Almost immediately after men started being held accountable for sexual assault and harassment in the #MeToo movement, New York Times contributing writer and author Lindy West said she noticed they voiced complaints they were being attacked unjustly, calling it a witch hunt.
In her new book, "The Witches Are Coming," she turns the phrase on its head: “So fine, if you insist," a passage reads. "This is a witch hunt. We’re witches, and we’re hunting you.”
West joined Boston Public Radio on Thursday to discuss the book, her take on pop culture, feminism, representation in media, and politics.
"To even sit here and deny that this is a witch hunt implies there's any legitimacy to that at all. It's a bad faith argument," she said. "It's really effective to say, 'No I'm not a predator, but to say, 'Wow I can't believe you're persecuting me like this' ... it's a classic abuse tactic."
In the book, West uses cultural touchstones like "The Breakfast Club," "Friends," and basically every Adam Sandler movie, to show how our views on gender have been shaped in perhaps insidious ways. West, executive producer and writer of the book and Hulu series "Shrill," said she is working to create the media she longed to see.
"I'm very, very over the moon, couldn't be happier about how much better the media landscape is that my kids grew up in than the one that I did, but also we have so much work to do," she said.
