Junot Díaz Kept His Job

A tweet about celebrities getting "metoo'd," and relevant lead in to this article.

Junot Díaz kept his job. Actually, he kept both of his jobs––after Zinzi Clemmons and a resultant influx of authors shared their stories about his sexual harassment, MIT and the Boston Review each kept him on after conducting independent investigations into his behavior. Díaz is a faculty member at MIT, where “no evidence of misconduct” was found, and is the Boston Review’s fiction editor, where his “objectionable conduct” has not merited a discontinuation of his contract. The condemnation of his forcible kissing and abuse of power merited a shift in the #MeToo movement, as he was one of the first men to be called out who didn’t fit the cis-white-straight-rich profile. His story is seen as a shift for other reasons too––the Boston Globe has called him a “turning point” because he has yet to face any professional repercussions for his actions: “For eight months, #MeToo stories have followed a familiar script: A prominent man is accused of impropriety. He faces immediate public shaming followed by a swift disavowal by the institution that made him famous. But the Díaz case may be rewriting that narrative.”

In an age where the prevailing attitude is that men can “get #MeToo’d” (yes, it’s a verb now, with a very strange past tense conjugation), Díaz might seem like a turning point against accusations of inane improprieties that threaten a man’s livelihood forever. However––is he really a turning point? Should he be?

Example A of "getting metoo'd" 

Example B

There are two conflicting narratives about the #MeToo movement––the idea that all men are getting fired, and the idea that none of them are. I did some detective work to begin to analyze who has faced professional consequences for their actions: Vox has a list of all the people who have been accused as a result of the movement, which I combed through. (You can find my fancy chart and brief explanation of my methods here). Vox’s list isn’t exhaustive, but I hoped it would give me some idea of the concrete results of the movement.

My first finding was about gender––though it wasn’t all women who were being abused, it was all (but to the exception of two) men who had perpetrated the act. Although people of any gender can be abused and people of any gender can do the abusing, the #MeToo movement has nearly exclusively been one wherein women voice accusations against men.

I found that a full 30% of the men on Vox's list faced absolutely no repercussions whatsoever, with repercussions spanning from “being placed on 2-weeks of paid leave and reinstated after” to “serving 175 years in jail.” Of the 219 men whose fates I examined, only 20% were fired. This 20% includes men who were sent to jail––like Larry Nassar, who was accused of sexual assault of over 250 minors.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who sentenced Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in prison.

Men who were fired were most likely to have committed rape, violence, sexual extortion, and pedophilia alongside their charges of sexual harassment and abuse. In other words, chances of being fired increased when the charge was coupled with a second abuse of power prosecutable on its own merit. I found chances of being fired also increased––but not dramatically––if a police investigation was underway.

Of course, chances of being fired aren’t that high in the first place. I categorized the types of accusations that arose, and of those categories not one man who had masturbated in front of a woman or otherwise exposed himself had been fired. “Inappropriate behavior” was not a fireable offense, nor were sexual advancements toward minors or “inappropriate comments.” Sexual advancements paired with creating a hostile work environment was only fireable one time out of eleven.

Should the majority of men who did not lose their jobs have been fired? Should more have gone to jail (of the 23 men listed under “statutory rape/pedophilic sexual abuse” only 3 faced legal consequences)? Is “being #MeToo’d” and the threat of facing social condemnation enough?

It isn’t. I can say with complete certainty that social pushback is not enough. Bad publicity is not enough. Having your Netflix show dropped is not enough. Having an event drop you from their list of speakers is not enough. At the very least, the result of the movement should be that it enables more people to be forthcoming with the abuse they have suffered. Victims are already being ostracized to the same extent––if not more so––than are the perpetrators they report. There needs to be comfort, at least, in knowing that if you report a sexual abuser you will not have to work with them anymore.

The largest result of the #MeToo movement is a wave of perpetrators retiring, stepping down, or resigning. Twenty-eight percent of the accused left their jobs this way, and it does solve the aforementioned issue––victims would not have to work with their abusers anymore. Someone else will have to. One of the biggest issues I faced in creating my spreadsheet was in figuring out how to categorize multiple-time offenders. There were a number of men who left a first job due to complaints and then were accused again at their second. When men are allowed to choose their punishment, and thus resign, it just allows the abuse to continue elsewhere. They should have been fired. Victims deserve concrete action against their abusers, and sexual abuse should be an offense that needs to be divulged to a future employer.

Chances of being fired vs chances of retiring. More graphs here.

So, Díaz wasn’t a turning point. He wasn’t fired, because most men aren’t. However, the accusations against him are admittedly not of Weinstein caliber. Díaz has been accused of forcibly kissing an undergraduate while he was in a position of power, harassing women in the audience of his readings, and misogynistic verbal abuse towards women. In response, he’s said “that doesn’t sound like me,” which is a common sentiment from men who are so accustomed to the type of misconduct they perpetuate that they are unable to realize it is wrong. He claims that there’s a difference between being a bad boyfriend and a bad person, but I don’t know why that would be true. Should men be allowed to treat women who love them more poorly as a result of their connection?

I don’t have a prescriptive response to the Díaz case. The investigative work of MIT and the Boston Review is important, but limited––neither acknowledges fully the abuse of power that is paired with every #MeToo claim. The Boston Review references it, saying that the claims against Díaz are “dispersed over a long stretch of time,” as though that proves his misogyny is intermittent instead of deep seated. What his case in particular proves is the general refusal to treat #MeToo accusations as proof of abuse of power as well as indecent behavior. None of the cases opened as a result of the movement are solely about sexual abuse; every single one is also a testament to the ways power is manipulated against women. The reaction to Díaz’s case––that he is one of the sole men to escape unscathed––proves that the view of the #MeToo movement is largely disproportionate to what is actually happening.

Should men lose their jobs? Yes. Should there be more action than is already being taken? Yes. Will we ever find another author like Junot Díaz? Yes. How do I know? Women have been producing works of art just as meaningful for just as long––and women are the ones, for the most part––being abused. If women can do it battered, men can do it without abusing. Art will be just fine.