So many blind eyes
Emma Thompson talked to the BBC about Harvey Weinstein.
“One of the big problems in the system we have is that there are so many blind eyes and we can’t keep making the women to whom this happens responsible. They are the ones we have got to speak. Why?” she told Emily Maitlis.
She railed against the “conspiracy of silence” and described Weinstein as “the top of a very particular iceberg” in “a system of harassment and belittling and bullying and interference” and warned that there were many more like him in Hollywood.
Asked if she was a friend of Weinstein, who was credited with transforming the British film industry in the 1990s, she replied emphatically: “No, and that is the understatement of the century.”
She didn’t “rail.” That’s an obnoxiously loaded word – it makes her sound irrational.
Thompson said she was unaware of the specific incidents but was not surprised. She said she only had business dealings with Weinstein and clashed with him over Nanny McPhee when Miramax owned the film.
“I spent my twenties trying to get old men’s tongues out of my mouth” – Emma Thompson on being a woman in Hollywood pic.twitter.com/5A52R3tC11
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) October 12, 2017
“I think there are probably about a million missed opportunities to call this man out on his disgusting behaviour,” Thompson said.
“I don’t think you can describe him as a sex addict, he’s a predator. That’s different. He’s at the top of, as it were the ladder of, a system of harassment and belittlement and bullying and interference. This has been part of our world, women’s world, since time immemorial.
“So what we need to start talking about is the crisis in masculinity, the crisis of extreme masculinity which is this sort of behaviour.”
I suppose it’s feminism. If women refuse to be underlings any more, then men will pay them back.
Exactly this. So many.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen someone criticise a victim for not coming forward sooner then go on to explain that loads of people knew what was happening anyway. It’s always the victim who’s supposed to be responsible for future victims, never the people who aided and abet it or just let it happen.
I’m sure this is the nastiest thing humans have to offer and yet it’s so widespread. Not only do we compound victims’ misery by telling them it was their own fault, but we tell them they’re to blame for other people being abused, too.
It’s hard to think of an attitude more cruel but it’s everywhere. It must be a big part of what lets abusers get away with decades of hurting people.
‘…crisis of extreme masculinity…’?
I don’t think Weinstein, Trump and Co. represent any excess of something that should be called ‘masculinity.’ Any more than Nazis represent superabundant patriotism. Any amount of their kind of ‘maleness’ is toxic. Even if, with the mildest restraint, they could pass for normal.
The victims of sexual harassment, bullying and assault aren’t to blame for their assault – that is solely the responsibility of the assailant and anyone who lends assistance. But it goes too far to say that victims have no responsibility to others to report what happened. In fact, the victims are usually the ones with the best evidence, and may be the only ones other than the assailant to know for sure what happened. Without the victim’s evidence, it’s tough to convict someone, and the abuse can continue for years as we see in this case. So, victims do have a responsibility to turn the assailant in, as should everyone else who’s aware of what happened. People know this, which is why they feel guilty for doing nothing – whether they’re a victim or a bystander.
At the same time, society can’t blame the victim and others for doing nothing. Aside from the fear of reprisal and the fear of not being believed, there are powerful social and psychological factors lined up against a potential complainant. We cannot blame a victim for lacking the courage to buck those forces. At the very least, the complainant will be forced to relive the trauma by recounting her experience. If she goes to police, she’ll have to recount her experience several times, and if the matter goes to court, she’ll have to do so in public. With sexual assault cases, this is highly embarrassing and is made more so by typical lines of attack in cross-examination. Even if the victim only files a harassment complaint with HR, the power imbalance within the corporation works against her. As we saw in this case, the company is likely to try to hush things up, especially when dealing with a guy like Weinstein who brings shareholders millions in revenue.
Counter-intuitively, the longer the abuse goes on and the more people who are aware of it, the less likely it is to be reported. The longer the abuse goes on, the more it becomes normalized within the organization. Although the experience is traumatic for victims, it becomes a rite of passage, like hazing in sports teams and sororities. Further, the more people know about it, the more the responsibility to report the abuse becomes diffused and the less likely people are to do something. People look around to see what others are doing and follow suit – if others aren’t reporting, they won’t either. This is the well-known principle that allows someone to be murdered in the street in front of dozens of bystanders who won’t even call police for help.
The solution lies not in blaming victims for failing to come forward, but in giving them the tools to do so. This includes whistle-blower protection, and training in what to do if you’re sexually harassed and bullied in the workplace. It includes holding management and directors accountable for failing to act when they know of harassment or when they pay hush-money to put an end to claims without taking action against the perpetrator. And it includes changing industry and societal attitudes towards bullying generally, and especially towards sexual harassment and assault. We’ve come a long way in changing attitudes since Weinstein started his predation in the 1970s, but we’ve still got a long way to go to stamp out his kind of behavior.