Friday, June 03, 2022

is #metoo still the deal?

 Supposedly, #metoo is dead, and so is lean-in.

Supposedly, the Depp-Heard trial shows how dead #metoo is. And Sheryl Sandberg’s departure from Facebook helps us measure the shelf-life of a book about breaking the glass ceiling, or something.
Lean-in was always a prop to patriarchy. I don’t think this has to be the case with #metoo, which was not about celebrities and CEOs, but rather started among the obscure depths of the media and publishing – among an educated class that has long been proletarianized, but in the nicest freelancy kind of way, with the college debt to prove it.


I myself am still an ardent intersectionalist, and from that perspective, #metoo is not dead. #Metoo is, properly, the preliminary to a strike. It is interesting that the same level in the media in which #metoo was generated is a hotbed, at the moment, of unionbuilding. These are connected phenomena. In the movie and tv industry, the #metoo spotlight was more on famous women being raped, bullied and sexually abused by famous men. I have heard less about unionization in an industry in which company unions, guilds, still have great power, and in which the star system warps our usual notions of work and exploitation. However, as the halfassed “reforms” to the system in response to #metoo refuse to touch on the systematic subordination of women in the industry, I think there is a future for #metoo – a future that will last as long as the abusive system is in place.


The Depp-Heard trial is a satyr play, of course, following the end of Roe; sexism, racism, and the war against the working class all hand in hand, chanting their usual reddit ditties. But don’t believe the hype, the early surrenderers. They have their deal, but it is not mine, nor necessarily yours.

The philosopher as spy: the case of Alexandre Kojeve

In the Spring of 2019, the rightwing French journal, Commentaire, published a story about the philosopher, Alexandre Kojève, by Raymond Nar...