan to turn the order for his execution which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were bearing from Claudius into their own death warrant, which words I have made the title of this piece. (1)

The same phrase can also be fittingly applied to what Justin “Peoplekind” Trudeau is now undergoing. Justin Trudeau, ever since he used his last name and looks to easily defeat the four women, each far more qualified for the job than himself, who ran against him in the 2013 leadership race for the Liberal Party of Canada, has marketed himself as a male feminist. He has certainly shown himself to have the feminist aptitude for totalitarian thought control. A year before the 2015 Dominion election that put the Liberals back in power he whipped his party, good and hard, declaring that the debate on abortion was over and that from now on the Liberals would accept no new candidates with pro-life views, and that sitting Liberal pro-lifers would be made to vote against their consciences. In power, he has declared pro-life views to be against Canadian values and has cut off access to government funding of summer jobs for students to employers unwilling to attest their agreement with the pro-abortion position. An endless display of feminist posturing has characterized the second Trudeau premiership from the day he announced his gender-balanced Cabinet. Needless to say, when the #Me Too Movement sprung up like a poisonous toadstool from the putrid manure that was all that was left of the reputation of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Trudeau was in seventh heaven over the opportunities it afforded him to signal to his crowd of adoring, empty-headed, left-wing sycophants his feminist virtues. He took every chance he could get to remind us of his government’s zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual misconduct and to lecture Canadians, and indeed, the entire world, on how we should be following his holy example. Sexual harassment is a serious matter, he insisted, and allegations need to be investigated no matter how long after the fact they happen to be made. “When women speak up”, he said, “it is our duty to listen to them and believe them.”

Then an eighteen year old editorial from a B.C. newspaper called the Creston Valley Advance resurfaced It appears that while Trudeau was in British Columbia in 2000, raising funds for his winter sports safety campaign in honour of the younger brother he had lost in an avalanche two years previously, he attended a beer and music festival got wasted, and groped a female reporter to whom, the next day when he had presumably sobered up, he offered the interesting apology of “I’m sorry, if I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper I never would have been so forward.”

As the flock of groupies in the progressive press that only a short time ago would swoon at the very mention of his name transformed overnight into a pack of wolves howling for his blood with fangs bared, it has been highly entertaining, to say the least, watching Trudeau try to squirm his way out of the hole he has dug himself into. Everything he has said, from his non-acknowledgement of any “negative interaction” to his bizarrely worded recollection of giving the “apology in the moment” has only made things worse for him, especially as it becomes obvious that he will not be holding himself to the same merciless standard that he has held other members of his party, despite his repeated assurances that he would do so if allegations were ever made against him.

Most recently, the Prime Minister in a desperate attempt to shift the focus off of himself, has tried to turn the scandal into a teaching moment for the rest of us about some supposed “awakening that we’re having as a society.” As it so happens, I agree that there is a lesson for us in all of this, but it is not the lesson that Trudeau wants to teach.

Decades ago, before the revived feminist movement of the post-World War II era poisoned all interaction between the sexes, men would occasionally make unwelcome passes at women. At the time it was called “getting fresh” and women were quite capable of dealing with it without hiring a lawyer, running to the courts, and making a federal case out of it. Depending upon the woman the method might involve a slap or a drink to the face, a bonk on the head with a handbag, umbrella or whatever accessory happened to be convenient, or one of many other variations on this theme. This worked because, at the time, society operated on the principle of acknowledging and respecting the differences between the sexes rather than that of the unattainable ideal of sexual equality. The rules, therefore, which forbade men to ever hit women, allowed women this particular show of force which was quite effective at deterring and correcting inappropriate behaviour and also at sifting out those who could be so deterred and corrected from the much smaller number of genuinely criminal sexual predators who could not.

Feminism, which insisted that society reorganize itself in accordance with the ideal of sexual equality, demanded that all spaces from which the fairer sex had traditionally been excluded, from private clubs to men’s locker rooms, but especially workplaces, be thrown open to women. Beginning with the United States in 1964, foolish Western governments began to pass draconian laws which placed the onus of proof upon employers, landlords, and businesses accused of the crimethink of discrimination. It was the father of the alleged Kokanee Groper, a man who never met a Communist tyrant that he did not admire and adulate, who introduced ours in 1977. Faced with the threat of crippling lawsuits in which all the cards are stacked against them, most employers opted for a gender-balanced workplace.

Now that every workplace was going co-ed, the feminists decided that with this exponential increase in the opportunities for men to “get fresh” with the ladies, a new set of rules for the workplace was in order. Judging from the rules themselves, it seems as if a committee consisting of hatchet-faced harpies jealous of women who actually get hit on, stuck up knockouts who get offended at even the most politely worded attention from men who are not in their league, man-hating lesbians who consider all heterosexual relations to be rape, and various and sundry other stripes of sex-hating, neo-Puritan, control freaks was patched together to draw them up. What the rules basically amounted to was “no getting fresh”, except that “getting fresh” was replaced with the colder, more sterile, technical phrase “sexual harassment.” The new phrase, while for the most part used to mean the same thing as the old, is much broader in scope. Any acknowledgement of having noticed a woman’s sex that is not welcomed by the woman herself could potentially fall under the umbrella of “sexual harassment.” (2) Indeed, even if the woman does welcome the acknowledgement of her sex it could potentially be considered “sexual harassment” since the rules allow for third-party accusations. With the new terminology came an upgrade in the seriousness of the offence. No longer was the old slap in the face sufficient – the offender had to be charged, dragged before a human rights court, re-educated with sensitivity training – a far more cruel and inhumane punishment than a blow to the face – and perhaps face the complete and utter loss of career, reputation, and family. Feminism’s new rules quickly spread from the workplace to the campus and throughout all of society.

As if this were not already bad enough, more recently feminists, including, as we have seen, Trudeau himself, have been insisting that women who make accusations of inappropriate sexual behaviour have a right to be believed. Such a right cannot be squared with the legal right of those accused of offences to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The latter right is fundamental to our system of justice. The supposed right of women to be believed is not. It is also nonsense. Nobody has a right to be believed, people establish their credibility by proving themselves to be honest, reliable and trustworthy. That a sizable percentage of rape accusations prove, upon investigation, to be false is a well-established fact (3) and it is highly unlikely that this percentage decreases when all allegations of sexual misconduct are taken into consideration. Here, as with a woman’s supposed right to have an abortion, “women’s rights” does not mean the guaranteeing to women of the same basic civil rights as men, but the granting to them of special, exclusive rights, that take away from more basic, established rights that have long been the property of all – the right to life, the right of presumption of innocence. Far from being the social “justice” its advocates claim it to be, feminism is a form of injustice that is irreconcilably hostile to the most basic rights and freedoms of our country, that is to say, the Common Law rights and freedoms that were part of the Canadian heritage long before the Charter of which the Trudeau Liberals are so undeservingly proud was ever inked.

The lesson, to be learned from all of this, is that women were quite capable of dealing with fresh men long before feminism made sexual harassment into a political issue, that the old way of dealing with it was far superior to the Stalinist-lite method preferred by feminists, that we as a society ought to have run as fast as we could in the opposite direction when a movement with “the personal is the political” as its slogan arose, and that we should repudiate the legacy of the sixties and go back to allowing women to be women, and men to be men.

It is highly unlikely, of course, that Justin Trudeau will ever learn that lesson. If, however, the young lady reporter eighteen years ago, had thrown a beer in his face, slapped him silly, or whacked him with her tape recorder, rather than written him up in an editorial, he would not be in the mess he is in today. Heck, he would probably be a better person today for it.

(1) In contemporary English it could be alliteratively and more or less literally rendered as “blown up by his own bomb.” This just doesn’t have the same ring as the Bard’s original wording, however.

(2) Technically, the rules are supposed to apply to both sexes, but in practice they have been enforced primarily against men.

(3) See KC Johnston and Stuart Taylor Jr., The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities, (New York: Encounter Books, 2017).

“Me Too”, ---- You! - Or Perhaps Not.

Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights – Rudyard Kipling

In 411 BC, the war between the Athenian Delian League and the Spartan Peloponnesian League, which had resumed three years previously after the Peace of Nicias finally fell apart, reached its twentieth year. Things were not going well for the Athenians. During the break in the fighting with Sparta, Alcibiades, the leader of the Athenian war party, talked the Assembly into sending a fleet to Sicily, ostensibly to support their allies, but with the goal of conquering the island. The same Nicias who had negotiated the peace with Sparta, in an attempt to dissuade them from doing this told the Assembly that a much larger force would be needed than what they originally intended, but with the only result being that they enlarged the armada and put him in charge, along with Alcibiades and Lamachus. Once there, the generals decided to begin their campaign by establishing a base and launching an attack on the strongest Sicilian city-state, Syracuse. Before the siege began, Alcibiades, who had thought up this strategy, received a summons ordering him to return to Athens to stand trial on charges of the desecration of sacred statues. He opted to flee instead and defected to Sparta. In his absence, the siege of Syracuse did not go well, Lamachus was slain, and Nicias sent away for reinforcements. Athens sent the reinforcements, led by Demosthenes, but this made things worse as the fighting with Sparta, now backed by Syracuse, resumed shortly thereafter and the Sicilian Expedition ended in total disaster for Athens with the loss of most of their ships and the enslavement of their men.

Ultimately, this would cost them the Peloponnesian War, but in 411 the decisive loss to Lysander of Sparta at Aegospotami was still six years away. It was at this point that Aristophanes, the master of Attic Old Comedy, introduced a new play. The play is called the Lysistrata, after its main character, an Athenian woman who with the help of her Spartan counterpart Lampito, persuades the extremely reluctant women of Greece to go on a sex-strike and withhold sex from the men until they agree to stop the war. It is not easy for her to convince the women to either agree to this or to stick to the plan once they have agreed to it. Contrary to a popular misconception, it is women rather than men who are by far the most obsessed with sex, a fact of which Aristophanes was well aware, and which he exploited to its full comic potential.

What makes the Lysistrata so hilarious is that the title character succeeds in her plan to end the war despite her use of a strategy that would almost universally be perceived – it certainly was so seen by her creator – as utterly undoable. There is an old quip, that has been variously attributed to Ann Landers, Henry Kissinger, and a host of others although it appears to be older than all of them, that the battle of the sexes can never be won because there is too much fraternizing with the enemy. It is, however, the current year, and perhaps it is time that the idea of a sex strike be seriously considered – not by women, but by men. Indeed, it is starting to seem necessary not for the purpose of attaining any political end but for survival. This is due to the “Me Too” movement that insists that we treat every Potiphar’s wife as if she were Lucretia. Just be clear, the Lucretia in the last sentence is she of ancient Rome, who committed suicide to protect her honour after her rape by Sextus Tarquinus and not her considerably less virtuous fifteenth century namesake, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, who was as ruthless, conniving and bloodthirsty as her brother Cesare Borgia, of whom Machiavelli’s Prince was a verbal portrait.

Indeed, there is evidence that just such a sex-strike is in its beginning stages. The ever fabulous veteran actress and author Dame Joan Collins, in her latest Diary for The Spectator remarks that “if these accusations towards men continue much longer, I fear a major decline in population growth in the near future.” She demonstrates that this fear is not unwarranted by concluding her column with the following illustration:

A 30-year-old single man informs me that he wouldn’t consider dating because he was too scared of being accused of inappropriate behaviour or of being ‘named and shamed’ by social media or the Twitterati. ‘I go out with the guys, drink beer and watch box sets,’ he said ruefully, ‘and friends are doing the same. We’re scared of the #MeToo movement and of being accused of sexual harassment and worse if we even tell a girl she’s pretty.’ ‘In my day we called it flirting,’ I told him.

Today, the line between “flirting” and “sexual harassment” is extremely blurry, making it potentially hazardous for any man to approach or otherwise show interest in a woman. American Vice President Mike Pence was mocked about a year ago for his policy of refusing to dine alone with women other than his wife. The Atlantic published a piece that claimed that this policy “hurt women” using the same tortured excuse for logic that the courts have been using since the 1970s to admit female reporters to men’s locker rooms – the reverse has now been accomplished on entirely different but even more absurd grounds – and to force private clubs to abandon “men only” policies. Vox posted an article claiming that this was “probably illegal.” The New Yorker ran a piece entitled “Mike Pence’s Marriage and the Beliefs That Keep Women From Power.” Each of these, incidentally or not, was written by a woman. Half a year later, l’affaire Weinstein broke, the “Me Too” movement was launched, and all of a sudden it was a lot more difficult to laugh at Mike Pence.

Rape, of course, is a serious crime – and it has been treated as such from time immemorial. Undoubtedly it is immoral and sleazy for an employer, whether he be a Hollywood producer, a corporate executive, or a Cabinet Minister, to offer to advance a woman’s career in exchange for sexual favours. It is just as immoral and sleazy, however, for a woman to accept the offer – and it is by no means the case, far from it, that it is always the man who initiates this sort of exchange. “Sexual harassment” is the preferred charge of the “Me Too” movement precisely because it is so vague and hazy. Virtually any attention that a man shows to a woman qua woman can be interpreted as sexual harassment if the woman so chooses.

Apart from their preference for the comparatively hazy charge of sexual harassment over those of long recognized sexual crimes and misdeeds with more concrete definitions, the “Me Too” wave of feminism insists that accusations be believed on the say so of the accuser, even in a dearth of supporting evidence and if the accusations pertain to events that took place decades previously. Potiphar’s wife would undoubtedly approve. This is a total assault on justice, that is to say true justice, at least as the term has traditionally been understood in the English-speaking world, and not the spurious contemporary substitute that is called “social” despite being utterly corrosive of society, its institutions, and, as we are seeing in feminism, ordinary social interaction between the sexes.

Eventually, the totally irrational and irresponsible “Me Too” movement is sure to self-destruct. Before this happens, however, there is no telling how many lives and careers it will ruin, to say nothing of the damage it will inflict on the fabric of society and relations between the sexes.

In the meantime, in the interests of self-preservation, men need to consider, at the very least following the example of Mike Pence. A reverse Lysistrata strategy would, however, be more effective in securing the downfall of the enemy. It is true that a strategy that eliminates the procreative act has the potential of resulting in a Pyrrhic victory, but women are far more likely to cave against such a move then men. So perhaps the answer to the “Me Too” movement is for men to tell the fairer sex, “futuete vos ipsos”, not as a crude expletive but practical advice, because they are for the time being no longer willing to do it for them.