The sexual assault backlash is coming. Here's how to respond.

The tide will soon turn against the victims, like it always does

The backlash.
(Image credit: Ikon Images / Alamy Stock Photo)

You can almost feel the gathering backlash.

As more and more women and men come forward with accounts in which they were sexually assaulted or harassed at work — in Hollywood, in D.C., in newsrooms from Fox News to NPR to Mother Jones — you can feel the shock that animated the first few weeks of these scandals giving way to a very familiar and particular form of exhaustion. It's a tug that's as irrational as it is persistent: Enough, it says. It can't be this bad.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.