Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt. I’m a Witch and I’m Hunting You.
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| Women on Friday protesting the Manhattan district attorney’s handling of accusations against Harvey Weinstein |
It is unclear what possessed Woody Allen, of all people, to comment on the accusations of sexual predation against Harvey Weinstein, when he could have just not said anything, not expressed sympathy for an alleged serial rapist, not accused long-silenced women who said they were sexually assaulted of contributing to “a witch hunt atmosphere” and not
felt compelled to issue a pouty follow-up statement in which he didn’t
apologize but, in fact, reiterated how “sad” he feels for Weinstein
because Weinstein is “sick.”
I’m
kidding! It’s totally clear why Allen would issue such a statement —
why he wouldn’t hesitate to include the astonishing confession that “no
one ever came to me or told me horror stories with any real
seriousness,” implying that people did tell him about Weinstein but he,
with that odd omniscience native to the very rich, deemed them
insufficiently serious. It’s also totally clear why Allen felt
untouchable enough to add that even if he had believed the “horror
stories,” he wouldn’t have been interested, let alone concerned, because
he is a serious man busy making serious man-art.
He said people
wouldn’t bother coming to him anyway, because, as he described it:
“You’re not interested in it. You are interested in making your movie.”
(That last bit is fair, actually. If I’d been sexually assaulted by
Harvey Weinstein, literally my last instinct would be to go to Woody
Allen for help.)
It’s
clear because the cultural malfunction that allows Allen to feel
comfortable issuing that statement is the same malfunction that gave us
Allen and Weinstein in the first place: the smothering, delusional,
galactic entitlement of powerful men.
When
Allen and other men warn of “a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem
atmosphere” what they mean is an atmosphere in which they’re expected to
comport themselves with the care, consideration and fear of
consequences that the rest of us call basic professionalism and respect
for shared humanity.
On some level, to some men — and you can call me a
hysteric but I am done mincing words on this — there is no injustice
quite so unnaturally, viscerally grotesque as a white man being fired.
Donald
Trump, our predator in chief, seems to view the election of Barack
Obama as a white man being fired. He and his supporters are willing to
burn the world in revenge. This whole catastrophic cultural moment was
born of that same entitlement, of Trump’s paws and Weinstein’s unbelted
bathrobe, of the ancient cycles of abuse that ghostwrote the Trump
campaign’s real slogan: If I can’t have you, no one will.
Setting
aside the gendered power differential inherent in real historical witch
hunts (pretty sure it wasn’t all the rape victims in Salem getting
together to burn the mayor), and the pathetic gall of men feeling hunted
after millenniums of treating women like prey, I will let you guys have
this one. Sure, if you insist, it’s a witch hunt. I’m a witch, and I’m
hunting you.
My
social media feeds have been glutted for the past three days with
stories of degradation, workplace harassment, rape — people, mostly
women but also nonbinary and male survivors, using the hashtag #MeToo to
demonstrate the staggering breadth and ubiquity of sexual predation.
Similar surges of personal storytelling followed Trump’s “Access
Hollywood” tape, the flurry of accusations against Bill Cosby and Elliot Rodger’s 2014 murder spree, in which he explicitly aimed to punish women for rejecting him sexually.
In
the past five years there has been a positive deluge of victims
speaking out — an uncountable number that represents not just the acute
trauma of an unwanted touch or a dehumanizing comment, but the invisible
ripples of confidence lost, jobs quit, careers stalled, women’s
influence diminished, men’s power entrenched.
I
keep thinking about what #MeToo would look like if it wasn’t a roll
call of people who’ve experienced sexual predation, but a roll call of
those who’ve experienced sexual predation and actually seen their
perpetrator brought to justice, whether professionally, legally or even
personally. The number would be minuscule. Facebook’s algorithm would
bury it.
So,
Mr. Allen et al., I know you hate gossip and rumor mills, but
unfortunately they’re the only recourse we have. We wish it was
different too. In a just system, Weinstein would have faced
career-ruining social and professional consequences the first time he
changed into a bathrobe and begged a horrified woman for a massage. In a
just system, the abuse wouldn’t have stayed an open secret for decades
while he was left free to chew through generation after generation of
starlets. Weinstein’s life, like Cosby’s, isn’t the story of some
tragic, pitiable downfall. It’s the story of someone who got away with
it.
The
witches are coming, but not for your life. We’re coming for your
legacy. The cost of being Harvey Weinstein is not getting to be Harvey
Weinstein anymore. We don’t have the justice system on our side; we
don’t have institutional power; we don’t have millions of dollars or the
presidency; but we have our stories, and we’re going to keep telling
them.
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