Why are we all so shocked about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged abuse of power, sexual harassment, assault and rape? Hypocrisy everywhere seems to be off the charts right now. The false virtue from Hollywood and DC is outrageous. We have created a culture where sexually predatory behaviour thrives and is rewarded. It’s become the norm and so many of us are in denial of this: Denial that these predators are everywhere, denial that we are all in fact silent and complicit in some way. So very many of us have experienced at least one of these abuses and we know what it feels like to be victimized but for some reason we still have trouble as a society to collectively demand predators take responsibility for their actions. It’s been the established unwritten social rule that this behaviour goes unpunished and those that experience it must repress any need for justice and move on. ‘Just take it. Suppress it. Now get on with your life and move on. Nothing to see here, folks. Just someone with shame in her eyes…’ Nothing a little denial won’t help.
Harvey Weinstein, it seems took full repulsive advantage of his power over the years and every single thing I have read has me nauseated and appalled. As a rape survivor myself, these stories take days for me to process and rage becomes a constant. But allegations against Weinstein are no different than the accusations against the current Predator In Chief, US President Trump and they are no different than the accusations against past US President Clinton; husband/best friend/partner of she who the Democratic Party believed was the only candidate necessary in the 2016 Presidential race: Hillary Clinton. Sexually predatory behaviour and enabling and ignoring that behaviour was not a problem then, sadly, and is still not a problem now in the eyes of literally millions of supporters that to this day feel that Clinton’s blind support of her accused sexual harasser and rapist husband and her consistent attempts to discredit every one of his victims is and was totally acceptable behaviour for a feminist. Well, that is if they even considered it at all and that is where the problem lies. And where my rage at the hypocrisy deepens.
Please don’t get derailed now by “Trump is far more dangerous and disgusting” arguments. That is not the point here. We had an election where no matter what happened we were going to end up with an accused rapist in the White House and THAT is rape culture and must be investigated if we truly want to stop giving these predators a nice cozy place to flourish. The fact that she was the partner of the accused rapist and not the rapist herself was and always will be irrelevant. It’s the silencing in rape culture that allows the culture to grow and thrive. And that defensiveness you may have felt reading any of this, that resistance, that desire to dismiss this: That just might be your contribution to rape culture.
This is not a partisan political issue. This is a human issue. This is not about Left or Right. This is about Right and Wrong. This is an issue about power and abuse of that power and sexual victimization. This is about women being victimized over and over and over and then being silenced and if they refuse to be silenced then labelled liars and whores seeking attention and profit. This is about allowing sexual predators to thrive in our society with impunity, never being made to be accountable and leaving their victims feeling as if their suffering is irrelevant and in fact so insignificant that it is completely ignored and dismissed.
It’s time to listen to ALL women. It’s time to ask ourselves why we didn’t think it was necessary in the first place. It is time to end the hypocrisy and listen to every woman that comes forward with stories of abuse and violence and not just the ones that feed the particular political narrative we support. Do we support women? Or just some women? Do we want to end violence or do we just want to end violence when we have an obvious “bad guy” or a “monster” that is easy to collectively condemn because everyone is doing it and it’s safe and the personal risk is minimal?
After all the outrage and activism and courageous conversation that has recently taken place, how can we possibly go back and protect accused rapists and harassers from the past? Shouldn’t we be using this inspiring moment of societal empowerment to reach out to any and all victims we previously turned our backs on? Isn’t it time now to listen to their stories? To share their stories? Isn’t it time to realize that the reason their stories were suppressed was because we ALL collectively ignored and silenced them?
There was not one interview with Presidential Candidate Clinton asking her how her partnership with an accused serial abuser would allow her to be a champion for the rights of women and fight for ALL women to ALWAYS be believed when they have the courage to come forward to report abuse of power, assault or rape. There was not one interview with Presidential Candidate Clinton to discuss why the ex-president, accused of all of these things, belonged back in the White House in a leadership role right back where some of his abuse took place. There was not one interview with Presidential Candidate Clinton urging her to explain how and why Americans should forget the horrific details heard from *Juanita Broaddrick, *Kathleen Willey, *Paula Jones or *Monica Lewinsky and how putting an accused predator back in the Whitehouse might be traumatizing for these victims or any other survivors that are triggered by predators being celebrated instead of being made to be accountable for their actions. There was a silent agreement that this history was to be forgotten and ignored. It’s time to go back and listen to these women. It’s time we listen to all women.
While President of the United States, Bill Clinton was accused of sexual harassment and rape and abused his power as President by having a sexual relationship with a 22 year old intern. When falsely denying the relationship, he allowed the entire world to call her a liar and had it not been for the famous blue dress, she would still be known as that liar today. Clinton’s lies were witnessed and proven globally and yet Lewinsky was still banished to her publicly assigned shameful role in history.
There were whispers and rumours for years both before and after Clinton’s presidency of many different stories of women alleging abuse, harassment and rape that were eerily similar to the stories we are hearing today about Harvey Weinstein (and those we have heard about Donald Trump). But a silent mandate was passed that these stories were not to be thoroughly investigated or taken seriously or even discussed.
It was the 90s after all and at the centre of the male dominated political struggle for power was the sole desire to villainize the other side. The Right wanted to bring down The Left and The Left wanted to stay in power. There was absolutely no concern for the women that were victimized, not by the abuse they endured nor the media’s chaotic assault on them after the fact. No one cared about the women then and no one cared about them last year when President Trump callously exploited them for his own political game during the presidential debate after his “Grab her by the pussy” video had gone viral. He was desperate and frankly disgusting for manipulating those women and attempting to capitalize on their years of suffering and being ignored. His method was ruthless and deceitful but he wasn’t wrong.
We should have been listening to those women. We should have listened to them years before. They deserved to be heard. They were sick of being silenced, ignored and forgotten while the man that hurt them toured the country campaigning, in a position of power once again. But this time representing a woman that said she would always fight for the rights of women. The same woman that had never once fought for them and had in fact worked hard to silence them. The agony this hypocrisy must have caused them I can only imagine. But I can somewhat relate because I felt it too. I could not help but wonder, as a rape victim, if my rapist had been a powerful man would I have been treated this way as well? I felt pain and betrayal that no one was listening.
We failed these women because we thought it was acceptable to takes sides. We thought it was acceptable to believe some women but not others. And not because we listened to their stories and didn’t believe them because the stories didn’t track but we just chose not to listen at all. And now it’s time to change that.
Asking Americans to forget Bill Clinton was an accused rapist, sexual harasser and guilty of abuse of power while President of the United States and just look past Hillary Clinton’s active participation in discrediting each of her husband’s accusers so that the pair could be put back in power in the White House and never be held accountable for any of these things is the very definition of rape culture. If one of the most powerful women in the world, the woman asking to be the first woman president of the United States has a personal history of silencing victims then what message does that send on this issue to the rest of us? What does it say to victims? Is it not possible we were silently saying that some abuse is okay? Or that sometimes it is acceptable to silence and not believe victims?
I have watched for years now as accused rapists and sexual harassers go back to being allstar athletes after accusations of brutality (Ben Roethlisberger, Kobe Bryant), campaign and win Oscars (Casey Affleck), have A-list actors falling over themselves to star in their movies (Woody Allen, Roman Polanski), have huge success in television, film and politics (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton) and maintain a huge fan base and still win music awards (Chris Brown, R. Kelly). All with few to no complaints from the media or fans or fellow artists & athletes that this is unusual or even something worth talking about. We accept this behaviour because somewhere inside of us, sadly, we just DO NOT CARE. Or at least not enough to speak out. Not enough to stand up. Not enough to demand change. How could we possibly care that much about violence but still celebrate the most violent among us as if they’ve done nothing wrong? Is it just that it’s too hard to care? It takes too much effort? It’s easier not to care so that we can still be Steelers or Lakers fans. It’s easier not to care because we’ve always wanted to be in a Woody Allen film and Polanski makes such brilliant pictures. It’s easier not to care because he’s just such a good actor, singer, songwriter, entertainer. And it’s easier not to care because she’s a woman and it’s “different” and she’s not the one responsible for the abuse and dammit “I’m with her”.
As a rape survivor who voted for Hillary Clinton myself (albeit kicking and screaming the whole way), I knew damn well my vote would be putting someone I saw as a predator back in the White House and I acknowledge that because of this I am part of the problem. I thought ‘partner of predator’ was better than predator himself but wouldn’t it be fabulous if we all agreed we deserve a better choice? We have got to stop allowing sexual predators to accumulate power. We cannot enable them and we must stand up to those who do. We cannot turn a blind eye because it’s inconvenient. We cannot pretend the rumours we hear that give us pause and create a knowing pit in our stomach will just go away if we ignore them long enough. We have got to listen to the victims. We have got to believe them and respect them enough not to allow their attackers to continue to be honoured and celebrated and never forced to take accountability for their actions. If we do not stop this behaviour of denial and hypocrisy, how can we ever expect to abolish the violent behaviour itself?
This predatory behaviour, this trauma inducing behaviour, this VIOLENCE happens because we are all complicit. We are all responsible. WE ARE ALL PART OF RAPE CULTURE. Enough is enough. Let’s stop the selective outrage, stop blaming everyone else and look at our own participation in this. This is not about blame – so many of us are victims ourselves – but we can look inwards and accept that we all just might be liberated by acknowledging our participation in the culture of silencing victims. We can change things but we do have to take an honest and empowering look in the mirror.
Please join us on Facebook to support survivors and hear their stories at Jane Piper’s This is Rape: Stories from Survivors and Schwarzenegger As Sexual Predator.
*Footnote*: *Please do take the time to listen to the words of the victims. Where they are available I have attached them as links to this article but please do your own research as well. We have forced silence on them for too long. Please at least listen to them in their own words. I think we owe them that.