To the editor:

The #MeToo Movement shouldn’t be trivialized as a weapon of slander, as is happening right now because of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s accusers. It’s an insult to women who have been violently raped and brutally sexually assaulted. It downplays the plight of women who have been pressured to sleep with a boss to keep a job or who endure belittling sexist comments on a daily basis in the workplace. It demoralizes women who have been coerced by drugs or alcohol or forced to have sex, and then told when they come forward, as happened to Dr. Christine Ford during the Kavanaugh hearings, to get over it because “boys will be boys.”

Women who “felt uncomfortable” because of something Gov. Cuomo may have said or done in a public place hardly makes him a “sexual predator,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik has called him. There are plenty of sexual predators who should be convicted — priests, evangelical ministers, Olympic trainers, coaches or pedophiles — but to call Gov. Cuomo one is simply political theater. (I’ll believe Rep. Stefanik actually cares about the #MeToo movement when she condemns Trump for rape charges or groping and grabbing his 26 accusers.)

Pressuring Gov. Cuomo to resign by evoking the #MeToo movement is a mockery of what that group stands for. Women who have been the victims of severe sexual aggression now get lumped in with a woman who gets offended because she “thinks” a man might want to sleep with her. Women deserve support in speaking out to men about words and gestures they find offensive, and the accusations against Gov. Cuomo will be investigated. However, jumping to conclusions based on mud-slinging only undermines the consequential issues that the #MeToo movement is trying to address.

Martha Hodges

Massena