October 9, 2018

The Face of #HimToo Speaks Out Against His Mother’s Viral Post

The internet plot twist comes amid a Republican push to energize voters with their own #HimToo angle.

In the wake of the sexual assault allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a surge of social media posts using the hashtag #HimToo began circulating to claim that innocent men are regularly falsely accused of sexual misconduct. 

The trend, a backlash to the #MeToo movement and Christine Blasey Ford’s gripping testimony against Kavanaugh, reached something of a boiling point this past weekend as the final vote to confirm Kavanaugh was being cast. One of the most viral posts came from the mother of a Navy veteran. She claimed that her “gentleman” son no longer goes on “solo dates” out of fear he’ll be wrongly accused of misconduct.

It appears, however, that would be news to her son. On Monday, Pieter Hanson joined Twitter and posted the following message:

Hanson’s brother, Jon, also came forward to correct the record:

“It doesn’t represent me at all,” Hanson told the Washington Post. “I love my mom to death, but boy…I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this.” He explained his mother had a tendency to go overboard on social media, though the post still struck him as surprising considering he had been raised in a progressive household.

The initial post, which sparked a slew of parody memes, has since been deleted.

The internet plot twist comes amid a push to energize Republican voters ahead of the midterms by painting Kavanaugh as the victim of a #HimToo-style false accusation. No one appears more eager to lead the charge than President Donald Trump:

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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