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Founded in 2006, 'me too' was created to help victims of sexual assault, mainly women of color form low income communities, find a way to heal. #MeToo has a goal of expanding the global conversation about sexual violence while creating a safe environment for survivors to speak on of their encounters. #MeToo gives empowerment and empathy through the community. Founder Tarana Burke shares her encounter of a fellow camper attempting to explain her painful story of sexual assault with Burke only to be shunned away before Burke could shudder the words "me too".

Reference:
“About.” You Are Not Alone, metoomvmt.org/about/.

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Alyssa Milano's retweet set off a firestorm that boosted support for the movement. The original tweet stated " If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'Me too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem". This post occurred after the sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. This retweet started a series of stories being shared across multiple social media platforms about experiences of sexual assault and abuse.
Reference:

1. Sandra E. Garcia,”The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags” Oct. 20, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-burke.html

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Sexual assault can happen to anyone at anytime. CNN reporter Don Lemon expressed his encounter with sexual assault along with sharing a few stories that closest friends shared with him (with their consent). This episode aired on September 24, 2018 at 8:00 P.M. PDT. Stories, such as Lemon's, let people who are victims of sexual assault know that the situation does not define who they are as a person. Lemon also expresses his point to leave politics out of a personal matter and hear both sides before fingers a pointed, because they could be pointed at the wrong person.

Reference:
Don Lemon “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” September 24, 2018, https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20180925_030000_CNN_Tonight_With_Don_Lemon/start/1380/end/1440

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CNN Tonight With Don Lemon : CNNW : September 24, 2018 8:00pm-9:00pm PDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive

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Everyone is head over heels with the #MeToo movement, including editor Jia Tolentino. Women are afraid that they might be the next face of the movement describing their situation of how they were sexually assaulted. Tolentino expresses how those who are in favor of the movement also exclaims concerns of if possibly they may be lying.

Reference:
Jia Tolentino," The Rising Pressure of the #MeToo Backlash," January 24, 2018,https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-rising-pressure-of-the-metoo-backlash

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In the fall of 2016, I started feeling little starburst twinges in the ball of my right foot. A podiatrist told me that I had a fat nerve, a neuroma, and gave me a cortisone injection that made the pain go away. Because something had come back odd on my blood work, he sent me to a specialist, who sent me for more tests, found everything normal, and told me to check back in after a year.

That winter, I went to the dentist, who told me that my blood pressure was a little high. "I think it's the news," I told her, and we nodded and sighed. In the summer, a dermatologist noticed, too. "I just spent two weeks at the Bill Cosby trial," I explained. In October, the Times and The New Yorker reported on allegations against Harvey Weinstein, and I wrote about sexual assault for the ninth time since June. Readers e-mailed me their own stories, flooding my in-box with accounts of rape, harassment, and shame. I replied to each person slowly, crushed by how little they expected, how little they wanted, how they always reiterated that it could've been worse. Over lunch, a friend told me that her first boss, decades ago, had coerced her into a sexual relationship, and that she was just starting to come to terms with this. We talked until I had to go to the gynecologist. I was late filing another sexual-assault story. The speculum was freezing, and my blood pressure was a hundred and forty over ninety-five.

When I went back to the specialist, just before Thanksgiving, I told him that I was feeling fine-my blood pressure had been high, but it was stress, and I was working on it. He asked me what I meant by stress.

"Oh," I said, laughing awkwardly. "It's a stressful time for everyone!"

He gave me a skeptical look.

"I'm a writer, and I've been writing about the news a lot, and it's sort of intense," I said.

"What do you write about?" he asked.

"Well," I said. "Lately, the Weinstein stuff . . . which everyone's talking about all the time, anyway, and so it's a little stressful."

The doctor wrapped the cuff around my arm. "Let me ask you a question," he said, sharply, as the cuff started to tighten. I got a familiar, awful feeling-a dissociative and desperate shimmer. I knew from his tone exactly what he was about to do. He was going to say that of course he was in favor of real victims speaking up, but he was worried that this whole thing was going too far. He would ask me if I didn't think it was dangerous to lump all these things together, and I would try to find the words to say that the fear of things being lumped together does more to lump them together than all the speaking up, and then he would continue asking questions as a way of telling me what he thought. I am no more a specialist in sexual assault than any other woman, but I've found myself writing about the subject more than maybe anything else over the course of my brief career- somehow, it keeps coming up -and I have had this conversation more times than I can count. At this point, knowing that someone is going to talk to me like I'm unreasonable hits me as a distinct physical sensation. It feels like someone throwing poisoned confetti at the back of my neck.

"Weinstein is a real scumbag," my doctor said, his hand pressing into the crook of my forearm. "But how far does this go? Someone says something out of line at the office party-you're telling me that's sexual assault?"

"No," I said. "I'm not telling you anything."

"Lot of people calling a lot of things sexual assault, sexual harassment," he said.

"I think it's interesting," I said, "given the extent of what we're learning, how many people seem more concerned with overreach than anything else."

"A hundred and fifty-one over a hundred and eleven," he said.

"Great," I said, wondering if I would live to see age fifty without my head exploding into chunks. "We don't need to talk about this!"

He switched to my left arm. "I'd like to know what you think about this, being a journalist," he said. "There are a lot of things going on in this world. And you're putting sexual harassment in the newspapers every day while we've got the M.T.A. breaking down, we've got this lunatic in the White House."

"Give me a second," I said. The cuff slowly tightened. I closed my eyes and imagined blue dusk, an open ocean, a quiet unbroken communion between water and sky.

"A hundred and twenty over eighty," he said.

"O.K.," I said. "If you really want to know what I think, I think that abuses of power tend to overlap, and that Trump wouldn't have been elected if people actually thought sexual assault was important."

"He wouldn't have been elected if the Democrats had run Biden!" my doctor said.

"I've got to go," I said, grabbing my coat, trying to get out of the office before I broke my composure. I walked through Brooklyn Heights, bewildered at how easily-how naturally-he had made me feel at fault. On the train to a meeting, I wrote down the conversation so I'd remember it. I wondered how soon I could get a new doctor, and how soon I could stop allowing strangers to implicitly hold me accountable for anything any woman has ever said or might say. I did the first, and I'm trying to figure out the second. My blood pressure, for the record, is fine now.

Though every woman I know has been anticipating a backlash since about thirty seconds after the Weinstein story broke, more than two months ago, the media equivalent of my visit to the doctor didn't begin in earnest until 2018.

A few days into the new year, Daphne Merkin published a Times Op-Ed with the headline " Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings." Within it, Merkin evinced the genuine frustration of many women who find that the conditions that they fought for in previous decades seem intolerable to a younger generation. "What happened to women's agency?" she asks. "What exactly are men being accused of? What is the difference between harassment and assault and 'inappropriate conduct'?" These are good and useful questions if you attempt to answer them, which she did not.

On January 9th, a rumor began circulating on Twitter, and was quickly confirmed: Harper's was planning to run a story on the post-Weinstein moment by Katie Roiphe, the feminist writer who made her name arguing that date rape didn't really exist. Fact-checkers had reached out to Moira Donegan, asking if she was the creator of the "Shitty Media Men" spreadsheet; though Donegan later identified herself in a nuanced essay for the Cut, the knowledge wasn't yet public, and the revelation could have put her at risk of harassment, or worse. After writers pulled their forthcoming stories from Harper's and readers called the magazine to protest, Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece for New York called " It's Time to Resist the Excesses of #MeToo." In it, he scoffed at the spreadsheet-one man, he noted, with inexplicable disdain, was accused of "secretly removing a condom during sex," not of workplace misconduct-and urged his readers to "resist this McCarthyism, to admit complexity." He noted, approvingly, that a group of French women had issued a letter that denounced #MeToo, arguing (where no argument was necessary) that a woman could possess workplace power and still enjoy being sexualized. "Imagine that: enjoying being the sexual object of a man!" Sullivan wrote.

Then, on January 14th, the Web site babe.net launched itself into the spotlight with a poorly executed article about Aziz Ansari, in which a reporter related a young woman's story of a bad, sad, uncomfortable night with the comedian. At The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan-who had previously written a piece called " To Hell with the Witch-Hunt Debate," arguing that the new movement was not a "war on sex" but a "long-overdue revolution"-concluded that this same revolution was now engulfing " the simply unlucky." "Apparently there is a whole country full of young women who don't know how to call a cab," she wrote, adding, "They are angry and temporarily powerful, and last night they destroyed a man who didn't deserve it." (She has since written another post, titled " Babe Turns a Movement Into a Racket.") The next day, Bari Weiss, at the Times, wrote a piece arguing that Ansari was guilty only of not being a mind-reader. "I'm apparently the victim of sexual assault. And if you're a sexually active woman in the 21st century, chances are that you are, too," the article began.

I have been confused by the tone of all of these pieces, which seem far more inflamed, over-generalized, and fatalistic than the relentlessly nuanced and self-interrogative essays that have actually delineated #MeToo. At the center of this discussion about discussion, there is a question: What are the parameters in which we should hold people responsible for more extreme versions of their behavior? Just as I resented my doctor for asking me to answer for the hypothetical woman crying rape after a joke at an office party, I resented these writers for asking "the movement" to answer for the obviously inexperienced and strategically brazen reporter who wrote the Ansari story at the previously unheard-of Web site babe.net.

Then, of course, I wondered if this was the frustration that men feel when they are asked to personally answer for women's inequality, when their inappropriate or coercive behavior is placed on the spectrum that ends in violent rape. But men benefit from gender inequality in a way that women do not from perceived feminist overreach. The extremes of male sexual misconduct typically serve to make lesser acts-such as secretly removing a condom, or removing plastic guards in the midst of shooting a sex scene, as James Franco allegedly did, though his attorney contends the accusation is "not accurate"-seem, in the grand scheme of things, really not that bad. From the beginning, there's been a reflexive cry: we shouldn't lump all male misbehavior together. There has been little insistence on parsing and making room for the gradations of women's resistance. When women push back on sexual misconduct, the viability of the entire movement seems to hinge on each act.

The Internet makes things more confusing: the world of sexual misconduct and confusion stands in front of us, exposed and quasi-litigated in new tweets and posts and essays every day. I wonder if we're overestimating how much we can affect stories and situations that we have nothing to do with. I keep asking myself what it would look like just to hold each other responsible-really responsible-for our own lives. This is an unprecedented moment of flux on an impossibly complicated topic; this movement is not even three months old yet. The fact of a hashtag flattens these stories, makes them seem unified, but they are profoundly individual. If we stop looking for straightforward collective agreement, we might find we need it less than we think.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
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The Rising Pressure of the #MeToo Backlash

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In the fall of 2016, I started feeling little starburst twinges in the ball of my right foot. A podiatrist told me that I had a fat nerve, a neuroma, and gave me a cortisone injection that made the pain go away.

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In society today, there is a substantial amount of pressure to pick a side. Publicly, people say or join "norms" because they sound justified and other people are doing it. Although when the conversation becomes personal there is a different tune; a tune of disagreement. This tune is described by OP-ED contributor Daphne in the article. Comments such as "Grow up, this is real life" or "What happened to women who are the predators?" arise in these closed door conversations. Martin rises the question of what is exactly women's legacy?

Reference:
Daphne Martin, “Publicly We Say #MeToo, Privately we Have Misgivings, January 5,2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/opinion/golden-globes-metoo.html

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Op-Ed Contributor

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Anna Zuccaro, left, and her sister, Mia Merrill, last month unsuccessfully petitioned the Metropolitan Museum of Art to take down a painting of a young girl by Balthus. Credit Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

You can be sure that this weekend at the Golden Globes, Hollywood celebrities, not exactly known for their independent thinking, will turn the red carpet into a #MeToo moment replete with designer duds. Many have promised to wear black dresses to protest the stream of allegations against industry moguls and actors. Perhaps Meryl Streep will get grilled - again - about what she knew about Harvey Weinstein. The rest of us will diligently follow along on Twitter, sharing hashtags and suitably pious opprobrium.

But privately, I suspect, many of us, including many longstanding feminists, will be rolling our eyes, having had it with the reflexive and unnuanced sense of outrage that has accompanied this cause from its inception, turning a bona fide moment of moral accountability into a series of ad hoc and sometimes unproven accusations.

For many weeks now, the conversation that has been going on in private about this reckoning is radically different from the public one. This is not a good sign, suggesting the sort of social intimidation that is the underside of a culture of political correctness, such as we are increasingly living in.

The women I know - of all ages - have responded by and large with a mixture of slightly horrified excitement (bordering on titillation) as to who will be the next man accused and overt disbelief.

Publicly, they say the right things, expressing approval and joining in the chorus of voices that applaud the takedown of maleficent characters who prey on vulnerable women in the workplace.

In private it's a different story. "Grow up, this is real life," I hear these same feminist friends say. "What ever happened to flirting?" and "What about the women who are the predators?" Some women, including random people I talk to in supermarket lines, have gone so far as to call it an outright witch hunt.

It goes without saying that no one is coming to the defense of heinous sorts, like Kevin Spacey and Matt Lauer. But the trickle-down effect to cases like those of Garrison Keillor, Jonathan Schwartz, Ryan Lizza and Al Franken, in which the accusations are scattered, anonymous or, as far as the public knows, very vague and unspecific, has been troubling.

Perhaps even more troubling is that we seem to be returning to a victimology paradigm for young women, in particular, in which they are perceived to be - and perceive themselves to be - as frail as Victorian housewives.

Consider the fact that the campaign last month against the Met to remove a Balthus painting that shows a young girl in a suggestive light was organized by two young Manhattan feminists. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. This is the kind of censorship practiced by religious zealots.

What happened to women's agency? That's what I find myself wondering as I hear story after story of adult women who helplessly acquiesce to sexual demands. I find it especially curious given that a majority of women I know have been in situations in which men have come on to them - at work or otherwise. They have routinely said, "I'm not interested" or "Get your hands off me right now." And they've taken the risk that comes with it.

The fact that such unwelcome advances persist, and often in the office, is, yes, evidence of sexism and the abusive power of the patriarchy. But I don't believe that scattershot, life-destroying denunciations are the way to upend it. In our current climate, to be accused is to be convicted. Due process is nowhere to be found.

And what exactly are men being accused of? What is the difference between harassment and assault and "inappropriate conduct"? There is a disturbing lack of clarity about the terms being thrown around and a lack of distinction regarding what the spectrum of objectionable behavior really is. Shouldn't sexual harassment, for instance, imply a degree of hostility? Is kissing someone in affection, however inappropriately, or showing someone a photo of a nude male torso necessarily predatory behavior?

I think this confusion reflects a deeper ambivalence about how we want and expect people to behave. Expressing sexual interest is inherently messy and, frankly, nonconsensual - one person, typically the man, bites the bullet by expressing interest in the other, typically the woman - whether it happens at work or at a bar. Some are now suggesting that come-ons need to be constricted to a repressive degree. Asking for oral consent before proceeding with a sexual advance seems both innately clumsy and retrograde, like going back to the childhood game of "Mother, May I?" We are witnessing the re-moralization of sex, not via the Judeo-Christian ethos but via a legalistic, corporate consensus.

Stripping sex of eros isn't the solution. Nor is calling out individual offenders, one by one. We need a broader and more thoroughgoing overhaul, one that begins with the way we bring up our sons and daughters.

These are scary times, for women as well as men. There is an inquisitorial whiff in the air, and my particular fear is that in true American fashion, all subtlety and reflection is being lost. Next we'll be torching people for the content of their fantasies.

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Opinion | Publicly, We Say #MeToo. Privately, We Have Misgivings.

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Op-Ed Contributor You can be sure that this weekend at the Golden Globes, Hollywood celebrities, not exactly known for their independent thinking, will turn the red carpet into a #MeToo moment replete with designer duds. Many have promised to wear black dresses to protest the stream of allegations against industry moguls and actors.

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Men are terrified of working with women following the post #MeToo movement because they may be the next victim. Certain institutions are beginning to exclude women from business ventures, or jobs entirely just to avoid a scandal. Women on the other hand, feel that men are being too insensitive about the subject an simply watch their words and actions.

Reference:
Prudy Gourguechon, “Why in the World Would Men Stop Mentoring Women Post #MeToo,” August 6, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/prudygourguechon/2018/08/06/why-in-the-world-would-men-stop-mentoring-women-post-metoo/#1802639c79a5

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It's easy to set aside grossly misogynist responses to the #MeToo movement. But recent surveys suggest that a much subtler backlash is occurring and threatens the efforts some companies and organizations have made to support the advancement of women through leadership ranks.

Three recent surveys arrived at similar troublesome findings: A growing number of men report being uncomfortable or afraid to work alone with a woman. Senior men are increasingly reluctant to mentor younger women or include them in opportunities like business travel or client dinners.

One company, KPMG, recently took a proactive approach, jumping on the problem to prevent this backlash from setting back advancements in women being mentored and sponsored within their company.

When I told my husband, who led a consulting firm for 40 years and employed, mentored and sponsored many young women, that I was writing about the #MeToo backlash, he laughed, thinking I was making it up. I said "No, it's a real thing. Men are afraid to be alone with women at work." "Then they're jerks," said my husband, unhelpfully.

If you too are skeptical, here's the data (the findings are preliminary but shouldn't be ignored):

A Pew Research Center survey asked respondents whether they thought that the recent focus on sexual harassment had made it harder for men to know how to interact with women in the workplace. Fifty-one percent of all adults questioned said yes.

SourceMedia reports on trends in the financial industries. Respondents to their recent survey on attitudes towards sexual harassment in the workplace post #MeToo voiced concern that women would be excluded from work situations "in order for men to protect themselves." A darker prediction was made by a woman in her 30's: "Corporations will discriminate against females and start hiring only male employees since it creates a less problematic environment." One senior leader in the banking industry reported that several male colleagues had told her they were reconsidering mentoring women.

Lean In partnered with SurveyMonkey to look into the possible negative effects of the #MeToo movement for women's advancement. Promoting mentorship is one of Lean In's key priorities. Nearly half of male managers they surveyed reported being "uncomfortable participating in a common work activity with a woman, such as mentoring, working alone, or socializing together." Senior men were five times more likely to hesitate to travel for work with a junior level woman than with a junior level man.

So why in the world are men afraid to be alone with women at work?
The implication of the surveys is that men are afraid of being falsely accused. But false accusations of sexual impropriety are actually very rare.

I can't resist putting on my psychiatrist/psychoanalyst hat to try to answer this question.

Let's consider the reports that men are increasingly afraid to be alone with women at work as a symptom that begs for a deeper look at possible causes. In medicine, symptoms are approached as the beginning of the story. They are just a sign that something is wrong, -there is some disease process going on- but they don't tell us which one. The next step is to formulate a "differential diagnoses"-what are all the possible causes of the symptom? So, let's take the symptom of "men are afraid to be alone with women at work as a result of the #MeToo movement" and go through the differential diagnosis process.
Differential diagnosis of the symptom

1. Women are dangerous. They will falsely accuse men of doing bad things. (Obviously, a man who is not going to harass a woman has nothing to worry about, right, unless women are prone to lying?)

2. Women are dangerous. They will entice men into doing inappropriate things.

3. Women are hypersensitive and unfair. Egged on by the #MeToo movement, they are going to misinterpret men's harmless behaviors as harmful, abusive or inappropriate.

4. Women are hypersensitive and don't have a sense of humor.

5. Men can't trust themselves to control their sexual fantasies.

6. Men can't stop themselves from acting on impulses, so they know they had better not be alone with an attractive female co-worker on a business trip. (See my article on why self-control and discipline is an essential capacity for a leader).

7. Men don't know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

Except for number 7, which indicates a need for education, and a shade of number 3, hypersensitivity, which I'll address below, all this starts to sound pretty ridiculous. In fact, the rest of the possible explanations are either fantasies of how men and women behave or prejudices--not rational assessments.

Everyone has an unconscious emotional life full of fantasies, wishes and impulses. This often includes insecurity, which can lead to an unconscious wish to dominate or demonstrate power over another person to prove one's strength. It also includes sexuality. We take all that with us to work. But the essence of maturity is to be able to control and moderate sexual and power-related impulses in a context where they are not warranted. Like at work.

Mature adults can control their emotional lives at work and focus on the job. They don't have to think about it.

They see their co-workers as just that, co-workers-even friends, even people fun to be around. But they don't spend their workdays thinking about them as sex objects, or about their bodies. Most men are mature adults. And therefore, they have nothing to worry about.

One of the actions KPMG took was to reassure their executives that the processes they have in place for responding to complaints are meant to ensure no one will be tainted by a false accusation. That seems to be a good idea, but again, the vast majority of men shouldn't have to worry.

In the midst of thinking and writing about these issues, I got a direct message on Twitter. I have a professional Twitter account for my leadership consulting business. I noticed that I'd been followed by a man who described himself as a general commander in the Army. I like connecting with retired military officers because they are often really gifted leadership consultants. So, I followed him back. Significantly, I didn't take the time to look at his Twitter account. I immediately got this message in return:

"Hello, dear. Great to meet you here."

I was startled, confused, angry and acutely uncomfortable. Why in the world would some stranger call me "dear"? Didn't he see me as a businesswoman? How about as an equal, or as a human being?

It was just a tiny thing. Would I have reacted differently before the #MeToo movement? Yes, I think so. I think I would have let it slide, and not been as flummoxed nor as angry. It would have just been one more incident in one woman's professional lifetime of little incidents.

Belatedly, I decided to look at the man's Twitter account to try to understand his behavior. He claimed to be on active duty, but no one on active duty would write the tweets he posted. I couldn't find him in any list of senior military officials actively serving where he claimed to be posted. His Twitter feed seemed vaguely anti-American. Was it a Russian bot that called me "dear?"

So yes, women are a little more sensitive now I think. That's not a bad thing, even if we're occasionally taken in by a Russian bot. We've woken up and we expect men to have woken up too.

But I still contend men don't have to be afraid. They can still be sexual people. They don't have to stop mentoring women. They don't have to be like Mike Pence and have a chaperone at dinner. Just remember why women are working, what they can contribute and don't be a jerk.

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Why In The World Would Men Stop Mentoring Women Post #MeToo?

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Surveys claim a growing percentage of men are avoiding mentoring women or taking them on business trips post #MeToo. When you take a closer look at the possible reasons for this, it mostly comes down to fearful fantasies and prejudices.

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#MeToo is a powerful movement that has stretched to women speaking up about sexual harassment at work. These voices are prompting fear in men. In this video posted by USA today provides more information as to why women are not being hired as much anymore due to the fact of the #MeToo movement. Such fear by men is causing a larger gap between genders at work than just unequal pay.

Reference:
Jorge L. Ortiz. “Will #MeToo turn into #NotHer? Movement may come with unintended workplace consequences,” October 4, 2018,” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/04/metoo-movement-unintended-career-consequences-women/1503516002/

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At the one-year mark, the #MeToo movement's impact is easy to ascertain in the number of powerful men brought down by revelations of their sexual misconduct, including the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves and Charlie Rose.

Less obvious but even more far-reaching in the workplace are the movement's unintended consequences.

Human resources professionals say #MeToo has increased awareness of harassment, made it easier for victims - female or male - to report offensive behavior and prompted enhanced employee training, especially among larger corporations.

But they also point to some negative effects, like confusion about workplace etiquette and, paradoxically, the possibility of fewer opportunities for women, as male executives struggle to adjust to the new rules of engagement.

The confusion stems from cultural differences in a country as vast and diverse as the United States. What may be regarded as an inoffensive hug or compliment in one setting could be interpreted as a come-on in another.

Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, said he grew up in South Florida around Latinos who were expressive and dispensed hugs freely, and also among Southerners who often used terms like "honey,'' "sweetheart'' and "sugar'' with their acquaintances.

In some workplaces, those practices now could form the basis of a severe reprimand.

"What one does in one culture, in South Florida - Miami - is very different from what's acceptable in Des Moines, Iowa,'' said Taylor, who writes the weekly "Ask HR'' column for USA TODAY. "It's not as simple as, 'Here's the national standard.' It requires different interventions giving cultural nuance, geographic nuance, and then your big one is age.''

Indeed, men of a certain age appear to have the most difficulty adapting to the new work order. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in February and March revealed 66 percent of adults 65 and older believe it's now harder for men to navigate workplace interactions.

The survey also indicated 51 percent of Americans believe the increased focus on sexual harassment and assault has made it more difficult for men to know how to interact with women at work. Only 12 percent said the interactions would now be easier.

Experts report increasing reluctance from men in positions of authority to hire or work closely with women, in some cases declining to hold one-on-one meetings with female employees.

"It's not a good thing,'' said Kellie McElhaney, founding director of the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership at UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "It's further disconnecting women from networks that we've already been excluded from. There are solutions, but I think right now men are a bit paralyzed.''

More: MeToo one year later: Cosby, Moonves fall, sex harassment fight at work far from over

More: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on #MeToo: Women of my generation have 'many stories'

Related: Donald Trump: Kavanaugh allegations show it's a 'very scary time for young men in America'

A poll directed this year by LeanIn.org and SurveyMonkey found nearly half of male managers are uncomfortable participating in common work activities with a woman, and senior-level men are 3½ times more hesitant to have a work dinner with a junior-level woman - and five times more hesitant to travel with one for work - than with a junior-level man.

Male managers also have grown significantly more uncomfortable mentoring women than before, the survey said.

"We're literally having executives say, 'I'm really nervous about hiring a woman, particularly in roles like EAs (executive assistants), that's such a personal job ... I'd just as soon hire a male,''' Taylor said. "It has become a risk-management conversation.

"We must figure out from an HR perspective how to minimize that, because we don't want men penalizing women for fear.''

Some believe the pendulum in workplace interactions has swung too far, further pushed to the edge by a politically charged climate in a country led by a president, Donald Trump, who has been accused several times of inappropriate behavior toward women. Accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh only added to that environment.

However, University of Maryland professor Neta Moye, an expert on human resources and leadership, says it's nonsensical for men to fear being disciplined for making an innocent, inadvertent comment that could be construed as offensive.

"None of the stories that we learned about in the #MeToo movement was a small, one-time, accidental incident in which some man says to some woman at work, 'I like your dress,''' Moye said. "These stories are of men who are knowingly, willingly abusing power, usually repeatedly, in order to get sexual favors from women."

San Francisco chef and restaurateur Dominique Crenn has faced the issue from different perspectives. In the 1990s she left a job when she felt her harassment complaint was disregarded, and decades later she fired an employee accused of harassing others.

San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn, the first woman in the U.S. to earn two Michelin stars, says abuses in the restaurant industry have not abated. (Photo: Matt Edge)

Crenn said she still frequently hears of abuses in the restaurant business, which from 1995-2016 was the source of more sexual harassment claims filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission than any other industry.

"When I look at this I say, 'All right, there's a MeToo movement. Now, how can we move forward?''' said Crenn, who will speak on the subject at this month's StarChefs International Chefs Congress.

McElhaney said one of the steps companies should take is to clearly spell out their policies about dating co-workers, discouraging romantic relationships between employees in the same department and forbidding them between bosses and subordinates.

Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania, goes a step further, saying office romance is on the way out because employers will start putting bans in place to avoid litigation.

"I think companies are going to find that trying to draw rules on how you should interact with each other is going to be more difficult and open them up to criticism from one side or the other,'' Cappelli said, "so it's going to be simpler to just say, 'The heck with it.'''

That may seem a bit draconian, considering human nature and the amount of time people spend at work every day. Interactions that lead to mutual attraction are likely to happen regardless.

In addition to some hard-and-fast rules and continued training, experts suggest companies implement common-sense solutions like increasing the number of women in leadership roles, holding meetings with doors ajar and encouraging handshakes instead of hugs.

Janet Zaretsky, a speaker and corporate trainer in Austin, Texas, said she has seen the empowering effect the #MeToo movement has had on women, as well as the negative effects like making some men reluctant to hire or work in close proximity with them.

But it was the Kavanaugh hearings that crystallized for her the notion that the cause needs to continue.

"There is still much work to be done to have victims' voices heard,'' Zaretsky said, "and to wake people up that their behavior has consequences.''

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Will #MeToo turn into #NotHer? Movement may come with unintended workplace consequences

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CLOSE At the one-year mark, the #MeToo movement's impact is easy to ascertain in the number of powerful men brought down by revelations of their sexual misconduct, including the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves and Charlie Rose. Less obvious but even more far-reaching in the workplace are the movement's unintended consequences.

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The #MeToo Movement has moved waves of mountains to provide a safe outlet to victims of sexual assault, although there are lines that are crossed. Some individuals would use the movement as a quick fame scheme, get revenge, or cover up an embarrassing night. A shared Facebook post by Kaylee Saenz, presents an idea that consensual sex that was later regretted is not a reasonable call for 🤬.

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Alexandria, Haley. “Facebook Post .” Facebook.com, 1 Oct. 2018, 7:13 p.m.

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In an interview with Sunrise talk show hosts Sam Armytage, author and #MenToo activist Bettina Arndt gives an opinion how the #MeToo movement has fallen from "powerful and impactful" to degrading. Arndt continues gives reasons as to why men should be scared of the #MeToo movement because they have no voice. Movements such as #MeToo has given Feminism a horrid new name and no longer upholds the rightful meaning the term once had.

Reference:
Sunrise. “.@Thebettinaarndt Says the #MeToo Movement Has ‘Given Women a Licence to Destroy Men on the Basis of the Most Trivial Accusations’.Do You Agree That We Now Live in a Male Bashing Society? 🤔 Pic.twitter.com/SWmAAlUXuQ.” Twitter, Twitter, 3 Dec. 2018, twitter.com/sunriseon7/status/1069706651890905088.

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In a retweet posted by Nebeel Azeez, there are a list of Protocols that businessmen, particularly higher class businessmen, follow to prevent from being the face of a #MeToo sexual assault case. Originally posted on Bloomberg by Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski, the list was updated on December 3, 2018. This list includes prohibiting a meeting with a female colleague with the door closed, not riding next to the female colleague on a plane or train, and not going on business ventures alone with the female colleague.

Reference:
Azeez, Nabeel. “Shariah Principles Are Saving Men from Getting #MeToo'd. You're Welcome. Pic.twitter.com/BdLYUkjRvJ.” Twitter, Twitter, 4 Dec. 2018, twitter.com/NabeelAzeezDXB/status/1069828228741775360.