Not that it’s anyone’s business, but my family needs my income. When I’m not writing for The Chris Salcedo Show on Houston’s KSEV700, I’m working 40+ hours a week as a corporate writer, and I play a major role in my family’s financial picture. This job will allow us to send our kids to the school of our choice, visit family members who live abroad, and help people around us in need. Again, not that it’s anybody’s business.

But I’ve digressed.

I came across a piece the other day entitled “Human resources study shows a stunning unintended backlash to the ‘MeToo’ movement,” and instantly thought about how blessed I was to already have a job. Here’s why:

“The Society for Human Resource Management published a report Thursday that documented the result of the movement that called on society to believe allegations of sexual harassment without question. According to the study, nearly a third of executives report that they have ‘changed their behaviors to a moderate, great or very great extent to avoid behavior that could be perceived as sexual harassment.’”

In other words, employers are thinking twice about hiring women.

Why? Because in the era of #MeToo and #KavaNOPE, all women are to be believed, full stop. Questioning her story and her lack of substantial evidence (and questionable personal behavior, like flying all over the world and then telling Congress she’s afraid to fly) means that you’re bigoted and uncaring.

If they can do it to a Supreme Court nominee, they can certainly do it to a male manager over at XYZ company.

(Again, thank God I have a job.)

I saw a clip from CRTV’s Louder with Crowder recently—and I couldn’t help but laugh at how simultaneously ridiculous and scary it was. Ridiculous because, well, you’ll see—and scary because that’s literally what the Left tried to do with Brett Kavanaugh.

In it, Crowder reenacted the courtroom scene from To Kill a Mockingbird (with Crowder playing Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch—sublime!).  Except, instead of an Atticus Finch who decries the shocking lack of evidence—it’s an Atticus Finch who throws up his hands in an “oh well” as the accused is dragged away while the judge says “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do. She said it, you did it. Fry him!”

Look at that last line.

It’s supposed to be bizarre to make a point. Only that’s almost exactly what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. On top of having his reputation forever ruined and his family dragged through one of the most egregious smear-and-threaten campaigns I’ve ever seen, Kavanaugh came within a hair of losing his appointment to the Supreme Court.

So here we are. Women are now actually being discriminated against on the basis of their gender. I say “actually,” because making a choice to stay home with their children and then come back into the workforce years later expecting the same rank and pay as a male counterpart who didn’t stay home isn’t discrimination. It’s a choice the woman made, just as making a choice not to study fields like the sciences or mathematics doesn’t mean that it’s discriminatory that more females aren’t in those fields.

This is actual discrimination, and frankly—I don’t blame the employers.

The CEO of SRHM (Society for Human Resource Management) had this to say:

“There were men who specifically said I will not hire a woman going forward … those who said they would hire a woman said they would not travel with one, and they, more importantly they would not engage in activities after business hours.”

Yes, there are real perverts like Weinstein and Cosby. They DO exist. (Then again so do people like Matt Damon who knew about Weinstein’s atrocities and did NOTHING … but I’ve once again digressed)

But that’s not every man.

What the Left has effectively done is make men fear that if a woman (who is, according to #MeToo, supposed to be believed without question) wanted to extort him, make a name for herself, or make a little money in a settlement, all she has to do is accuse him of sexual harassment or assault.

We live in a country that, for the most part, is relatively safe for women, and certainly equal when it comes to the rights that we all have before the law. (Again, one-off misogynistic jerks or perverts do not make it institutional. Those people are sadly everywhere.)

And yet, I read articles like this one that paint a picture of institutionally rampant sexual danger.

The author writes of a woman who had a traumatic experience while trying to sell a dryer she listed online: “Despite all the national conversation about gender violence and rape culture that’s been happening lately, there are still people who don’t get it.”

She continues: “There it is. The reality of surviving as a woman in America in 2018. Courtesy of Twitter. If you’ve somehow been missing this conversation up until this point, well, now you know. And men, as you are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence, it’s on you to fix it.”

…“surviving as a woman in American in 2018“?! Truly, the writer needs to get out of the country a little more for some serious perspective. Might I suggest Saudi Arabia or India? More on that in a bit. 

Here’s the skinny: This DOES happen. It DID happen to the woman selling the dryer.

But this is not institutionalized nor socially accepted. And to say that it is doesn’t fix the instances where it does occur. It simply creates more problems.

The United States isn’t a haven of violence against women. In fact, it’s a haven FOR women. And yet according to CNN and Thomson Reuters, when it comes to a woman’s safety the US sits in the company of India, Afghanistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and others … why? Because “the foundation’s survey was conducted after the #MeToo campaign emerged in October 2017,” and that “the large number of women alleging sexual misconduct since then is the reason the US has been included on the list.”

Interesting. So the United States has been placed with the likes of Saudi Arabia (where women are beaten and mutilated routinely) and India (where “100 sexual assaults are reported to police in the country every day”) simply because of a politically-motivated movement that tries to take down people they don’t agree with.

This is NOT what it’s like to live in the United States in 2018, and you know it. I can tell you where we ARE, though. We’re in a country where women now face a legitimate threat en masse: their ability to secure employment and advance in their careers.

These women, #MeToo and p*ssy-hat wearing anti-Trump protesters alike, have created a toxic environment for women. They’ve created an environment wherein decent men who would never dream of doing anything to their female subordinates are now afraid to hire said women because even their good reputations probably won’t save them from an allegation.

Bottom line: you’re not going to fix the bad men that DO exist or keep women safe by making this country out to be a hell-hole. Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty can see that we’re not.

All you’ve done is create a stigma that all women, regardless of whether or not we stand with your ilk, will now have to bear.

Bravo ladies, bravo.

Mary Ramirez is a full-time writer, creator of www.afuturefree.com (a political commentary blog), and contributor to The Chris Salcedo Show. She can be reached at: afuturefree@aol.com; or on Twitter: @AFutureFree