Selective Solidarity
The epic hypocrites of #MeToo
WELL that was fast.
The sheer horror of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk — credible claims of rape, sexual abuse and harassment, spying and blackballing — has somehow become lost.
Three months ago, the national conversation was rare and unified, one based on clear moral outrage: Weinstein was a monster, a predator who exacted an incalculable human toll, deserving not of rehab nor understanding but criminal prosecution and social exile.
Perhaps because this conversation has been most publicly conducted by Hollywood — a community that continues to remind us such abuse takes place across all industries, to women with no power or platform — it’s become a farce.
Take last weekend’s Women’s March. Among the speakers in Los Angeles was Scarlett Johansson, who said, “My mind baffles. How could a person publicly stand by an organization that helps provide support for victims of sexual assault while privately preying on people who have no power? I want my pin back, by the way.”
That last line was a reference to James Franco, who’s been accused by five women of sexual harassment and who wore a Time’s Up pin to the Golden Globes. Yet Johansson has yet to forcefully decry Woody Allen, who directed her in three films. In fact, she adores him.
“I’d sew the hems of his pants if he asked me to,” Johansson told Vogue in 2007. She was 22; Allen, who described her as “criminally sexy,” was 71.
One month after Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter detailing childhood sexual abuse, Johannson defended Allen.
In 2014, she told the Guardian: “I think he’ll continue to know what he knows about the situation” —
huh? — “and I’m sure the other people involved have their own experience of it. It’s not like this is somebody that’s been prosecuted and found guilty of something, and then you can go, ‘I don’t support this lifestyle or whatever.’ I mean, it’s all guesswork.”
Johannson’s appearance at the Women’s March came days after Dylan Farrow gave a harrowing interview to CBS This Morning; actors including Colin Firth have since cut ties with Allen.
Yet to Johannson, a self-styled leader of the Time’s Up move- ment, alleged pedophilia is a “lifestyle or whatever.” Good to know.
Also onstage was Natalie Portman, who in the past has defended child rapist Roman Polanksi. Yet Portman spoke of verbal taunts she suffered as an actress at 13 — the same age as Polanski’s most famous victim, who he drugged and anally raped — as an “environment of sexual terrorism.”
Guess it’s different when something happens to you.
At the New York City Women’s March, featured speaker Whoopi Goldberg said, “We’re all human beings and have a right to say, ‘This is how I want to be spoken to. I don’t want to be spoken to like you own me, like you think you can touch me when I say you cannot.’ ”
Samantha Geimer was Polanski’s 13-year-old victim, and her grand jury testimony is available online. (She testified under the last name Gailey.) If you haven’t read it, I’d urge you to. “Spoken to like you own me, touch me when I say you cannot”: This is a child who suffered just such abuse, yet in 2009 Goldberg said Polanski wasn’t guilty of “rape-rape.”
Goldberg, who has also defended abuser Ray Rice and alleged serial rapist Bill Cosby, has yet to clarify.
How do these movements allow such women to represent victims? To defend them? How have they not been called on their hypocrisy?
If the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements hope to effect real change, they should seriously consider their spokespeople going forward. They should develop a power structure and a cohesive agenda. They would do well to beware the last decentralized grassroots movement, Occupy Wall Street. Time’s Up and #MeToo are equally in danger of going out with a sad, messy whimper.
Is this what women in Hollywood really want?
Look at last night’s SAG awards. Hardly a word was uttered in support of the actresses Weinstein ruined physically, emotionally, creatively, financially. James Franco was allowed to skip the red carpet, his sister-in-law Alison Brie unfairly tasked to defend him. Why? Why should a woman have to defend an accused man?
Rose McGowan’s name has yet to be mentioned at an awards show — let alone have her, the kickstarter of this movement, in the room.
It’s disheartening to hear actresses rave about The Golden Globes as if they sparked a cultural revolution: They wore black on the red carpet, nothing more. The SAGs had only Nicole Kidman vilifying ageism and advocating for more women in power. The Oscars may very well bring us accused sexual harasser Casey Affleck presenting, of all things, Best Actress.
What a way to harness public outrage. Time’s Up, indeed.