10/17/2017
Where there’s smoke there’s fire
- An essay I wrote about the Abuse of Power of Hollywood Movie Mogul Harvey Weinstein
The heavy smoke cleared from the Oakland skies a few days ago and moving along with it were some of my concerns and stress from living in an area that I suddenly had to wear an N95 air mask to run an errand. After a week of reading about the fires erupting only 30-40 minutes away from me in California wine country, I finally had some moments to just pause and be still.
In these moments of reflection, the other newsworthy incident that also drew my attention last week also comes to mind. It’s a story also involving smoke, but one of smoke and mirrors. The tale of famed Hollywood studio head and producer, Harvey Weinstein and his abuse of power.
After decades of looming and foreboding gossip that trailed him like a singed cape but was never confirmed publicly, the curtain rose and we all peeked into Weinstein’s private world and his acts of nonconsensual s*x, abuse and harassment. Weinstein, one of the wealthiest and at one time one of the most powerful men in Hollywood used his power to lure women by promising opportunities of career advancement and then took advantage of his position. Even when women came forward to police to try to stop him, he stopped the cases from moving forward with his connections. The magician who opened up an industry to the magic of small artistic films was in fact a cruel ill con man.
These s*x scandals took on the weight of feeling like another natural disaster occurred to me when I read about them. The disaster was more along the lines of an avalanche though. I couldn’t even get through the New Yorker article that shared the stories of some of his victims before I had read enough and needed to shut my computer. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. The stories kept coming over the next few days, falling from the sky like the ashes that fell from the sky in Oakland all week long. Every day, sometimes twice a day or even more, there was another women stepping forward to share her tale of secrets, abuse and/or r**e at the hands of Weinstein.
As someone who not only grew up in New York City and worked in or with the NY media for 5 years after college along with having close ties to the film industry through friends and associates, learning about Weinstein’s actions is awful and painful but not surprising. It’s the Weinstein’s of the world which was one of a handful of reasons I eventually transitioned my career into working with men, women and couples to empower them around their s*xuality over a decade ago.
What I eventually started seeing after I took my first s*xuality workshop was that true power and I don’t mean egoic power, could only come from being a fully integrated individual connected to all parts of one self - heart, mind, body including one’s ge****ls. That means being connected and expressed in one’s s*xuality in healthy ways. With a country with a staggering rate of s*xual abuse, harassment and r**e like the U.S. has how can women fully be in their power. In the U.S, 1 in 5 women have been the victims of attempted or completed r**e in their lifetime. 1 in 2 women have experienced s*xual violence other than r**e in their lifetime. With numbers like these it impacts the power of women in this country.
As much as shows like S*x in the City seemed to welcome in a new era of openness and empowerment around s*x for women, sadly it hasn’t done nearly enough of what is actually needed for our country to get past its puritanical attitude towards s*x. In my opinion, it is this attitude that is a major factor that creates the fertile breeding ground for incidences like a Harvey Weinstein to continue for decades. We are still living in an undercurrent of don’t ask, don’t tell. Just_please_don’t_talk_about_s*x with anyone else echoes from the chambers of our nation’s bedrooms.
We live in a society where s*x is used to sell products or we are shown unrealistic versions of what s*x is and should be and very little of the beauty of this amazing experience. The last time I saw s*x on TV was Nicole Kidman in HBO’s Big Little Lies in the shower with her TV husband, Alex Skarsgard. Some tainted overly s*xualized version shown of one of the mom characters but not at all what most American moms actually experience. Yes it’s a show but can’t we see one that actually shows the reality of most moms.
How does our attitude fare versus other countries? Michael Moore’s movie, “Where to Invade Next” comes to mind around this juxtaposition. In the movie one of the CEO’s of an Italian company shares to Moore about wanting his employees to have pleasure in their lives and to have s*x. Yes, he really said that! In the US, a CEO like this would probably get fired for saying that on record. In the US the rate is 4 times more likely than Italy for a woman to be r**ed. We are ranked #9 versus for Italy according to NationMaster.com for incidences of r**e in our country. Italy has a lower per capita rate of r**e than most of the advanced Western countries in the European Union. Could it be because of their attitude and openness around s*x?
Even where I live on the border of Oakland and Berkeley just 5 minutes away from the famed UC Berkeley campus, an area that is one of the most diverse and innovative parts of the country, an area that welcomed the free speech movement and has championed many other causes, there is still an underlying attitude of quietness around s*x. It’s just private, right? I’m wondering is it this privacy that comes with a really big price tag? Have we reached the tipping point that we must start talking about s*x now.
With staggering rates in this country of s*xual abuse and r**e, we are living in a society with it eyes wide shut. Only two months ago a friend told me she had been r**ed on a blind date. It’s hard for me to even write that because it’s just so crazy to fathom that this actually happens, still. I read what she wrote about the experience and wept. Not only does it feel like not enough is being done to stop these heinous violent acts on a wide scale basis but that we must do more of a bottoms up response to change it. Where to start? Here’s where we start.
Ourselves.
We must create a culture where we talk about s*x and redefine the spaces where it is acceptable to speak about it. I truly believe, it is one of the ways that will lead us to less s*xual violence. We must face our awkward feelings, our ineptness, our shyness. Our “I’m not doing it right,” “there’s someplace to get to,” and “my body doesn’t look good” attitudes towards s*x so the shadow side of s*xuality in our culture can’t flourish.
What’s the cost of this pervasive attitude of shut down around s*x discussions? The Harvey Weinstein scandal is just the tip of a larger iceberg. Could it have existed if not only women didn’t think that roles and work would be taken away from them if they spoke out about his behavior but if they also felt free to speak more openly about s*x in general?
Only a society uncomfortable talking about s*x can create a culture that an inconceivable abuse of power like Harvey Weinstein can happen.
Please, can we talk about s*x now?
