And so we have arrived, in the Brett Kavanaugh affair, the inevitable and ultimate apotheosis of #MeToo – the vilification of men qua men. 

Now, one accusation alone – no matter how unsubstantiated and uncorroborated – is enough to ruin a man’s reputation, nullify his accomplishments and erase his opportunities...for life. 

This is apparently the standard set, and accepted, by roughly half of the country as represented by the Democrat party.

We have thus entered something new and dangerous.  And in light of this new reality, new rules for men vis a vis the opposite sex are required. Here are some baseline suggestions:

• Don’t hire women.  Where accusations against men are concerned, proof is no longer required, nor presumption of innocence granted. Under these circumstances, why on earth would a man hire any woman or interact with any woman in a professional setting?
• If a man must interact with a woman in a professional setting, he should do so as little as possible and always with a third and fourth party present (one of whom should be a man).  Never under any circumstances should a man be alone with a female co-worker.  No written communication with a woman co-worker should take place without a boss or supervisor and at least one male co-worker copied on the correspondence. Ditto with text and telephone communications.
• Do not mentor women or girls, large numbers of whom are clearly unstable, fragile creatures and God knows what they may mis-remember or mis-construe.  Under these circumstances, it is not even remotely worth the risk to help a woman advance her career.  Brett Kavanaugh has spent his life helping women professionally. What good will did it buy him?
• Dating and romance are now minefields to be traversed with extreme caution, if at all (see above re: mentoring).  Forget making a move, going in for the kiss – unless you get express written consent before every move, you run the risk of being labeled a sexual predator for life. 

Even if you do get consent at every stage of the encounter, that still may not be enough. As Cathy Young wrote for the Washington Post, the definition of “consent” is itself disputed and subject to change given the whims of the mob:

“Consent advocates already fret that even an explicit ‘yes’ may not be given freely enough. A series of educational campus posters includes the warning that ‘if they don’t feel free to say ‘No,’ it’s not consent’; a Canadian college campaign cautions that consent is invalid if it’s ‘muted’ or ‘uncertain’ rather than ‘loud and clear.’

This advocacy creates a world where virtually any regretted sexual encounter can be reconstructed as assault...”

In other words, we live in a world where a woman can consent to intimacy, then retroactively withdraw that consent (the exact nightmare that comedian Aziz Ansari recently found himself in). 

This is a world in which men and women are not free to find each other, a world in which genuine romance is not possible.

Romance, after all, requires maturity and acceptance of a certain ambiguity from both parties. It requires that both men and women accept responsibility for their feelings and actions, responsibility that modern women often seem incapable of exhibiting and, frighteningly, are not expected to exhibit.

Nevertheless, men are burdened with strong sexually appetites, appetites honed by millions of years of evolution.  So what of your natural instincts to pursue, court, woo women?  To find one with whom to wed and mate in order to procreate and advance the species? 

All I can say is, good luck my friend. Proceed at your own risk.

Take heart, though. The sex robots are already here, and are daily growing cheaper, better and more widely available.

It won’t be long before men won’t need women at all.

Because this ultimately is what men are realizing in our current anti-male hysteria:  That interactions with women are often more trouble than they are worth. 

Congratulations, #MeToo.

Graphic credit: Pixabay.