ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
The climate of sexual harassment must change so talented women can get on with their work.
Greetings from the #MeToo breaking news desk. It is only the second week of 2018 and my head is spinning. How about you?
So much has happened in this historic cultural shift that may finally bring persistent systemic sexual harassment at work out of the shadows — including the shockingly precipitous fall of Soulpepper Theatre’s Albert Schultz, one of the most influential figures in Canadian theatre — that maybe every media outlet should name a special correspondent to report and analyze the daily volume of #MeToo and #Time’sUp news.
Please don’t let it be me. Can any one person deal with the numbing cascade of revelations and accusations against so many powerful and well-known men in entertainment, media and other fields?
It’s difficult to fully acknowledge in the moment just how many women — and some men — have been hurt by sexual harassment in their careers.
In reaction, the persistent state of rage, remembrance, expectation of punishment and yes, concern for fairness, that many women I know are experiencing is morally exhausting. What’s next? Believe me, there are more stories coming (I could name two more prominent Canadian men today and probably not get sued) which makes it clear that for far too long, as author Susan Swan put it to me, so many male bosses have had that “droit de seigneur attitude that they can tithe their female employees for sexual favours.”
Although, tithing is a mild word for what happened to many women. Most of them are young and just starting out, who are now risking their emotional well-being, careers and reputations to step forward and say, whether about a Hollywood producer, morning television star or successful man in Canadian cultural, this is what he did to me. The inevitable pushback is also underway. American writer Daphne Merkin recently asserted in the New York Times that while many women are publicly supporting the #MeToo movement, privately they are “rolling our eyes, having had it with the reflexive and unnuanced sense of outrage that has accompanied this cause from its inception, turn- ing a bona fide moment of moral accountability into a series of ad hoc and sometimes unproven accusations.”
And French movie star Catherine Deneuve along with almost 100 other women published an op-ed piece this week in Le Monde, denouncing “expeditious justice” against men and defending a man’s “freedom to importune.”
Too many men, said Deneuve and her glamorous gang, were being forced out of their jobs for placing a hand on someone’s knee or stealing a kiss.
My response? Conflating “clumsy flirting” and “gallantry” with forcing a woman in your workplace over whom you have power to look at your penis, watch you masturbate, put up with countless micro sexual aggressions and submit to sex is ignorant and dangerous. It sabotages the true worth of the #MeToo movement.
Never doubt there is true sustainable worth in this social justice movement, whatever it’s called.
Ever since the New York Times outed one of the worst offenders, producer Harvey Weinstein, it has gathered steam in dispatching sexually abusive men to the sidelines of their own power and kingdom and glory, most if not all of them, deservedly.
In the Soulpepper case, four utterly believable women have launched multimillion-dollar civil lawsuits against Schultz and Soulpepper, citing offences by Schultz that range from persistent suggestive remarks to unwanted touching to pulling out his penis.
Schultz, saying he will “vehemently” defend himself, has resigned, and his wife Leslie Lester, executive director of Soulpepper, has apparently been fired.
The money these four actors are seeking is huge, perhaps unreasonable. But maybe it took the threat of that much money at stake in a large non-profit theatre to force instant change in what many have for years described as an unhealthy bullying workplace.
As for the accusers and their lawyers calling Schultz “a sexual predator,” can both he and Harvey Weinstein, gross and “importuning” allegedly beyond all legal boundaries be labelled the same thing?
Every woman harassed or touched against her will has an iron clad right to redress. But we do need to differentiate between the accused violators. It makes every case stronger.
At the Golden Globes award ceremony everyone seemed riveted by Oprah’s “presidential” speech on the #MeToo issue, declaring “a new day is on the horizon . . . when nobody ever has to say “me too” again.” It was an exhilarating moment.
But to me, Frances McDormand, a Globe winner for best actress in a drama in the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, in which she fittingly played a fierce and often out-of-control mother demanding justice for her raped and murdered daughter, said the truest thing in her speech: “Trust me. The women in this room tonight are not here for the food. We are here for the work.”
This is the love that is getting lost in this climate of never-ending outrage, in the frightened women who have bravely said, there will never be a better time, enough is enough, I am stepping forward.
It is our love of our work, our searing ambition, our talent, our joy, our responsibility in showing up and doing a great job, whether it’s in a newsroom, a rehearsal hall or a police station.
If you are lucky in life you get to do what you love, or you fall in love with what you are doing.
Power, bullying, unchecked assh--ry in the workplace (which sets up a culture of harassment and silence) obscure what women in so many fields know.
The climate must change because we love what we do, we do it so well and everyone — male and female — will be better off in a safer, more equal environment.
We are here for the work. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues.