The growing mountain of sexual harassment accusations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein has become a huge topic within the last week. People everywhere are outraged, male celebrities have vowed to protect their daughters from men like themselves and women of all shapes and sizes have sworn to stick together. However, these attacks on women have come and gone across decades and decades in Hollywood. Nothing’s changed since and I doubt nothing will happen now.
In 1921, a famed actor known as “Fatty” Arbuckle raped a woman at a party, who later died from her injuries. He was acquitted. In 1977, Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old and is still facing rape accusations. Just on October 3, the New York Times published an article on a German actress admitting that he had assaulted her.
Woody Allen has been accused of sexually abusing his own adopted daughter(!) and he still continues to produce prominent movies today. Amber Heard was domestically abused by Johnny Depp and after filing for divorce was the one criticized for stealing his money (which she ended up donating to charity, BTW.) And, of course, who can forget perhaps the most tantalizing abuse scandal toward a woman in Hollywood: the infamous acquittal of O.J Simpson.
Since the beginning of the Golden Age of Hollywood, female stars have been abused, harassed and used as disposable props by some of the most eligible bachelors (and married men) in Los Angeles. Such accusations follow a similar pattern: women finally gain the courage to speak up on their sufferings, people criticize them for taking too long and even accuse them of lying, and no one ever subjects the male harasser in question to such severe condemnation as his victims.
In a worst-case scenario, as seen in the Weinstein case, even women purposely tear down other women who come forward. After the Weinstein news broke, fashion designer Donna Karan suggested that women “may ask for trouble” from the way they present themselves. The way women dress is not a form of their consent and any woman that believes that only serves to be an example of how completely brainwashed both the Hollywood industry and the entire country have become by masked misogyny.
Actress Rose McGowan also voiced her opinion on the matter, only to have her Twitter account suspended. If women like McGowan, who overcome every worry and anxious feeling in them to speak up against the injustice they face, are completely blocked out of the conversation of sexual assault, why would they choose to come forward in the first place? Twitter’s suspension of McGowan’s account represents the continued silence of women, teaching them to remain submissive in the faces of overpowering men.
Although it is very brave and heroic of all the women affected by the immoral actions of Harvey Weinstein to step forward and make themselves known, we are all kidding ourselves if we think this will be the time that real change happens. Abuse toward women will always be a lingering issue in Hollywood, on college campuses and even in the White House. So many parents become worried about their daughter’s safety as soon as she’s born, but when a son is born they refuse to worry about the fact that he may be the next man in power forced to resign from his job for sexual misconduct.