The #MeToo movement has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with the very real fact that all women have been sexually harassed by men - repeatedly, since they were young children, and that most women have been subject to some sort of sexual violence, up to and including a third of us having been raped - and that the culture we live in not only tolerates that, but messages men that the way to be a "real man" is to embody the attitudes that lead to sexual violence against women. #MeToo is about the fact that we live in a rape culture, and yes it absolutely DID center working women in that it was primarily about sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. Helloooo.... what planet do you live on?
Rich women are still oppressed by patriarchy just as rich Black folks are still oppressed by racism (which is also an outcropping of patriarchy - since it's a dominance-based hierarchy). Wealth/class is a factor, but it doesn't free you from other types of dominance hierarchy stratifications. Privilege is intersectional, just like oppression is.
Patriarchy doesn't mean the rule of men, it means the rule of the fathers. In other words, the rule of whomever is at the top of the societal pyramid of power - in the home, but also in the culture. Patriarchy has an important gender component, but that's not the only aspect. It's a Might Makes Right system of upholding and maintaining "traditional" power by keeping those "below" you on the pyramid in their places - by coercion and intimidation, but also sometimes by custom and law.
A mere 50 years ago, all women were second class citizens in the US (as were all Black people). There were hundreds of laws that applied to women that did not apply to men that restricted what women could do or be. Women couldn't get credit cards or home loans in their own names until that time - and even today the vestiges of those beliefs still swim in the societal subconscious. Sexual harassment is primarily about trying to remind women that they are sexual objects who exist for the pleasure of men and don't belong competing with men. That's why previously male-dominated fields like medicine, police work, and STEM fields have a particularly high rate of sexual harassment. It's OK for women to be nurses or secretaries, but we want to keep them out of "our" jobs - the ones we feel entitled to as men.
The real issue is a dominance-based culture, which happens to dovetail nicely with predatory capitalism. bell hooks termed it capitalist white supremacist patriarchy because those are all dominance based systems that intertwine and support each other.
The reactionary right wants to reclaim the imaginary 1950s as seen on TV (bc it didn't really exist in the way they imagine - except for a strong economy where lower-middle class, and middle class families had a chance to do OK and have some upward mobility). Also, everybody "knew their place." That shit isn't coming back - not the acceptance of place in an imaginary hierarchy, and not the sort of robust economy where a middle class guy could buy a house and support a family on his income alone - because the capitalistic elites are too busy lining their own pockets to care about them. The gulf between the very rich and the rest of the culture hasn’t been this big since The Guilded Age. And yet, they keep voting for the interests of those guys over and over again (because they want the social stratification back and they think the right can give it to them - they can't).
Nobody cares about them? Why don't they care about themselves, and stop trying to trade unearned privilege for job security and a decent paycheck? You know who funds all that outrage Rush Limbaugh kind of radio? Rich white guys who want to keep the little guy distracted and putting his attention on those who are "other" so they won't come for them and their interests.
Of course, it’s untrue: greater social equality can accompany, or parallel, shifts in economic distribution. In our case, they run at cross-purposes; in other countries, notably in the European Union, greater economic equality has actually accompanied greater social equality. There is no necessary and inevitable relationship between them. To believe that greater social equality is the cause of your economic misery requires a significant amount of manipulation, perhaps the single greatest bait and switch that has ever been perpetuated against middle- and lower-middle-class white Americans.
This has been the cultural mission of the ruling elites—to deny their own existence (at least the robber barons and other plutocrats were up-front about their economic standing) and pretend that they are on the side of the very people they are disenfranchising, even at the very moment they are disenfranchising them.
~Michael Kimmel
