Why did no one speak out about Harvey Weinstein?
Why did no one speak out about Harvey Weinstein?
As the allegations swirl around the disgraced film mogul, we must ask whose fault it is that his behaviour continued unchallenged for so long – and how we stop the harassers we encounter in our own lives
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Harvey Weinstein with his wife, Georgina Chapman, at the 2016 Oscars. Photograph: Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock
This happens once in a while: a tide of disapproval should crash on the head of the man who has been serially sexually harassing women for his entire career. But it never does. Almost as the story breaks, his part in it becomes a trigger event at best – the Franz Ferdinand moment in the first world war – or a footnote at worst. Instead, the pressing question becomes: whose fault was it that a culture of silence built up around the person whose fault it actually was? It is almost as if the extravagance of the offence expiates the offender: Harvey Weinstein has so many allegations against him – of harassment and assault, of rape, forced oral sex, the systematic silencing of his victims. He has “unequivocally denied” any allegations of non-consensual sex. However, of the harassment, he has admitted enough that we know he is a bad man. We know about bad men the way we know about hurricanes. They simply exist, and when they land, they leave a lot of clearing up to do.
Is the fault institutional? The Weinstein Company fired Weinstein when everyone found out he was a sexual predator; it would have been better if they had fired him when it found out. According to the testimonies of 16 separate former and current executives, his behaviour was widely known, both at Miramax and the Weinstein Company. Are the real culprits the very powerful allies of the predator? It has been alleged that Matt Damon and Russell Crowe worked actively to suppress one story in 2004, much to the rage of Sharon Waxman, the journalist whose story went under the wheels of that celebrity juggernaut. (It would be saddening and surprising to discover that Damon is a jerk; less so Crowe.)
Is the problem more generally from male bystanders – even if we accept that not everybody knew what was going on, there are enough people directly implicated – the lawyers, the fixers, the friends – to infer that many more had a fair idea. Since men can raise their objections to sexual harassment without the risks that women face – of being branded hysterics or fantasists, or driven by envy – shouldn’t they use that freedom to better purpose? The worst that they would be called is humourless. Or should female bystanders, particularly the powerful ones, take the lead, in defence of the sisterhood? Is it good enough to say, as Meryl Streep has: “I did not know about his financial settlements with actresses and colleagues; I did not know about his having meetings in his hotel room, his bathroom, or other inappropriate, coercive acts.” Shouldn’t everybody make it their business to know? It seems inconceivable that a man with such a range of behaviour should have passed as a regular Joe to anyone. Or does all the responsibility lie with the women Weinstein harassed, who should have worked to make their experience public for the sake of the other women who would inevitably follow? Or – one crowning victim-blaming intervention from the surprisingly unglued Donna Karan – were those women at fault because they were asking for it in the first place? (“Here, wear this thing for an awards ceremony. Oh, you got sexually harassed? You shouldn’t have worn that thing, maybe?” is a summary of Karan’s position, but it’s worth watching in full, if you want to really get angry.) She has subsequently apologised.
There’s a relatively simple two-grid matrix we could use when it comes to ascertaining the ethics of all this: how much power do you have yourself, and how easily can you be discredited by exactly the same cultural contempt for women that spurred the harassment in the first place? As the writer, feminist and human rights activist Joan Smith reminds us: “The men who do this, do it because they have the power and wealth to get away with it. They deliberately pick on women who are less powerful than themselves.” If you had a lot of professional or cultural capital yourself, it is less likely that you would be sexually harassed; when you chastise victims for not speaking out sooner, you’re asking women to suffer the double punishment of being harassed in the first place, and then having to kill the green shoots of a nascent career for some higher altruistic purpose. Practically if not explicitly, it’s not much different from saying it’s their fault.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/oct/10/why-did-no-one-speak-out-about-harvey-weinstein