Tag Archives: unsafe in any station

(No election thoughts yet other than “Woot, no red wave!”)

Back when #metoo was news and multiple women were standing up and saying Me, Too, I blogged about what would happen next. Would we make serious efforts to take down the harassers? Or better yet, stop harassment before it starts? Or as Echidne of the Snakes speculates, would it become like mass shootings: we gasp in shock at each new account but somehow we never do anything.

“Some of the most galvanizing early #MeToo cases suggested that a thorough and eternal discrediting would be the fate of every accused man,” the WaPo says, but it didn’t happen. Many men suffered nothing but a few uncomfortable articles. Others were deemed tainted for a while, then they bounced back. The women they harassed who quit their professions? Nobody cares. As witness the article (and this blog post) focus on the men.

Harvey Weinstein went down. Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Lester Moonves and Roy Moore have had their careers destroyed though Roy Moore, at least, still has his defenders. And while Weinstein’s in prison, the others are free and wealthy enough that they won’t suffer, other than being out of work. Louis CK is touring again; allegations of inappropriate touching against Morgan Freeman got no traction (which is not to say they’re not true). Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations didn’t affect Brett Kavanaugh’s rise to the highest court in the land, and brought out odious defenses of assault. Or consider this account.

Then there’s Johnny Depp, whose response to Amber Heard accusing him of abuse was to sue her for libel. It’s a tactic several pastors accused of harassment or assault have also used. They won’t be the last. And as LGM says, in no way does making accusations benefit the women.

I’m not suggesting that harassers have to be pariahs forever but redemption is something you have to earn — and simply waiting till the fuss dies down is not earning it. Louis CK apologized, which is good, but is it enough? Has he apologized to the individuals rather than to his public (which gets us into reputation management rather than repentance)? Has he done anything to help him resist the temptation to do it again (here’s an example of someone falling back into old patterns)? In his apology he talks about stepping back and listening but he was performing again less than a year later. Other harassers haven’t even done that much, or they came out with a faux apology. For example Joss Whedon blaming “beautiful, needy, aggressive women” for his on-set harassment issues.

The trouble is, our society is not good at thinking about redemption: how it works, when it’s been earned, who needs it. Many convicts who’ve served their time still walk around under a cloud of suspicion. Unless of course, they’re rich, in which case time at a minimum security prison represents unspeakable suffering (they lost their freedom, dammit!) — haven’t they suffered enough? Or for an actor or TV personality, they’ve been out of work for a year, can we condemn them to exile forever?

It also requires organizations to change, as Marti Noxon said last year. If the system allowed harassers to get away with it, organizations need to fix the weaknesses. If HR did nothing because “hey, it’s only one time, maybe it won’t happen again” they need to start thinking “what if it keeps happening? What if it blows up in the company’s face?” Changing organizations is not easy — there’s a reason it’s been compared to teaching an elephant to dance. In an already sexist world, it’s even harder.

As I said at the first link in this post (paraphrasing Cato’s letter), “the only security which we can have that men will not harass, is to make it their interest not to harass; and the best defense which we can have against their being predators, is to make it terrible to them to be predators. As there are many men predatory in some stations, who would be innocent in others; the best way is to make predation unsafe in any station.” We still have a long way to go.

I write more about haraassment in Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holder.

One of the standard complaints about the #metoo movement is that it treats ordinary men, men who may have said or done something inappropriate but clearly aren’t bad people, like they were Harvey Weinstein, destroying their careers and crushing their lives. They do not, however, offer much in the way of examples, and the examples are usually wrong: an in-depth investigation by the employer gets treated as a he said/she said situation (more here). I’m beginning to think “he’s being treated like Harvey Weinstein!” means something along the lines of “he got fired, Weinstein got fired, ergo they’re treating him like Weinstein!”

Now it turns out even Weinstein, the poster boy for absolute rock bottom, has his defenders too. Weinstein recently showed up at Actors’ Hour, an event in NYC for young performers (there’s some debate whether he was invited or just showed). Comedian Kelly Bachman cracked jokes (“I didn’t know we’d have to bring our own Mace and rape whistles.”); some audience members booed. A male comic got up and mocked her. Another woman confronted Weinstein at his table, with profanity hurled on both sides (not by Weinstein but by some of his entourage); the woman was asked to leave.

So why not ask Weinstein to leave? I’s a private space and the organizers could certainly have told Weinstein he wasn’t welcome. The organizer said she protected the women by letting them have “freedom of speech” — the comics were free to mock him — but then why ask the one woman to leave?

Partly it may just be that Weinstein wasn’t actually doing anything other than being there. Admittedly with his record that’s pretty alarming but it wouldn’t surprise me if the event organizers just didn’t want any confrontations. A lot of us (myself included) tend to be confrontation averse. Though that’s not a good reason: women have good reason to scream at a guy who preys on them.

And part of it, undoubtedly, is that we seem to have a reflex to forgive sexual harassers. They’ve suffered enough by being criticized and shunned for a while; surely we should forgive and move on. As Weinstein’s spokesperson put it, he was at Actors’ Hour “trying to find some solace in his life that has been turned upside down. This scene was uncalled for, downright rude and an example of how due process today is being squashed by the public.” Of course it ain’t an issue of due process; it’s true he hasn’t been convicted of anything, but private citizens outside the jury box are free to believe the victims. And if his life has been turned upside down — well, given the reasons, why should we feel sympathy for him? Yet somehow people do, far more than for the many women he allegedly assaulted, or whose careers he ruined for refusing him.

Similarly we have one Heather Mac Donald arguing that Placido Domingo’s alleged history of sexual assault (apparently one of those open secrets in the opera world) should be forgiven because Domingo’s that awesome. We cannot punish a singer of such caliber merely because he assaulted a bunch of nobodies! Which is not a new thought: Rebecca Traister has written about being told “That’s just Harvey being Harvey” when she heard stories about his behavior; simply being a powerful man is held up as an excuse.

Of course, we don’t know what the women whose careers Weinstein allegedly destroyed (I believe the women, but I think sticking with “alleged” covers my butt) might have accomplished without his interference. Or how good the women who left opera rather than stay around Domingo and people who supported him might have been. We’ll never know. But somehow their careers dead-ending, their lives turning upside down, isn’t as important as the suffering of powerful men.

We have a long way to go.