Oh, god. Could you make it any more about you? Men are wondering if hugging women is still OK.

“Have we gotten to the point now where men can’t say, ‘That’s a nice dress’ or ‘Did you do something with your hair?’” says the veteran sales associate for a Los Angeles company. “The potential problem is you can’t even feel safe saying, ‘Good morning’ anymore.”

The sexual misconduct allegations that have brought down powerful men in Hollywood, media, politics and business are sending a shiver through the workplace. Men are wondering if it’s still OK to hug a female colleague or ask about her weekend. And some are asking themselves if they ever, perhaps even inadvertently, crossed the line.

You can still comment on women’s appearance in a complimentary way, if you’re also the kind of guy who says “That’s a nice shirt” to your male co-workers. You can comment on their hairstyle, if you also say the same sort of thing about other men.

“Good morning” is always safe, you dumbass.

Hugging is also safe, if you ask permission first, and if you don’t use it as an excuse to send your hands on a scouting mission to various prominences in the landscape. Again, I have to wonder, though, how often hugging is an important part of your interactions with other men.

Also, if you have to ask yourselves if you’ve crossed a line, then yes, you have crossed a line.

I’m really getting annoyed with these men who are playing dumb and incapable of understanding simple social cues and rules of behavior. We men aren’t that stupid, and no one is fooled — even you aren’t that dim. Apparently, though, the cost of appearing stupid is the price you’re willing to pay for an excuse to clumsily fondle women against their will.

“You don’t feel save saying ‘good morning’ anymore.” Sheesh. You really are willing to play the imbecile for a cheap feel.

Shall we tally up the casualties in the ongoing War on Men for the weekend?

• John Hockenberry of NPR

• James Levine of the Metropolitan Opera

• Jay Fliegelman, a distinguished professor of literature at Stanford

  (if you read his victim’s account, it’ll break your heart)

Wow. Big names are falling like dominoes. You might be thinking this is good news, that bad men are finally being held to account for their misdeeds, but there is still criminal injustice going on all the time. Matt Lauer thinks NBC owes him $30 million dollars. And then there’s the student who raped a drunken women at ASU — he’s getting off because he has a 3.9 GPA. His rationalizations have to be seen to be believed.

In a lengthy statement, he described how he considered himself a supporter of women’s rights. I am an advocate of gender equality, including equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work and access to essential, basic healthcare for women, he said. However, as has historically been the case for previously under-represented groups, there is an over-compensation where the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction and creates another injustice. This does not create gender equality, but rather allows a person to make heinous, unsubstantiated claims without consequence.

James even went as far to suggest that his punishment is prohibiting him from helping to solve world hunger.

He said his suspension greatly impairs my ability to contribute to my research team in sustainable engineering, where we are attempting to invent and implement ways of ensuring we can feed a population of soon to be ten billion on a rapidly degrading planet.

Gosh, study hard, do well in school, and you too can get a rape license. And ladies — you’d better submit to rape if you want to end world hunger. It’s OK because James is sort of a feminist, he says. Toppling a few big wigs is not going to lead to a long-term solution as long as we keep promoting Junior Weinsteins like James.

New/old excuses are being deployed as I write. There’s the old “Men are inherently brutal and sexist” story, which isn’t true: we are what we make ourselves. There are plenty of healthy, normal men who don’t want to walk all over women — but there are also social structures that enable misbehavior, and actually reward successful men with tolerance for their abuses. That has to change, and then we can discover good men who succeed on their abilities, rather than by their viciousness in climbing an ugly ladder to the top ranks.

There are also lots of moanings about how hard it is to be a man right now, which is also not true. It might be believable if loads of innocent men were being loaded into the tumbrels, but look at all of them: they’re all guilty as hell, there is evidence supporting the accusations, and often these men are reluctantly confessing to their abuses. I, for instance, am resting easy because I know I don’t have any terrible crimes in my past, and I suspect that’s true for the majority of my male readers. It’s the ones with guilty consciences who are sweating bullets and trying to argue that they are unjustly persecuted, and the worrisome thing is how many Top Men are looking shiny with sweat.

The atmosphere is indeed a peculiar one. (Though if one more person calls it a “witch hunt” I will scream, because co-opting a historical occurrence that disproportionately, gruesomely punished single women with death as a metaphor for uncovering abuses by powerful men is not acceptable.) The air seems to vibrate with powerful (and abusive) men’s fear as more allegations are brought into the public eye, and that’s essentially unprecedented. And as new stories come out again and again, I fully encourage men to re-examine themselves and their past behavior. Just like not being racist in a deeply racist world takes work, not being sexist in an environment that normalizes sexist attitudes requires conscious commitment and awareness.

But what you don’t get to do is complain about it — because, congratulations, you are now getting a free sample of how women have to act around men all the time.

I had no idea that Rich Sanderson still existed, but gosh, he was turning up on Twitter a lot this week. You may recall Sanderson from about 5 years ago, when his thing was repetitively harassing women and feminists: he called himself Atheist, skeptic, aka THE KING! Coiner of the term #FTBullies. I guess he still does. That’s his grand claim to immortality, that he coined the hashtag #FTBullies. That’s kind of…it. It’s rather sad, really. I’m picturing his poor mother getting together with her girlfriends, and they’re all bragging about their childrens’ accomplishments, and all she’s got is that her little Richie has a hashtag that only he uses in his obsessive campaign against Rebecca Watson and PZ Myers, still, and he thinks he’s a KING.

Anyway, his name keeps popping up in this twitter thread, where he’s babbling about the time I was threatened with a rape accusation. Let it go, little Richie. Let it go.

Then this morning I got some email. I suspect it’s from him. It sure sounds like him, and contains his predictable hobby horse.

Dear PZ,

Don’t “dear” me, you demented wackaloon.

If you are sincere about your support for #MeToo campaign, if you’re sincere in statements like “You screwed yourself while trying to screw others, and no one feels any particular reason to redeem you.” If you really believe that, why have you not even discussed the time an adult woman sexually harassed you by threatening to accuse you of rape?

Hey, you disingenuous goober, the only reason you know about that incident is because I openly discussed it. I wasn’t sexually harassed; a student tried to extort a better grade out of me by threatening to lie. It was handled quickly and appropriately.

If you are sincere, you will name and shame her, or you will at least discuss the issue in relation to this latest movement to end sexual harassment. If you don’t want to or are afraid to, can you explain why that is?

Sincerely yours,

Critically Thinking

You want me to torment a student who made a mistake 25 years ago? No.

But wait. I can make a contribution to the #MeToo campaign! I can tell everyone how to handle that rare circumstance in which a man is unjustly accused of sexual misbehavior! I have experience! Unfortunately, it’s not very useful experience, because it doesn’t happen very often. But I can tell you exactly how to cope.

So imagine a woman accuses you of improper behavior towards her at work. What do you do?

• First and most importantly, be innocent. That means that you must treat all women fairly and not take advantage of your position to take liberties with her, or to belittle her. I know that seems to be surprisingly difficult for way too many men, but it’s a necessary prerequisite for this technique to work. If you aren’t innocent…well, bugger off, you horrible little man. You’re deservedly screwed.

• Next, you need to acknowledge that this person is trying to do you harm. What should you do? Get out of that situation. Leave. Don’t try to argue, and for jebus sake, don’t try to dominate and suppress them — that’s playing into their hands and creating a situation they can use as evidence that you’re abusing them.

• Report. Go to human resources, your supervisor, anyone with any authority. Describe the situation honestly — if you can’t describe it honestly, you shouldn’t bother following this script. You’re screwed. But if you’re innocent, you should be completely open and transparent and document the event to a third party.

• Step back and wait. You’re done. Any further interaction will involve other people looking deeper into the matter (and you’re innocent, remember? So they’re not going to find anything inappropriate, right?) In my case, another faculty member, a woman, was delegated to hear the student’s side of the story. It fell apart immediately, she was contrite, and the situation was over.

• It is possible that a determinedly vindictive woman could push it further. But again, you’re innocent — there isn’t any evidence of misbehavior, right? She doesn’t have dick pics on her phone, there aren’t witnesses to you slapping her butt, you didn’t get drunk and proposition her at a party, you aren’t on record with unwarranted punishments or promises? Right? If there are, fuck you, go away, you’re going to get what you deserved. Otherwise, if your behavior has been spotless, back off, be impersonal, get a lawyer, let it be handled by professionals.

Easy!

Notice that you, a man, have advantages here, and this plan takes advantage of them. Women ought to be able to follow the same plan too, when faced with a nefarious male with bad intentions, but the good deal for you is a) you won’t be automatically disbelieved, b) you won’t be immediately labeled a disruptive influence, and c) you won’t be fired as a shortcut to silencing a complaint. We can get our concerns addressed. In a perfect world, when a Matt Lauer or a Harvey Weinstein importunes a woman, she ought to also be able to immediately walk away, report the situation, and get a third party to look into the matter objectively, and take appropriate action against the guilty party, whoever it may be.

We know that doesn’t happen often enough. It’s grossly unfair. That’s why women are using the “#MeToo” hashtag, to publicize the frequency of this injustice. Because we men have made justice our privilege, and made the world a hell for those who do not recieve what ought to be universal rights. There’s even a song about it now.

You don’t get to use my example of an innocent man who got a swift and fair response as a reason to further trivialize the right of women to also be treated equitably.

You fucking dishonest wanker.

By the way, this twit emailed me using a throw-away email account, “criticallythinking@protonmail.com”. It’s blocked now, along with all the other accounts he’s used to pester me with in email.

Well. You know that #NotAllMen hashtag? Somebody quantified it to find out exactly how many men, and the results are not encouraging.

The research group asked over 1,000 Americans “What do you think counts as sexual harassment?” in an online survey. They were told to select all that apply.

The survey found that 91 percent of women and 83 percent of men thought “being forced to do something sexual” fit the bill.

If that doesn’t count as sexual harassment, what does? Who are the 17 percent of men and 9 percent of women who don’t agree?

Men were even less likely to characterize behaviors that didn’t involve physical touch as sexual harassment. Twenty-four percent thought flashing someone doesn’t count and 30 percent thought making sexual comments about someone’s body isn’t harassment.

So…1 in 6 of your male friends think they can find an excuse for forcing themselves sexually on a woman, and 1 in 4 think that sending a dick pic is not harassment. So it’s true, it’s not all men, but it’s also not just a couple of nasty felons hanging out in a dark alley — it could be 80 million ordinary, ignorant, selfish American men.

I guess Matt Lauer is full of regret and is soul-searching and wants to repair the damage he has done, so he is weeping to the press.

There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions, Lauer said in the statement released to the network. To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry.

Lauer said that some of what he has been accused of is untrue and mischaracterized but said, there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.

Translation: he’s sorry he was caught, can he get back on the gravy train now, please?

I’m sure he is embarrassed now. But the man had a trapping button installed in his desk — you came in to meet the boss, he’d press his secret button, and click, you were trapped in there with him and couldn’t get out until he let you. Not only is that creepy as hell, but required forethought and intent and planning and assistance to install. Was that one of the incidents he now claims was mischaracterized?

Here’s the deal, Matt. You screwed yourself while trying to screw others, and no one feels any particular reason to redeem you. You were a dime-a-dozen talent who was paid $25 million a year, doing a job that any of thousands of women could have done better, with more class and insight than you ever demonstrated…and they wouldn’t be leaving a trail of slime everywhere they went. You’ve got millions of dollars socked away, I’m sure, and can just go sink out of sight, to everyone’s relief. Disappearing without a fuss would be in your interest, too, because all you’re doing now is reminding us that you have a fat bank account full of undeserved loot, and a trail of women whose careers were stunted by your selfish actions.

Vanish, little man. Your deflation has only just begun.

Oddly enough, I am not at all surprised that Garrison Keillor has been fired for sexual improprieties.

The question now is who will be the last man standing in the entertainment business. I’m betting on Peewee Herman.

Even liberals can fall prey to it. Here’s an article about those vile Southern Baptists having a vile conference in which they rail against all them gay sissy boys and transgernders and baby rapers, except Roy Moore, who is their kind of baby raper, and I can share the author’s sentiments about how awful and hypocritical these bigots are. Unfortunately, what caught everyone’s attention is the opening performance of the conference. This one. Of a guy doing a rainbow flag dance.

The comment from our liberal colleague about this performance:

But wow — they opened their conference with the gayest performance they could find among their “straight” participants.

I guess us straight people aren’t allowed to dance, even badly, without turning gay. You know, all those gay people with their flamboyance and their colorful displays and their uninhabited behaviors. We’ve got to categorize people. Men who dance: gay.

We’re all shackled throughout our lifetimes by these expectations that we have to conform to certain behaviors to fit in to our expected roles. I have no desire to dance, not in the slightest, because I’d be really, terribly, embarrassingly bad at it. And why am I bad at it? Because in my narrow little world, it was not encouraged, and you were weird if you, white boy, were dancing. We get it shamed out of us. It’s another stereotype that white people can’t dance, but it’s not because we’re lacking in a basic human capability, it’s because we’re discouraged from learning.

Another example: I spent the first dozen or so years of my life singing, several times a week, in church choir, where we got real training, and where, I like to think, I was even getting pretty good. And then I left religion, and with that, there was the unintended side effect of my voice drying up, because the only situation in which ordinary, poor or middle-class people sing is in church…and hell no, atheists don’t go to church. Sometimes I want to sing, but the only relic of my past training is an acute consciousness of how bad my singing is now.

I’m also afraid that any attempt at trying would conflict with my identity as a straight white atheist.

We’re all going through life pulling on straitjackets, aren’t we?