A CULTURAL VICTORY
WHY THE WEINSTEIN EFFECT IS THE FIRST CULTURAL VICTORY FOR SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES IN DECADES. IT SPELLS THE END OF SEXUAL AMORALITY THAT WAS ALLOWED TO FESTER.
To those inclined to dismiss the fall of men like Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Louis C. K. and Kevin Spacey and Al Franken and Roy Moore and Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes et. al as a witch hunt or a moral panic, it would be tempting to miss the true import of the current watershed on sexual harassment and abuse.
This, perhaps paradoxically, should be seen by social conservatives as the most significant win they have scored in the culture wars in decades.
While those who have successfully brought such men to heel have largely hailed from the feminist left — and it would be unworthy to attempt to diminish either their bravery or their success — this should be one of the rare moments when elements of both the left and the right can claim a common victory.
For while the so called Weinstein Effect has removed the veil of shame that has kept women silent in the face of sexual abuse, so too must it also spell the end of the sexual amorality that allowed that culture to fester unchallenged for generations.
The ’60s- era sexual revolution granted us a swath of personal freedoms, both in law and in culture — the ability to experiment sexually, to date, to divorce, to consume pornography. Crucially, it granted recognition and legal rights to same- sex couples.
But no revolution comes without a cost.
As we can see in hindsight, the anything- goes era also gave cover to darker intentions; to predators whose abuses of power could be covered by victim blaming and euphemisms like “womanizing.” His personal life is his business, right?
That consensus is coming to an end.
Imagine, for a moment, Hollywood director Roman Polanski; in 1977, he drugged, raped and sodomized a 13-year-old girl who came to his house to model. Polanski fled the country and has lived in exile ever since. The facts of that case were not in dispute when, in 2003, he received an Oscar for Best Director, along with the overwhelming adulation and a standing ovation from the entertainment elite. But the child looked so much older than 13, they said. It was so long ago.
Or take Woody Allen, who continues to work unhindered despite the open allegations of his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, who said the man sexually assaulted her at the age of seven.
Could either of these men survive the current social climate had their accusers come forward in 2017?
Perhaps the most instructive example is that of former U. S. president Bill Clinton, who has been accused of a litany of sexual abuses, most infamously against a then 20- something intern, Monica Lewinsky.
The young woman’s reputation and career were destroyed by the affair while the Clintons prevailed.
Republicans at the time tried to nail Bill Clinton on whether he lied about the affair under oath. Few bothered to consider whether it was fundamentally immoral for a man in a position of extraordinary power to engage in a relationship with a White House intern. In the liberated ’ 90s, no doubt, such an argument would have been considered sexually naive, even quaint.
Famed feminist Gloria Steinem even penned an essay in the New York Times in Clinton’s defence.
No one so prominent came to the defence of Monica Lewinsky, who was so diminished by the PR campaigns of her abusers that she was subsequently deemed too tartish to work as a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig’s weight loss program. What income Lewinsky made off her notoriety was quickly consumed by legal fees while the Clintons’ millions compounded.
Even the sexual assault allegations surrounding current U. S. President Donald Trump are not being dismissed so callously today. Trump openly admitted to grabbing women in their genitals on talk radio and at least 20 women have come forward to complain about assault and harassment; but no one seems to be disputing that sexually assaulting women is bad, or that it’s normal behaviour for men in power; rather, his supporters simply don’t believe his accusers, imagining them tainted by political motivations.
This, in its own depressing way, is a kind of progress.
This is not the moment to be led into the temptation of nostalgia. Sexual harassment didn’t just appear the moment women started taking the pill and working alongside men. The covenant of marriage didn’t prevent rape, incest, molestation and abuse — although the culture that shrouded sexuality taboo was certainly more adept at keeping silent about it.
Further, no one is keen to give up the freedoms the revolution has permitted. We all seem to enjoy easy no- fault divorce and our extended sexual Rumspringa.
Those who currently dominate the conversation on sexual misconduct right now are those on the left, who seem to want to neuter the dangers of sexual liberation by couching it in demands of explicit and repeated affirmative consent codes; or they take an ironically puritan approach to alcohol consumption and sex.
I’m not sure this is going to work.
Further, the notion that the left has any kind of exclusive credibility on the file of sexual harassment and abuse is ahistoric. But the right loses sight of the battle altogether when it defends men like Trump and Roy Moore, who is currently contesting a senate seat in Alabama despite multiple credible allegations of women who say the then- 30- something attorney general pursued them in their teens.
Moore, who rose to prominence by displaying a statue of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building, has maintained a base of deeply devout Christian supporters through this latest scandal. This is not only hypocritical, but self-defeating. The persecution of Roy Moore and men like him are a good thing for those who claim to uphold moral virtue.
Hypocrisy in the name of partisanship will no longer do. The culture is beginning to shift in ways that social conservatives should embrace.
There should be no expectation that everyone will be held to the new sexual standard that emerges from this mire; but with the current round of public prosecutions, there is, once more, a sexual standard to be held to.