5 Times #MeToo Got It Wrong

“Believe women” was a slogan that rang around the nation when – in the mid-2010s – women realized their then-untapped potential to strategically cancel men using sexual power. What was first a fight to correct genuinely chauvinistic, abusive behavior became a fight to rabidly overcorrect any perceived shortcomings. The MeToo Movement cheapened the real plight of people experiencing sexual assault, no matter if the survivor is a woman or a man. 

But how come people never saw the writing on the wall? We all grew up reading cautionary tales like The Boy Who Cried Wolf which warned against the consequences that come with leveraging false or flimsy allegations. 

It doesn’t matter what the intent is – to play a trick like the boy crying wolf, to narcissistically seek attention, to take down a political opponent, to retaliate against a former lover – the repeated witch hunts that spawned from the MeToo Movement have done exponential damage to the culture of our workforce, our recreational activities, and our interpersonal relationships in general.

1. Amber Heard’s Accusations About Johnny Depp

In June of 2022, actress Amber Heard was ordered by a Virginia jury to pay actor Johnny Depp $15 million after a defamation suit was ruled in the male actor’s favor. Depp made three claims of defamation against Heard, who penned a Washington Post op-ed alleging that her ex-husband routinely committed domestic abuse.

For six years, Depp missed opportunities to secure acting roles and was insulted, slammed, and wrongfully canceled by the public who chose to believe Heard’s allegations. One of Depp’s lawyers, Adam Waldman, called this an “abuse hoax,” while one of Heard’s Lawyers, Ben Rottenborn, urged that if jurors ruled in Depp’s favor, it would set back the MeToo Movement. 

When Depp was finally vindicated, he said the decision “gave me my life back.” The sad – and underreported – truth of the matter is that Depp was a battered husband being accused of the exact behavior he was routinely subjected to. We may never know the full story, but what we do know is that Heard attempted to game the system and far too many people.

2. Christine Blasey Ford’s Accusations About Justice Brett Kavanaugh

In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was on track to become the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice after his nomination by President Donald Trump. Justice Anthony Kennedy had just retired, and the appointment of a more conservative judge like Kavanaugh would have nudged the then-split court to the right.

All of the sudden, however, a woman named Christine Blasey Ford came forward with accusations that 59-year-old Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a high school party many decades earlier. Witnesses couldn’t corroborate the evidence and even her high school friend Leland Keyser said she didn’t “have any confidence in the story.”

For many skeptical of the left or simply right-leaning in general themselves, this appeared to be character assassination with a political agenda in mind – don’t allow the appointment of a conservative justice. 

Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist Mollie Hemmingway, who co-wrote an entire book about this messy confirmation, called the media persecution of Kavanaugh “a completely unsubstantiated allegation of sexual assault against him,” and though “every major news outlet in America worked hard to validate Blasey Ford’s story, they were unable to.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately produced a report that allowed Kavanaugh to proceed in his appointment to the Supreme Court, saying there wasn’t evidence enough to substantiate Blasey Ford’s assault claims. Sadly, even being vindicated and ultimately appointed can’t convince the millions of Americans who blindly trust allegations that he is truly an innocent man.

3. Chloe Dykstra’s Accusations About Chris Hardwick

Founder of Nerdist and long-time AMC host Chris Hardwick was a successful comedian who got in a relationship with a cosplayer and model named Chloe Dykstra. The two ended their relationship in July 2014, but four years later, Dykstra published a Medium essay alleging that an ex-boyfriend (unnamed in her article) emotionally and sexually abused her. Reminder, this ex-boyfriend was unnamed. 

Readers tried to deduce who this could have been and came to the conclusion that the ex was Hardwick, who was then swiftly blacklisted by AMC, Comic-Con, and Nerdist, to name a few. Within a month, however, news broke that Dykstra’s allegations were unsubstantiated, and worse, she wouldn’t even comply with a legal investigation, saying on Twitter, “I chose not to participate in the investigation of the person I spoke of. I do not believe in an eye for an eye."

While Hardwick admitted that he had made some jokes in poor taste, he denied the abuse allegations, saying, “our three-year relationship was not perfect – we were ultimately not a good match and argued – even shouted at each other – but I loved her, and did my best to uplift and support her as a partner and companion in any way, and at no time did I sexually assault her.”

What’s more, Hardwick asserted that Dykstra actually cheated on him while the two were living together. 

A lack of evidence doesn’t change the fact that allegations tarnish a person’s reputation and, as a result, their livelihood.

After the investigation, Hardwick was reinstated by AMC for his popular show Talking Dead and his name was placed back on the Nerdist website, but in attempting to clear his name he had to release private text messages and had already been burned by headline upon headline reporting the allegations. Thankfully, Hardwick is now married to actress Lydia Hearst and welcomed their baby daughter to the world in 2022. Nevertheless, his growing media career could have skyrocketed to further success, but Dykstra’s false allegations have left their mark. 

4. A Teenager’s Allegations About Joseph Gatt

Actor Joseph Gatt has a unique look due to alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, but his interesting appearance didn’t hinder his career – it helped it. Gatt secured roles in a Star Trek film, a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, the television show Game of Thrones and more, but when a 16-year-old teenager framed him for pedophilia his career came to a halt.

This teenage girl claimed that Gatt raped her (despite the two never having met in person) and allegedly sent lewd text messages. Though we know now that those texts were photoshopped and the “nudes” he allegedly sent were actually movie stills, Los Angeles County publicly announced felony charges against Gatt without even investigating these lofty claims. 

Forensic examinations later showed that the teenager had fabricated her evidence and that no crime had taken place, but for two years, former LA Deputy District Attorney Angela Brunson tried him for an alleged sexting affair. What Gatt had done was film a Cameo video which the teenage girl purchased, where he wished her a happy birthday, and reportedly responded to a few messages she had left on his Instagram – politely not pervertedly. 

Gatt lost two years of work, and his name was tarnished. After two years, the case was quietly dismissed, so Gatt filed a lawsuit against Brunson, LA County DA George Gascón, and an LAPD detective for $40 million. 

In the lawsuit, filed in April 2024, Gatt said he was “publicly branded” as a “serial pedophile” and that the criminal investigation was “botched,” among other claims about Brunson potentially targeting him based on their opposing political ideologies.

In a statement for Deadline, Gatt’s lawyer said, “We look forward to recovering Mr. Gatt’s enormous losses in court.”

5. Anonymous Allegations About Journalist Mike Tunison

A writer named Mike Tunison was named on a crowdsourced spreadsheet titled “Shitty Media Men,” which went viral in October 2017. Anonymous, unvetted sources aggregated men on this list, alleging they engaged in acts of sexual misconduct and assault. But Tunison said in an op-ed for the New York Post he was wrongfully placed on this list and the resulting cancellation ruined his life.

A random source said they had filed a complaint with the Washington Post’s HR department of “stalking, harassment, and physical intimidation,” but when Tunison checked with HR, they said there wasn’t anything on file. 

He wrote later in The Federalist that his story is “very much the opposite” of the popular narrative of MeToo: “vulnerable women taking down powerful men.” Rather, the former coworker he thinks is to blame for his name being on that list was – at the time of this op-ed’s publication – an editor for a corporate media outlet based in New York who “wields far more institutional power and influence” than he had at any point in his career.

False accusations can more easily destroy the lives of everyday people because they may not have the legal and financial resources to fight them.

Two years after Tunison was canceled without any evidence to back it up, he reportedly was unable to date, was working as a janitor, and had been dealing with such tough mental health issues that he even called a suicide hotline. It appears that he has since started his own Substack to continue writing, but the list took its toll on what could have been continued writing career success.

The standard set by #MeToo places a near-impossible burden of proof on men to prove their innocence for scenarios that may have only occurred in their accuser’s imagination. But a lack of evidence doesn’t change the fact that allegations tarnish a person’s reputation and, as a result, their livelihood.

No One Is Safe from Sham Sexual Assault Scrutiny

Look, I’m about as pro-woman as a gal can get. I regularly write for a women’s magazine and work full-time for a women’s policy organization. But the standard that #MeToo set for unsubstantiated witch hunts has created a model that women can use as a weapon against men. While I could report case after case of celebrity sexual assault allegations, I actually think it matters more to acknowledge the impact on your everyday man. That’s where #MeToo hurts the most.

False accusations can more easily destroy the lives of everyday people because they may not have the same amount of legal and financial resources to fight them. Though we should take comments from random internet users with a grain of salt, many men have come forward post-MeToo to share that they or someone they know has been hit with false allegations – and sadly has paid the price.

“Earlier this year, my adult nephew was falsely accused of ‘emotional abuse’ by an ex-girlfriend. Both he and she have somewhat high profiles in their fields which meant the accusations drew media attention. And she used #metoo to spread the word as far as possible,” wrote one man on Quora. “As a result, the ex-girlfriend’s easily discredited lies gained instant, massive support from young feminists. As a group, they set about ‘cancelling’ my nephew’s career. And they’ve succeeded. For now, his livelihood is on hold, with no income likely for the foreseeable future.”

In response to this post, which contained several other anecdotes like a work colleague allegedly losing his 30-year career after two women leveraged false allegations and the wife of a police officer telling him that allegedly a large percentage of sexual assault cases are false and driven by angry exes, other men shared similar stories. 

“I know of nine more cases of people who are either in my circle or one degree removed. If I know 12 men or boys who’ve experienced this, which is a huge percentage of the men and boys I know, I’m guessing it’s fairly common,” wrote one man in response.

A 2020 study found that around half of men have experienced unwanted or even non-consensual sexual encounters.

Between 2018 and 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 27,291 charges of sexual harassment allegations and noted how this number significantly increased after the MeToo Movement caught steam in late 2017. They’ve also noted that women file a disproportionate number of charges alleging sexual harassment to the EEOC. While this could be representative of a cultural norm for men to more frequently be the perpetrators of relationship violence, it could also mean that fewer men report when women are the ones to emotionally, physically, or sexually abuse them.

In December 2020, a study out of the UK found that around half of men have experienced unwanted or even non-consensual sexual encounters. So then, why do many numbers seem to overrepresent women? Well, the researchers said that these men “often felt unable to talk about them and often took decades to tell anyone what had happened to them.”

Reynhard Sinaga is known as “the most prolific rapist” in Britain’s legal history, and all of his (known) victims were men. He appeared physically “unthreatening” and was short and thin, yet he sexually assaulted 206 men. Only two of those 206 victims reported their assault to the police. This is an extreme example, but it’s one that directly speaks to the fact that sexual violence perpetrated against men is tragically underreported.

All victims are worthy of support and compassion. Yet, it seems as though there’s a bias to believe all women while brushing aside all men.

Closing Thoughts

Many assault claims are inconclusive. Many relationships have dirty secrets that one or both parties involved can and will twist in ways to benefit their own interests. Several cases seem to prove further how MeToo has gotten it wrong, but we may never know the full truth behind them. Some say the accusations of Aziz Ansari were totally unfounded, that E. Jean Carroll’s takedown of President Donald Trump was biased and baseless, and even that Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against President Joe Biden weren’t credible.

We should certainly take accusations seriously because sexual assault is a very real, very serious crime. But the lazy standard of guilty until proven innocent reveals an underlying carnal desire among bitter, vengeful people who just want to see heads roll. 

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