Welcome to "Full Frontal".
I am Samantha Bee.
You know, over the past few months we've all discovered
who's behind workplace harassment, and, [GASPS],,
it's literally thousands of men.
Jinkies!
And they would have gotten away with it too-- oh, most of them
did.
So now that we're finally listening to women,
some people are asking an important question.
Should we stop listening to a women?
Has #MeToo become a war on people who
don't deserve to be hurt by it?
Legendary actress Catherine Deneuve is
denouncing the #MeToo campaign.
Let's not turn women into snowflakes.
Let's not infantilize women.
There is a bit of a witch hunt happening.
You really want to go there Liam Neeson?
Your most successful movies are literally all about women
calling you to say they have a problem and you believing them.
When your daughter called to tell you she was taken,
you weren't like whoa, whoa, whoa, are you sure
you weren't asking to be taken?
Let's not ruin an innocent taker's life.
Yes, the inevitable backlash to the #MeToo movement
has arrived.
Or as I like to call it, the #YouTooLoud movement.
So I'd like to take a look at one
focus of the backlash, the so-called shitty media men
list.
In case you don't know, the shitty media men list
was just that, an anonymously crowdsourced list of men
in media who women said did shitty things,
ranging from sending unsolicited dick pics to claiming credit
for women's work to rape.
It was never intended for public consumption.
If it had been, it would have had
a punchier name, like this sassy koala video is amazeballs.
And in fact, its creator took it down
after just 12 hours because so many people were sharing it.
It was the Scaramucci of lists.
The list was essentially like a green book for women, only
instead of telling black travelers which establishment
were friendly, the list told women which men might
be hostile, groping, grabby, pinchy,
pervy, plagiarizey, and rapey--
aka the Weinstein Company version of the seven dwarfs.
The list also let women know that they weren't alone--
you know, the whole me too component.
People were so obsessed with this list that existed for 12
hours that Harper's Magazine planned an expose
about it three months later.
Women tried to protect the creator of the list
from being doxxed by Spartacusing all over Twitter.
Would you look at that, a good example of people taking
credit for a woman's work.
You know, all women have done throughout the four
months of the #MeToo movement is try to protect other women.
But you know what, who is going to protect the men?
When we are conflating and putting these things
all in a bucket, we're going to start
hurting your fathers, your brothers,
your sons, your grandfather.
Young people will not take the risk
of actually talking just to another person,
asking them out for a date. - So it will just be robots.
It will be-- well, I hope it'll be robots because robots
are more attractive.
Upon hearing that, robots everywhere
downloaded a not tonight, I have a headache feature.
By the way, here's the number of people
who were putting rape and harassment
and bad dates in one bucket.
NARRATOR: Nobody.
Literally nobody is saying they're the same.
The list wasn't called rapists and other people
whose 100% verified crimes I consider to be equal to rape.
What many fail to understand is that it doesn't have to be rape
to ruin your life, and it doesn't have to ruin your life
to be worth speaking out about.
Any kind of sexual harassment--
[APPLAUSE]
--or coercion is unacceptable.
So what the fuck are women supposed
to do to protect ourselves?
If we go public with a story, we're petty crybabies hell bent
on destroying men's careers.
If we write a secret list to protect each other,
we're gossipy shrews telling lies in the shadows.
What men literally cannot understand is,
this isn't about them.
Whoa.
[APPLAUSE]
This isn't about men.
That is unbelievable.
The shitty media men list wasn't Arya's Stark's fucking hi list.
No one is getting their face worn by a teenager,
although I'm sure that is some sick fuck's fantasy.
Unfortunately though, not all the backlash
is from willfully blind men.
Some of it is from women who have seen way too
much, especially in the wake of an article about Aziz
Ansari and the horrible night an anonymous woman
said she had with him.
The conversation about this article
has been tentative and difficult,
largely because a lot of women disagree about it.
And women actually like to be careful
with each other's feelings except, perhaps,
Ashleigh Banfield.
Let's take a moment to reflect on what you claim was the worst
night of your life, end quote.
You had a bad date.
Is that what victimized you to the point
of seeking a public conviction and a career-ending sentence
against him?
You had an unpleasant date and you did not leave.
That is on you.
It's harder than you think to leave when
you're uncomfortable or scared.
For example, you're scaring the shit
out of me right now Ashleigh Banfield and I can't leave.
And it's not just Ashleigh.
A lot of people are worried about Aziz's career,
which no one is trying to end.
Because again, we know the difference
between a rapist, a workplace harasser, and an Aziz Ansari.
That doesn't mean we have to be happy about any of them.
People like me had to wade through a sea
of prehensile dicks to build the world we now enjoy.
[APPLAUSE]
And part of enjoying that world is setting a higher standard
for sex than just not rape.
And women get to talk about it if men don't live up
to those standards, especially if that man wrote
a book about how to sex good.
And if that seems harsh, I'm sorry.
In fact, you know what, I'm sorry for a lot of things.
I'm sorry that anyone ever thought
the contents of that list or any of the other ways we
protect ourselves from men were your god damn business.
I'm sorry you thought you got to choose what experiences
we can share or how we react to the shitty ways we've
been treated.
And to men specifically, I'm sorry our request
to be respected makes office culture
a little less fun and flirty.
And I'm sorry we tattled about that stuff you did on us, even
when it was totally not rape.
But listen, if you don't want to tune into your partner's
feelings throughout sex, maybe you shouldn't
be fucking a person at all.
May I suggest a coin purse or a Ziploc bag full of green jelly.
[APPLAUSE]
Men, if you say you're a feminist,
then fuck like a feminist.
And if you don't want to do that,
take off your fucking pin because we
are not your accessories.
We'll be right back.