That was the beginning of the #MeToo movement and what a run and ruin it has been in the last year or so, felling and embroiling a number of high-profile individuals, in several cases destroying lives and careers, especially after politics played around it and #MeToo realized its potential to sway not just minds but also votes. The only good thing about #MeToo was that really hurt women found a voice.

And men, even if they didn’t like it, were wary of being seen or heard to be on the wrong side of #MeToo. Friendships going back years, in some cases decades, were cast aside because guilty by association/accusation was something nobody wanted. But on social media, with anonymity relatively more ensured, questions were posed and opinions slipped through: “Can a female claim rape after having a few drinks with a dude and then having consensual sex?”

Yep, fear has crept into many a male mind even as it might have given ideas to some women. #MeToo has done that, and has had that effect. Love hereafter #MeToo will linger and pause to wonder at the bedroom door. Hamlet will invade the head: To be or not to be. The bravest of men in positions of power are right this minute thinking of what they will get into if they walk arm in arm with a woman and shut themselves in a room.

And some on the political left have in the wake of the ‘Judge Kavanaugh #MeToo Moment’ gone to the extent of convicting all men as automatic sex offenders. Their extraordinary conviction is: Men implicated or charged with a sex offence should prove their innocence. Women accusing any male of sexual assault should be believed, period. “It is not a court of law, it’s a court of credibility which men face,” said one Democratic member of the US Senate judiciary Committee.

What does that mean? It means presumption of innocence doesn’t belong. It means men have to 'unconvict' themselves from the day they are born. It also conveys that the English Common Law, on which the American and Indian law is based, no longer holds, runs the gamut. So what if it took centuries to get out of Medieval Age jurisprudence when troublesome men were declared heretics and told to prove their innocence or go to the gallows. And gallows it was 100/100!

Presumption of guilt in sexual assault cases doesn’t require hearings. They ride themselves through with accusations. The accused is dead before he takes the stand; that after the accuser has branded him Pervert No.1, and that without a shred of evidence. Why? Because he happens to have a chromosome that makes him a sexual offender. Congenital! There will come a time when sex determination tests will be done to rule out ‘male’.

No, that’s not a joke. Because no mother, sister and daughter will want motivated and false #MeToo accusations to target father, brother, husband and son. Like the smart guy in the room said, “Mothers will may be forced to form a Mamma Bears Club because Mamma they’re coming after your son!” Guilty by accusation, uncorroborated. Yeah, Court of Credibility! Not fair process. Everybody knows nobody can prove a negative, ever. But what the hell, it’s just another male, dime a dozen.

Now, there are two women accusing Judge Kavanaugh and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer says he has several more lined up with “salacious” details. The second woman alleges, quite literally, that Kavanaugh “waved his genitals in my face” at a drunken college party at Yale three decades ago. But it turns out she wasn’t sure. So, she called several of her classmates asking if they recalled the incident! The friends flatly denied. The New York Times did not publish the story because it could not find a single source to substantiate the accusation.

But the New Yorker published stating at the same time that it could not find a source. Clearly sections of media are not beyond accusing men of #MeToo with nothing to back up the charges. The real danger will be when #MeToo will be used by regimes to go after political rivals. Finish off opposition with zero corroboration but a hell of a lot of politics. Judge Bret M Kavanaugh’s #MeToo “trial” Thursday should be watched carefully. They are trying to muscle him out of town on frivolous charges. Destroy his family.

India doesn’t have a #MeToo movement going. So using the movement to use “smears to character-assassinate” has still not caught on. But give it time. There will come a time when if a woman changes her mind afterwards, it gets investigated as rape. Khap panchayats are not the only kangaroo courts on the planet. And Bishop Franco Mulakkal is not a #MeToo target. His case is nowhere in that category even if nuns are fair game for priests. Nobody wanted to muscle him out of town, he himself was shouting to be forced out without even kicking the tyre to see if it is ready to roll! (IPA Service)