Lately I’ve seen a lot of discussions on Facebook about women complaining about rude behaviour, sexual harassment and abuse of power by men. Only a few years ago, different opinions about that were virtually impossible and would be answered with a tsunami of shaming. But times have changed.

The counterarguments are manifold. They’re not just brought up by men, quite often by women and quite often women give ‘likes’ to what the men say. I will mention a few: it’s ridiculous to contact the media because of one rude remark decades ago, especially because it’s impossible to get the context clear anymore. Also, almost nobody will never have had said or done something rude in such a long period. The media shouldn’t anyway be the ones making judgments, sometimes destroying lives of well-known people without any juridical proof.

Some women mentioned that they worked all their life in groups of men and enjoyed it; sometimes they liked the rude humour, sometimes it went too far but then they were capable enough to make that clear without help of media or ideologies. Some women said they liked the kind of compliments when they were young that would now be called unacceptable and harassment.

Especially men pointed out there is no ideal or clean-cut way to approach women when you have erotic wishes. Some women supported them, saying they pitied men nowadays who in no way could have a clue how to approach women in a way both ‘decent’ and effective.

I’m not saying I support all arguments and remarks against what I will call for short the MeToo-ideas. Those arguments sometimes were quite generalising and on the brink of victim blaming. Like the stories (brought up as often by women as men) about girls who used their attractiveness to make a career and looked for revenge when they didn’t succeed. But even those remarks shouldn’t be banned imho, as they do mention a real part of the gender power interaction, be it devoid of any nuance.

I also realise lots of these changes are partly due to the turn to the right of society in general. But even that might cause a wake-up call for the left and force them to really participate in a dialogue instead of shouting ‘male supremacy’ and ‘misogyny’ all the time, meaning every time a man makes clear in practice he has heterosexual feelings.