I saw a tweet recently that was wrote by a prominent Conservative political voice, Candace Owens, whom is popular amongst the organization Turning Point USA, and it triggered me.
I'll summarize the tweet by saying that it was expressing her opinion that the #MeToo movement consists of weak and stupid women who did not take initiative to get themselves out of the situation they were in.
In recent interviews Candace is defending herself and her tweet by saying that she does support strong women and survivors of sexual misconduct –– but believes that the #MeToo movement is causing harm to women.
She backs up her belief by saying that men do not want to hire women because of their fear of being #metoo'd– which I could discuss further, but that's a discussion for another time.
I simply want to dissect Candace's tweet at a face value and point out all of the things wrong with it.
I want to give Candace the benefit of the doubt that she truly isn't as insensitive as her tweet sways by acknowledging that Twitter only allows so many characters for a tweet, and although Candace's full explanation of her stance on the #metoo movement would be much more than what Twitter allows, much damage was done with how she chose to summarize her stance.
There are many issues with what Candace tweeted.
The first issue is that Candace has hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.
Her platform can reach millions of people of all ages –– including very young individuals who may be too young to understand that Candace's opinion is only an insensitive opinion.
Her tweet claims that a victim is "too weak to tell that person to stop touching your ass."
First, it isn't the victim's fault that their ass, or any other body part, is being touched.
Second, if the victim does not say anything, that doesn't make them weak.
Frankly, the violator should have known what they were doing is wrong and not done it in the first place, but as some may unfortunately know, not everyone has that figured out.
Personally, I have been touched inappropriately and I have not said anything –– mostly out of fear, their authority over me and discomfort. This doesn't make me weak. I was under the impression that as a female in the situation I was in, I was supposed to just take it.
I have also "turned around and told that person not to touch my ass again" and while most times the person would, there have been instances when I would get yelled at, cussed at, shoved, and groped even more.
Her tweet also claims that "women are too stupid to realize what men might want when coming into their hotel room late at night".
As women, we shouldn't have to assume that because a man wants to come over that we should know that they want sex.
It also should not be suggested that we are stupid if we don't realize that a man wants to have sex in such a situation.
An invitation in does not equal consent.
Candace concluded her tweet by saying, "too inconsequential to realize this".
If you don't know, inconsequential means insignificant or unimportant.
Candace's followers and viewers of her tweet basically would have read that she views women of the #metoo are insignificant.
The ending of her tweet can contribute to the stigma around coming forward as a victim.
Anyone can read Candace's tweet and misinterpret it as her saying that anyone who can identify with the #metoo movement is unimportant, prompting them to become discouraged and want to stay silent.
While some people may know better than to take Candace's words to heart, there are some people, specifically young people, who may take her words literally.
As someone who has experienced multiple occurrences of sexual misconduct of various kinds, reading this tweet broke me.
A victim should never be told they were weak and stupid for what happened to them.
At face value, this tweet was victim shaming.
Some may agree with me, and some may not– we are all entitled to our opinion, just as Candace is to hers, and these were mine.
