Should conservative women finally jump on #MeToo bandwagon? I say no.

Three Republican congresswomen ‒ Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Nancy Mace of South Carolina ‒ are on a mission to expose what they say is widespread sexual harassment and misconduct on Capitol Hill.

The trio was recently pivotal in forcing Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California to resign from Congress over allegations of sexual abuse. And now the ladies “are out to name and shame more offenders,” The New York Times reports.

Luna and Mace are eyeing Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, in particular, due to allegations that he had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate and sexually harassed staff.

Considering that the congresswomen are diehard MAGA supporters, they make an unlikely team to go after powerful male politicians who are potentially guilty of sexual misconduct. For one thing, all three have publicly claimed that they don’t believe the allegations of sexual abuse against President Donald Trump.

Moreover, conservatives generally have historically been skeptical of the #MeToo movement, citing concerns that taking allegations of misconduct at face value risks penalizing innocent men, among others.

Nevertheless, Luna, Mace and Boebert have been outspoken in their campaign, with Luna even identifying it with #MeToo explicitly. The Florida Republican stated that Gonzales’ and Swalwell’s resignations in April brought about the first moment of reckoning with the issue of sexual misconduct since #MeToo peaked in the late 2010s.

The trio’s recent activism begs the question: Is it time for conservative women to get on board with #MeToo, a movement we have, until now, been largely hesitant to join?

#MeToo was never a movement for everyone

I, for one, say no.

We should obviously want to limit the occurrence of sexual abuse and hold offenders accountable. Even so, if the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that the #MeToo movement possesses fundamental flaws that should make us all think twice before getting on the bandwagon.

#MeToo’s primary weakness is that it minimizes the importance of ensuring due process for the accused. While the movement’s calls to “believe women” rightfully pushed back on the previously existing cultural tendency to dismiss women who came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct, they swung too far the other direction in promoting a presumption of guilt on the part of the men allegedly involved.

A prominent case involving former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, demonstrates how this was the case. In November 2017, at the height of #MeToo, radio broadcaster Leeann Tweeden accused Franken of having sexually harassed her during his comedian days, and other women soon came forward to accuse the senator of inappropriate behavior, such as unwanted touching, as well.

Facing pressure from other Democrats in the Senate, Franken announced his intention to resign from office that December, even though the ethics investigation he’d requested was never allowed to proceed.

Then, in 2019, reporting in The New Yorker by Jane Meyer revealed that there were inconsistencies in Tweeden’s story and that several Democratic senators who’d called for Franken to resign said they regretted doing so.

Former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, for example, said calling on Franken to step down without having all the facts was “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made” as a senator.

While it is still likely that Franken made some women feel uncomfortable and disrespected during his long career, forcing the senator’s resignation without conducting an investigation first was problematic in itself. Due process isn’t an impediment to justice being served – it’s a requirement for it. The political and moral fervor of #MeToo caused people to ignore this basic premise, which even some supporters of the movement later came to acknowledge.

Conservatives can't join a movement that ignores due process

A second flaw of #MeToo is that it never answered the all-important question of which male behaviors count as acceptable and which don’t.

In another well-known case involving Aziz Ansari, an anonymous woman recalled a date she’d gone on with the comedian during which she felt pressured for sex. Ansari allegedly persisted despite the woman giving him “verbal and non-verbal cues” that she was uncomfortable, but he seemed to understand after she said “no” for the first time during the encounter and called her an Uber home.

As many critics pointed out at the time, most people would consider the date with Ansari an awkward and unpleasant sexual encounter rather than an instance of sexual misconduct. Nevertheless, the accuser herself considered it the latter and, thus, believed it was worthy of a #MeToo story.

While #MeToo raised many important questions concerning the nature of sexual consent and the many factors ‒ like external pressure, power differentials, intoxication and age gaps ‒ that might compromise it, the movement never provided definitive answers to those questions. As a result, #MeToo evidently misled some women into believing that certain sexual encounters that, by most standards, would be considered consensual and ethical were actually cases of abuse.

Reps. Boebert, Luna and Mace are right to call attention to the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in the political world and society generally, but they should be wary of attaching themselves to #MeToo.

Until the movement learns to prioritize due process over swift punishment for alleged offenders and finds a way to avoid overextending the umbrella of sexual misconduct to include scenarios where it does not apply, there’s nothing conservative or even judicious about it.

Surya Gowda is a fact-checker with USA TODAY Opinion.