The producer and other powerful men are facing repercussions for their alleged abusive behavior. Will the President?
In
1975, Susan Brownmiller published a startling and controversial volume
in the literature of feminism. It was called “Against Our Will: Men,
Women, and Rape.” Deploying a wide range of examples from history,
criminology, psychoanalysis, mythology, and popular culture, Brownmiller
came to a provocative conclusion about the origins of the patriarchal
order. “Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to
generate fear,” she wrote, “must rank as one of the most important
discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the
first crude stone axe.” Sexual coercion, and the threat of its
possibility, in the street, in the workplace, and in the home, she
found, is less a matter of frenzied lust than a deliberate exercise of
physical power, a declaration of superiority “designed to intimidate and
inspire fear.”
Brownmiller chronicled the use
of rape as a weapon in warfare, from classical antiquity to Vietnam; its
role in the history of marital and property rights; the grotesque way
that it shapes our notions of “masculinity” and “femininity.” Some of
her arguments, particularly those pertaining to race, met with strong
and convincing resistance from such critics as Angela
Davis—Brownmiller’s treatment of the Emmett Till case reads today as
morally oblivious—yet “Against Our Will” remains an important prod to
our understanding of the social order.
One of
the most pernicious myths, Brownmiller wrote, is that women “cry rape
with ease and glee.” As Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, in the Times, and Ronan Farrow, in The New Yorker,
have made plain in their recent reporting on the Harvey Weinstein case,
women who speak up about sexual predation do so with extreme difficulty
and dread. Rumors persisted for years that Weinstein, a film producer
and distributor of extraordinary influence, set out to defile and
degrade countless women. And, using the instruments of his power—jobs,
payoffs, nondisclosure agreements, expensive lawyers and private
investigators—he sought to keep them silent.
That
so many women have summoned the courage to make public their
allegations against Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and Bill
O’Reilly—or that many have come to reconsider some of the claims made
against Bill Clinton—represents a cultural passage. An immense cohort of
victims and potential victims now feel a sense of release. Suddenly, a
number of issues are in play: What constitutes harassment? What relation
is there between the worst offenses and more ambiguous ones, between
physical assault and verbal slights? What are fair guidelines and
sanctions? Do men really understand the ways that harassment can
diminish and undermine a woman?
These questions
resonate far beyond Hollywood and the media, in less publicized places
of work. They are, in a sense, a resumption of the discussions of 1991,
when Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that a
Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, had harassed her repeatedly when
he was her supervisor. Perhaps times are changing. Thomas won
confirmation; he donned a robe and took his place on the Court.
Weinstein, according to some news reports, may soon find himself in
court, too, but in less comforting circumstances.
The
Weinstein Moment is also a chapter in the Trump Presidency. When the
news broke about Weinstein, Trump declared that he was “not at all
surprised.” He seemed intent on signalling that he was in the know, a
man of the world. And yet his knowingness comes from a different
source—his own history. And that history is a disgrace. A year ago, on
Election Night, when the most decisive precincts in Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin began to yield their results, there was
shock, and a deep sense of offense, among countless Americans at the
prospect of seeing Trump in the Oval Office. There were many ways to
frame and understand the election, but one was surely this: a cartoonish
misogynist had defeated an intelligent feminist. Hillary Clinton, the
first woman to have a genuine chance to be President, lost to someone
who had flaunted his contempt for women generally and for her
personally, even prowling behind her during a nationally televised
debate.
Trump has indulged in more scandalous
behavior than is easy to recount. For some reason, his record of
misogyny, in both language and acts, his running compendium of
self-satisfied creepiness, the accumulated complaints against him of
sexual harassment and assault (all denied, of course), have attracted
only modest attention, one defamation lawsuit, and no congressional
interest. The specificity of these accusations—by a former Miss Utah, by
a reporter for People, by several former
teen-age beauty-pageant contestants, by his ex-wife Ivana, who said that
he had torn out a patch of her hair and violated her—is disturbing.
Breast groping, crotch grabbing, unwanted kisses on the mouth. This is
the President of the United States.
Before the
election, Jia Tolentino determined for this magazine that twenty-four
women had “corroborated Trump’s own boasting,” and twenty have come
forward publicly. None with ease and glee. “As always happens when
someone accuses a high-profile man of sexual misconduct, these women
will be tied to their unpleasant, formerly private stories for life,”
Tolentino wrote. There may be hope, however. According to some
assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense of
disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp increase
in the number of female candidates and winners. Stephanie Schriock, the
president of EMILY’s List, recently announced that more than twenty thousand women have declared themselves candidates for public office—a “gigantic spike,” according to a detailed report by Christina Cauterucci, in Slate.
Video From The New Yorker
Anthony Bourdain on Going from Obama to Trump
Donald Trump, with Steve
Bannon drawing battle plans, believes that he is the initiator of a
great culture war in America. But it may turn out to be a war of a very
different kind, with a very different result. It seems to be occurring
to more and more Americans that Trump would not pass muster before any
decent department of human resources. And if he would surely be
disqualified from running a movie studio, a newsroom, or a medium-sized
insurance firm, how is it that he presides over the most important
office in the land? ♦
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