We have an epidemic of highly-respected figures
in Hollywood getting away with sexual assault.
[crickets]
I want to make sure you pay attention to this.
One second.
[drum roll]
Bros.
We have an epidemic of highly-respected
figures in Hollywood and they're getting away
with sexual assault!
[O.S.] Oh no! What?! We need to DO something!
Now do you believe us?
Hey! What do you say you and me
go on an little time travel adventure.
We're gonna hop in the Internet Wayback Machine
and go all the way back to the distant past of
a few weeks ago,
where we found some online records indicating that
in early October of 2017,
a website called "Buzzfeed" published a barnburner of a story.
Entitled "Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine
Laundered Racist Hate,"
the piece blows the lid off the internal workings of
Breitbart "News."
It's a meticulously-researched story that has
plenty of evidence in the form of emails and
other internal documents to prove that Breitbart
actively and intentionally worked to bring white
nationalist ideas into the mainstream.
Reaction to the story has been strong,
with some people lamenting that we
should have seen the signs.
We should have done something to stop these racist
ideas from being smuggled into the mainstream
political discourse.
Yes.
If only someone had seen the signs.
In fact, not a single thing in the Buzzfeed story
should be a surprise to anyone.
People did see the signs. Many people.
Those of us who have been targeted by white supremacist
movements have said for years
that Breitbart is a driving force behind
the mainstreaming of white supremacy.
The Buzzfeed article accurately describes
GamerGate as
"the opening salvo of the new culture wars."
Though personally, I like to describe it as
a waking nightmare,
on par with a clown convention or
24-hour Nickelback marathon.
"GamerGate involves some male gamers harassing
women who are speaking out about the portrayal of women
in video games.
Presumably after the initial shock that women
were speaking to them at all."
During that horrifying and destructive temper tantrum
of weaponized white male rage,
this is just one of the incredibly racist images
that was circulated on the internet
to drum up anger and fuel harassment against me.
And this is hardly limited to me.
Ask any woman with white privilege who's been harassed
online and without a doubt,
they will stories about the incredibly ugly and vile
anti-semitism woven into the attacks against them--
whether they are Jewish or not.
It's a consistent through line in online harassment
strategies.
So, yeah, I'd say the signs that white nationalism was
deliberately being cultivated as a core component
of the alt-right
were pretty fucking obvious.
So many women,
people of color, queer and trans folks were viciously
targeted, harassed, and threatened
by the loose coalition of forces that
became GamerGate -- way before that particular
movement even took shape.
The dehumanizing and dangerous strains of racism
and misogyny that fueled it were apparent to all of us.
And we spoke out!
Loudly, and clearly, and repeatedly.
But nothing changed.
We watched in disbelief as Milo Yiannopolous got
6 figure book deals and was chummy with Bill Maher on HBO
despite his history of drumming up mobs
that targeted feminists;
spouting the most vile, racist insults imaginable at black women;
and outing trans people
with the intent of destroying their lives.
A tiny fraction of this should have been enough to
bring him down, but it wasn't.
None of it was.
It wasn't until statements he'd made
supporting pedophilia came to light that he started
to be shunned.
Apparently, all the women, people of color and trans folks
he'd mercilessly attacked up until that point
just didn't matter enough.
We also watched in horror as Breitbart News
which had been a driving force behind GamerGate,
seamlessly morphed into being a driving force
behind Trump's presidential campaign,
relying on the exact same brand of racist, sexist,
provocation that they had relied on before.
If all of us were speaking out about these things,
why wasn't anything being done?
Well, we live in culture in which men are
given the benefit of the doubt;
in which men's voices are considered authoritative,
rational, and true.
And in which, far too often, what women say is
given little weight.
We're dismissed as emotional, or hysterical,
It's as if women are canaries in
our cultural coal mine,
meant to discover where our culture
is particularly toxic by suffering from the poisonous
fumes of misogyny.
It's only after we cry out long enough, and loud enough,
about how awful it is that finally, someone else,
a man, notices and says something.
That's when people actually start to take action.
But we're not your fucking canaries!
We're people with our own voices that deserve to be heard.
Consider the Bill Cosby rape case.
This is an instance of a powerful man who
sexually harassed and raped women for decades
and how the allegations of those women were ignored
despite an ever-increasing number of them over the years.
It wasn't until male comedian Hannibal Burress called
Cosby a rapist during a stand up routine that the allegations
started to get the attention that they deserve.
As it turns out, the very same day the Buzzfeed
story broke, another story made massive waves.
"Now to the latest on Harvey Weinstein:
The New York Times is reporting allegations by
numerous women who say the Hollywood mogul
sexually harassed them."
This story should have made waves decades ago,
but Weinstein has leveraged his wealth and power to silence
those who might have spoken out against him.
That's not to say that no women have any power
or influence in these systems.
An incredibly established, highly-respected actor like
Meryl Streep, for instance, may have been able to bring
serious consequences down on a predator like Weinstein.
But predators like Weinstein don't go after the powerful.
They prey on those who have no power.
Those just starting out. Those with everything to lose.
As former Weinstein employee Lauren O'Connor wrote
in a telling memo that pinpointed our cultural problem,
"I am a 28 year old woman trying to make a living
and a career. Harvey Weinstein is a 64 year old,
world famous man and this is his company.
The balance of power is me:0; Harvey Weinstein: 10."
In so many spheres of life,
the claims of women are routinely ignored or dismissed.
Or men use their power to keep women from speaking up
in the first place.
If you want to start putting a stop to sexual predators
and rapists before they spend decades assaulting women;
if you want to help curtail dangerous and deadly
political movements before they take root
in the White House,
there's a pretty simple first step:
START LISTENING TO WOMEN.
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