But is the vilification of working-class men fair? One of the biggest lessons of #MeToo is that men in the upper echelons of society are also capable of violent, coercive behavior. Consider those accused of abuse: Harvey Weinstein, Eric Schneiderman, the former White House aide Rob Porter and the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Abhishek Gattani.

Am I being too literal? But how can we overlook the literal meaning of the words emanating from our mouths? Or, as one young woman told The Times in 2001, when asked to consider what the words meant: “Now that you mention it, I’m like, damn!”

“People aren’t calling it a wife beater because they believe that beating your wife is O.K.,” Adam Klein, an assistant professor of communication studies at Pace University, told me. But the willingness to casually evoke violence against women implies a strange double standard. “We accept misogyny as cool,” he said, even as we know that racism is unacceptable.