The #MeToo movement’s feminist dystopia

It’s here, at last: the backlash against #MeToo. Finally people are sticking their heads above the parapet and asking if perhaps #MeToo has gone too far. They’re braving the inevitable fusillade of shaming tweets and accusations of ‘rape apologism’ to raise awkward questions about this hashtag movement. They’re wondering out loud if this movement that started life with the noble goal of exposing male abuse of women has now become too trigger-happy, too keen to demolish men on the basis of accusation alone, and too happy to go along with a view of women as fragile creatures in need of chaperoning. #MeToo’s dissenters have arrived, and about time too.

The niggling questions about #MeToo that critically minded women like Christina Hoff Sommers and Lionel Shriver have been raising for weeks now have exploded into the mainstream in recent days. The queen of cinema, Catherine Deneuve, and a hundred of her fellow Frenchwomen sent the stiff Anglosphere into a tizz last week with their letter slamming #MeToo as a drab, sexless moral panic.