There is a spectre haunting New Zealand men. The spectre of a #MeToo witchhunt, which is what happens when women act like witches, which isnât sexist, itâs just a historic fact that women used to get together with their broomsticks and steal penises. People wrote about it in Latin, you know, and that makes it a serious record, because they still teach Latin at Auckland Boys Grammar and Wellington College and thereâs no finer schools in the country.
Of course Iâm not excusing harassment and sexual assault. I am offended you would suggest that. Those things, when theyâve actually happened, are terrible. Itâs simply that I find it hard to believe they happen as often as women say, because women are known to blow things all out of proportion. One time I told a junior coworker that sheâd be so much prettier if she smiled more and she absolutely went off on me, how weird is that? I was paying her a compliment. No surprise she ended up going into comms instead, she wasnât a good fit for the fast-paced newsroom environment.
I am not sexist â I know and respect a lot of women journalists. When theyâre investigating real stories, they can be just as competent as men. The problem is when youâve got women journalists investigating other womenâs stories about men. Theyâre naturally going to believe women who say theyâve been harassed. And itâs not journalistic to believe women. The proper, investigative thing to do is believe men.
All Iâm asking for is balance. After all, if men were really doing these horrible things, for years and years, someone credible would have said something about it and we would have investigated it. Or rather, we wouldnât have, because the appropriate organisation to pursue these allegations is the police. Donât you ladies understand that journalism is a noble calling which is above challenging the status quo or questioning the integrity of law enforcement?
You should stick to real journalism, like Paula Penfoldâs work on the Teina Pora case. That was impressive because it didnât threaten my position in this industry, which I clearly earned through my own hard work and not making a fuss about minor things like being sent sexually suggestive text messages by my supervisor every night. That never happened to me so I just canât believe it happened to anyone else. I would have heard about it from someone believable, over the water cooler or the urinal wall.
Think of the dangerous precedent weâre setting. If women are just going to believe other women and investigate their stories â hundreds of individual, one-off stories â what next? Are we going to give credence to the hundreds of individual stories of MÄori incarcerated for longer, harsher prison sentences than individual PÄkehÄ committing the same crimes? Should we be troubled by the thousands of individual, one-off stories of historic child abuse? Are we supposed to draw some kind of conclusion about our societyâs values and power dynamics from the fact a lot of people have similar experiences?
Perish the thought!
The only reasonable conclusion to draw, based on my own rational assumptions and not any kind of conversation with the women journalists involved in this investigation (itâs only fair to them, they could hardly be objective about their own investigation) is thereâs nothing to see here and the risks to innocent men massively outweigh any kind of justice or closure which might be delivered to unreliable women. People could lose their jobs over this investigation, and for what? Women who never progressed that far in the industry anyway.
Iâm not saying women canât hack it in journalism, Iâm sure they all had their reasons for leaving and it would be rude to question them. If you canât even ask a woman when sheâs planning on having children you can hardly inquire about her career plans!
Iâm just asking for balance. The solution to decades of alleged harassment and bullying cannot be turning the tables on people like me who did nothing wrong and certainly didnât benefit from more talented people being driven out of the industry by systemic misogyny. Is it going to fix anything if the predators in our midst are unmasked and the power structures that support them are torn down? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make a living from journalism these days when all you have going for you is a pompous writing style and the unshakeable conviction that your every brainfart is worthy of publication?
If Alison Mau and Paula Penfold really want to help women, they should leave this investigation to male journalists whoâll do the job properly, and wonât just take some girlâs word for it that her boss was a creep or her coworker wasnât just a clumsy flirt. And if a bit of reasonable doubt and objectivity means that no women feel comfortable sharing their personal stories of trauma and disillusionment with us, well. We can all draw a pretty clear conclusion from that.
~
With apologies to David Cohen and Bryce Edwards, who I didnât contact before writing this piece because Iâm not a real journalist.