Last month, motivational speaker Tony Robbins was confronted by a feminist in one of his audiences for slamming the victimhood element of the popular anti-sexual harassment #MeToo movement and warning that its excesses would actually hurt women.
According to Robbins, some women are using the movement as a “drug” to “try to get significance.” Robbins argued, “anger is not empowerment.” He also noted that he’s spoken to “a dozen” men in power concerned that the movement would unfairly swallow them too, highlighting one businessman who apparently passed on a qualified “attractive” female job candidate out of fear.
A feminist who claimed she’s a victim of sexual misconduct, Nanine McCool, challenged Robbins in a viral exchange. The woman, attending a seminar in San Jose, California, blasted the hugely “influential” speaker for paying the movement a “disservice” with his apparently wrongheaded observations.
Robbins has counseled the likes of former President Bill Clinton and tennis star Serena Williams.
“Who should throw the stone? You shouldn’t throw that stone if you live in a f***ing glass house,” said Robbins. “Is there any one of us that hasn’t done something that we prefer we’d not or that we’re embarrassed by or that was hurtful even if we didn’t intend it to?”
“Certainly there are people who are using it for their own personal devices, but there are also a significant number of people who are using it not to relive whatever may have happened to them, but to make it safe for the young women,” McCool said in response. “So that they don’t have to feel unsafe.”
“When you push someone else it doesn’t make you more safe, it just makes them angry,” argued Robbins. He “demonstrated” his point by physically pushing against McCool’s fist as she instinctively retreated.
“I thought, ‘OK, we’re going to fist bump.’ Then he started pushing me,” the woman said of the “demonstration” to Vice News. “I thought he wanted me to show how strong I could be and push back, but that’s not what he wanted. He wanted me to move backward.”
“I initially started pushing back but he immediately pushed back harder,” she continued. “There was no way. He was going to knock me on my ass if I didn’t step backward so I quit pushing against him, I just started walking backward. As long as he was pushing me, I was moving.”
The exchange quickly went viral, and many progressives have used the exchange to signal that Robbins must be targeted and destroyed for his take.
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