The Weinstein Moment and the Trump Presidency
The producer and other powerful men are facing repercussions for their alleged abusive behavior. Will the President?
In 1975, Susan Brownmiller published a startling and controversial volume in the literature of feminism. It was called “Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.”
Deploying a wide range of examples from history, criminology,
psychoanalysis, mythology, and popular culture, Brownmiller came to a
provocative conclusion about the origins of the patriarchal order.
“Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate
fear,” she wrote, “must rank as one of the most important discoveries of
prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone
axe.” Sexual coercion, and the threat of its possibility, in the
street, in the workplace, and in the home, she found, is less a matter
of frenzied lust than a deliberate exercise of physical power, a
declaration of superiority “designed to intimidate and inspire fear.”
Brownmiller
chronicled the use of rape as a weapon in warfare, from classical
antiquity to Vietnam; its role in the history of marital and property
rights; the grotesque way that it shapes our notions of “masculinity”
and “femininity.” Some of her arguments, particularly those pertaining
to race, met with strong and convincing resistance from such critics as
Angela Davis—Brownmiller’s treatment of the Emmett Till case reads today
as morally oblivious—yet “Against Our Will” remains an important prod
to our understanding of the social order.
One
of the most pernicious myths, Brownmiller wrote, is that women “cry rape
with ease and glee.” As Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, in the Times, and Ronan Farrow, in The New Yorker, have made plain in their recent reporting on the Harvey Weinstein
case, women who speak up about sexual predation do so with extreme
difficulty and dread. Rumors persisted for years that Weinstein, a film
producer and distributor of extraordinary influence, set out to defile
and degrade countless women. And, using the instruments of his
power—jobs, payoffs, nondisclosure agreements, expensive lawyers and
private investigators—he sought to keep them silent.
That
so many women have summoned the courage to make public their
allegations against Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and Bill
O’Reilly—or that many have come to reconsider some of the claims made
against Bill Clinton—represents a cultural passage. An immense cohort of
victims and potential victims now feel a sense of release. Suddenly, a
number of issues are in play: What constitutes harassment? What relation
is there between the worst offenses and more ambiguous ones, between
physical assault and verbal slights? What are fair guidelines and
sanctions? Do men really understand the ways that harassment can
diminish and undermine a woman?
These questions
resonate far beyond Hollywood and the media, in less publicized places
of work. They are, in a sense, a resumption of the discussions of 1991,
when Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that a
Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, had harassed her repeatedly when
he was her supervisor. Perhaps times are changing. Thomas won
confirmation; he donned a robe and took his place on the Court.
Weinstein, according to some news reports, may soon find himself in
court, too, but in less comforting circumstances.
The
Weinstein Moment is also a chapter in the Trump Presidency. When the
news broke about Weinstein, Trump declared that he was “not at all surprised.”
He seemed intent on signalling that he was in the know, a man of the
world. And yet his knowingness comes from a different source—his own
history. And that history is a disgrace. A year ago, on Election Night,
when the most decisive precincts in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and
Wisconsin began to yield their results, there was shock, and a deep
sense of offense, among countless Americans at the prospect of seeing
Trump in the Oval Office. There were many ways to frame and understand
the election, but one was surely this: a cartoonish misogynist had
defeated an intelligent feminist. Hillary Clinton, the first woman to
have a genuine chance to be President, lost to someone who had flaunted
his contempt for women generally and for her personally, even prowling
behind her during a nationally televised debate.
Trump
has indulged in more scandalous behavior than is easy to recount. For
some reason, his record of misogyny, in both language and acts, his
running compendium of self-satisfied creepiness, the accumulated
complaints against him of sexual harassment and assault (all denied, of
course), have attracted only modest attention, one defamation lawsuit,
and no congressional interest. The specificity of these accusations—by a
former Miss Utah, by a reporter for People,
by several former teen-age beauty-pageant contestants, by his ex-wife
Ivana, who said that he had torn out a patch of her hair and violated
her—is disturbing. Breast groping, crotch grabbing, unwanted kisses on
the mouth. This is the President of the United States.
Before the election, Jia Tolentino determined for this magazine
that twenty-four women had “corroborated Trump’s own boasting,” and
twenty have come forward publicly. None with ease and glee. “As always
happens when someone accuses a high-profile man of sexual misconduct,
these women will be tied to their unpleasant, formerly private stories
for life,” Tolentino wrote. There may be hope, however. According to
some assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense
of disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp
increase in the number of female candidates and winners. Stephanie
Schriock, the president of EMILY’s List, recently announced that more than twenty thousand women have declared themselves candidates for public office—a “gigantic spike,” according to a detailed report by Christina Cauterucci, in Slate.
Donald Trump, with Steve
Bannon drawing battle plans, believes that he is the initiator of a
great culture war in America. But it may turn out to be a war of a very
different kind, with a very different result. It seems to be occurring
to more and more Americans that Trump would not pass muster before any
decent department of human resources. And if he would surely be
disqualified from running a movie studio, a newsroom, or a medium-sized
insurance firm, how is it that he presides over the most important
office in the land? ♦
