INDECENT EXPOSURES
Imbalance of power is root cause of assault charges in Hollywood and elsewhere
CHILLING. Repulsive. Criminal. Words falter in trying to characterize the horrifying stories told by the women who suffered unwanted sexual advances from Harvey Weinstein, the powerful Hollywood producer and head of Miramax Films. Stories of unwanted touching, indecent exposure, and, allegedly, rape. Equally disgusting are the reports of complicity by enablers who worked not only to provide him with the cover to perpetrate his dirty business but then to slander and threaten and pay off the women to force their silence. Shocking as the stories are, they are no surprise to women. As the outpouring of #MeToo responses on social media has clearly revealed, most women have similar stories to tell — of being groped on a crowded subway or bus. Of a hand on a knee in an interview or a meeting with a superior. Of a man exposing himself in an elevator. Of being forced to touch or be touched by a man.
The curious aspect for most women is why? Groping on a subway or indecent exposure in an elevator can’t be sexually gratifying. Maybe Weinstein was gratified by allegedly forcing himself on young actresses. Maybe Bill Cosby was gratified by intercourse with women who were drugged. Maybe Donald Trump was gratified by grabbing women in the crotch, as he claimed to be. But none of these interactions describes sexual gratification the way most people would view it. So why?
The answer, of course, is that these encounters aren’t about sex. They are about power. In every recent notorious case, from allegations against such men as Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and President Bill Clinton, the imbalance in power is immense. If the means of dominance had been a knife at the woman’s throat, we would call it rape or assault, but because the imbalance is financial or professional or status, we call the attack harassment or abuse — or we don’t call it anything. But it is assault, plain and simple. And the people who enable the perpetrator are accomplices in a crime, plain and simple. These accomplices include the lawyers who threaten the victims with legal action, the business associates who pay off the women and threaten that if they talk they will never find work again, the assistants who herd the prey into the lair, executives at media companies who kill stories about the assaults, prosecutors who sweep the offenses under the rug, and all the people in the industry who remain silent. Because of them, Weinstein’s abuses went on for decades.
Sexual assault is a huge problem in our culture, and it needs to be fixed. The appropriate punishment for Weinstein, and all the others who commit these crimes, is prosecution and jail time. Laws against rape and sexual assault exist, but too often they aren’t enforced against the rich and powerful.
Victims are too often left with little or no protection from the threats that keep them silent. Since Weinstein has become a pariah and is no longer powerful, many more of his victims have come forward, but some are too fearful to speak out publicly.
If we are going to put an end to this kind of sexual assault, we as a society have to get serious about redressing the systemic imbalance in power and equal up the gender representation in positions of authority. In 2014, 85 percent of films had no female directors, 80 percent had no female writers, 33 percent no female producers, 78 percent no female editors and 92 percent no female cinematographers, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. Even more damning, 100 percent of studio heads
are men, according to a
women “Three … of told the me that Weinstein had raped them, forcibly performing or receiving oral sex or forcing vaginal sex.” Ronan Farrow, New Yorker Magazine
2015 study on diversity in Hollywood by the Ralph J. Bunche Center at UCLA. These are the people responsible for hiring and casting and compensation. They control the careers of aspiring professionals in the industry.
It would be a mistake to write this off as unique to Hollywood or celebrity or the infamous casting couch. The same power dynamic is pervasive at corporations, banks, factories, faculty lounges, the real estate business, the White House, Silicon Valley, Wall Street. Only 6.4 percent of chief executives at the Fortune 500 companies are women, 18 percent of equity partners in the top law firms, 11 percent of executive positions in Silicon Valley companies, 0 percent of CEOs at the 22 largest investment banks, 20 percent of U.S. Congress, 20 percent of the Texas Legislature and the list goes on.
The argument is often made that you can’t legislate cultural changes, but you can. We have done it. Since the Equal Pay Act passed in 1963, the wage gap between men and women has closed from 59 cents on the dollar to the current 80 cents. Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972, which banned discrimination in education, led to such a sea change that women now earn the majority of all undergraduate and graduate degrees. It also served as a mechanism to stem the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses, until Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education in the Trump administration, stepped in to rescind its protections. Iceland, Norway, France and Germany have some form of regulation requiring that boards of public companies have reasonably diverse membership, and female representation is up sharply.
But change is only possible if a majority of Americans make a commitment to equality and safety for the female half of the population.
It will only come when every citizen in America is ashamed to have a president who has bragged about assaulting women, a president who could have been a spokesman for the rich and powerful of Weinstein’s ilk when he said: “When you’re a star, [women] let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p***y.”
Chilling. Repulsive. Criminal.