Tonight I watched The Accused. Such an excellent yet disturbing picture. So hard to watch the rape scene. All these men standing around with a mob mentality bellowing out encouragement for the rapists. Rape isn't sexual - it's an act of power, control, and violence. It got me to thinking about the recent Harvey Weinstein revelations.
A man with enormous Hollywood power who, on the surface, supported women's roles and their achievements. However, behind the scenes for decades (yes, decades) he sexually harassed, flashed, and groped a multitude of women, including actresses, reporters, and staff. If anyone raised a complaint, he paid them off with a confidential settlement. As the saying goes, he with the gold makes the rules and apparently this was the case with old Harvey.
Is there an innate makeup of the male ego where power and money equals the belief that personal boundaries don't apply? That offensive, violent, and sexually driven behavior can be accepted with just the wave of some cash? The majority of women, myself included, have had to put up with blatant as well as subtle offensives made by men in power. When every conversation with the boss always includes a reference to your physicality, i.e., purple looks great on you, did you cut your hair, is that a new dress, etc. Bet these same comments wouldn't be made if I were a man.
I understand a woman's point of view where you simply want it to stop and close the book on the situation instead of broadcasting the sordid details. But what about the men? Surely close friends, associates, spouses, lovers, producers, directors and agents, among many others, were aware of Weinstein's behavior. So why stay silent for so many years? It's like that same mob mentality. So what if a female is being screwed right in front of them? Just ignore it and let it go on? Or speak up?
Harvey Weinstein. Bill O'Reilly. Bill Cosby. And of course, Donald Trump. Enough already. Women, let's break out our own ego's and quit putting up with this behavior. Men, grow a pair and start speaking up to put a stop to these offensives rather than silently standing by, which implies approval.
After watching The Accused, I Googled the cast and ran across an interesting interview with all of them. Kelly McGillis, who had been raped herself, stated the following:
MCGILLIS After the movie came out, a lot of women came up to me and said: "I'm so glad you did this movie. That happened to me, and I never told anybody." I think it's really surprising how many secrets women carry, really heavy secrets that may not be as extreme as rape but can be as simple as being in an awful situation and selling your soul to get out of it. Those are all ways that we betray ourselves, and that's a heavy burden to bear.
Let's not sell our souls - let's speak up.
