Abstract What explains the liberal hypocrites exposed through the 2017 MeToo moment in the United States, and why did it take so long to “see” them? I argue that these liberal hypocrites are best understood within the context of the politicization of men’s involvement in mainstream American feminism. There are three dimensions to politicization: public endorsement, abstraction of impact, and partisan identification. Each of these dimensions exteriorizes values from adherents, facilitating inconsistency between their outward personas and private lives. When values become politicized, hypocritical stances toward them become, in effect, conceptually impossible. What is distinctive about the American MeToo movement, and part of what has driven liberal pushback against it, is that it is calling for a different framing of men in feminism than has been the mainstream: one that recognizes and censures hypocrisy, even among political allies.
Caitlin Brown (Sat,) studied this question.