October 17, 2017
Over the past week, we have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the mounting evidence of Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of women. Many ask how this could have gone on “undetected” for so long, asking why women didn’t come forward and take on a wealthy, powerful person with powerful allies in media and politics. We have been treated to sappy, faux sympathy from men, or wrong-headed assertions that only pretty girls get harassed, by those obtusely refusing to recognize that rape and sexual abuse is about POWER– about chasing women out of spaces where men decide that we don’t belong– whether that is an executive suite in Hollywood, Silicon Valley or Wall Street, or a fire department or construction site. As the cascade of “#MeToos” filled our timeline, we all realized, with sickening dread, the terrible price women are forced to pay for trying to make a living or even make a life.
It is enervating to contrast Weinstein’s rapid fall from grace with the fate of another outer borough bully from Queens, Donald Trump. Not only did Trump’s similar admissions fail to consign him to the ash heap of history where he belonged, but they propelled him to the most powerful position in the land. The fact that Trump’s assault of women and denigration of minorities was deemed by many voters to be beside the point, is a measure of how little women and people of color matter to a depressingly significant number of people.
The reality is that we all know that Weinstein’s rapid reckoning is the exception, not the rule. America is too in love with its own mythology to ever grapple with the messy, inconvenient truths that might interrupt the narcissistic delusion that we are a fair-minded meritocracy. In the eyes of far too many of us, the primacy of straight, white men is proof of their superiority, rather than evidence of a nation conceived in genocide and plunder. Of course, that illusion has a cost that those of us who attempt to shatter it ignore at our peril. Any effort to break through the torpor is met with the threat of violence. Just ask Colin Kaepernick or Anita Sarkeesian. That is the reason so few dare to speak out in the face of sexual harassment and violence or in the face of racial discrimination and violence. We know all too well the cost of American illusion. We are the ones who pay the price.