The Hollywood Ending Women REALLY Want

I’m thrilled that women are calling out Harvey Weinstein. But in many immigrant communities, victims of sexual abuse are afraid to speak out

The news that Harvey Weinstein is not just a screamer but a serial predator is being greeted with nods of recognition in Hollywood. Some of his starry collaborators thought he was a “dog,” who hit on young, attractive, vulnerable women. Now they acknowledge he’s a “pig.” Some stars are already feuding with each other: did Matt Damon knowingly kill a story in the New York Times to protect the man who discovered him? Should Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s alleged victims, be castigating Ben Affleck on twitter for his seeming complicity? For women like McGowan, Asia Argento, and the model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez — who pleads with Weinstein in a sickening audio she recorded at the behest of police — there must be a feeling of vindication. They have hinted at this grotesque behavior for years, even (in Argento’s case), making a movie about it.

That their careers were crushed is not merely a testament to Weinstein’s former power, but to the ease with which Hollywood believes the worst of women, but very rarely of men. Or maybe Hollywood was cowed by a beast more monstrous than any Marvel villain. Even the New York City Police Department admits it had enough evidence to charge Weinstein, but stood down.

In Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker expose this week, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino claims her career took a hit after she rebuked Weinstein’s advances. But career damage is nothing next to the “horror, disbelief and shame” that Argento says she suffered. Each of the women Farrow interviews — including employees who helped create a “honey pot” in which they lured victims into the room with Weinstein, then left — feels lingering shame at her participation. Several use the word “haunted” to describe the aftereffects. Argento goes further, calling her experience with Weinstein a “horrible trauma.”

As a survivor of sexual abuse, I know what she means.

Something is taken from women by the degraded actions of men like Harvey Weinstein, and it isn’t easily restored. It’s not just a sense of safety, but a feeling of being at home in one’s body. So often survivors speak of feeling uneasy in their own skin. Even 40 years after my own experience, I still sometimes disassociate myself when life’s challenges seem overwhelming, even if the “challenge” is only a dirty piece of cutlery. Dealing with PTSD is a daily struggle — feeling the world is toxic and no one can be trusted — but the worst feeling is not to trust oneself. As Argento tells Farrow: “The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible. Because, if I were a strong woman, I would have kicked him in the balls and run away. But I didn’t.”

But the people lacking in strength were the people who knew, and did nothing. As a nurse who formerly worked with young rape victims says, “there’s always someone — a parent, a neighbor — who knows.” Meanwhile, reporting of violent assaults has fallen precipitously in immigrant communities since Trump took office. In Houston, the number of Latino victims reporting sexual assault has dropped by 42%, even as arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have surged. Many women in Latino and Asian communities fear that an interaction with police or a court appearance could target them for deportation, or worse. As San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon says, “Underreporting of violence could, in some cases, lead to severe injury or homicide.”

This story shared the front page of Monday’s Los Angeles Times with Weinstein’s story, but in all other ways the two realities are as distant as Boyle Heights is from Malibu. Even as Hollywood interrogates itself, women in the city’s lower socioeconomic strata are more vulnerable as ever, and they have fewer ways of seeking protection, for themselves and for their kids. They can’t go on record as saying they never trusted the man who raped them. They can’t refuse his overtures and wait for another job. They don’t have access to the reparations that famous people do. They fear, not just for their reputations, but for their lives.

When I attended a fundraiser last weekend for the Rape Foundation, an organization that provides free treatment and legal services to victims of all ages and demographics, Weinstein was present by his very absence: emcee David Schwimmer joked: “This event was sold out, and there was even a waiting list. Luckily, the Weinstein company table cancelled at the last minute.” The audience of Hollywood insiders laughed uneasily.

But the joke is on us is if we don’t take this opportunity to extend our reach to other women, beyond the klieg lights, who don’t have the privileges so many women do. We need to help them find shelter and treatment and justice. We can’t confine our outrage, and compassion, to the people whose faces we already know.

We cannot rest until ALL the tables are empty, until there’s no longer a need for fundraisers, because there’s no longer a need for organizations like the Rape Foundation and its facilities.

That may sound even more delusional than Weinstein’s advances.

But it’s a happy ending (of the Hollywood kind) we all have the power to write.

_________________

Jessica Teich is the author of a memoir about sexual abuse, The Future Tense of Joy. This post first appeared on The Huffington Post.