Latest update : 2017-10-14 19H:26 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME
Harvey Weinstein is merely the latest in a line of powerful, establishment men to fall to the clamour of a generation, which as journalist Ronan Farrow showed, refuses to stay silent in the face of inequality and sexual harassment.
Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia Farrow, who broke the story of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s ‘secret habits’ in The New Yorker magazine has seen the realities of sexual harassment committed by powerful Hollywood men spill into his personal life. In 1992, his mother ended her relationship with Woody Allen when she found naked pictures of Soon-Yi, her 21-year-old adopted daughter, in Allen’s possession (Allen later married Soon-Yi). And he has consistently defended his sister, Dylan, who alleges that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was 7 years old.
It’s easy to imagine that this personal history provided an early motivation to investigate the “open secret” of Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long history of sexual harassment and assault. And maybe Ronan’s status as a Hollywood insider by birth left him particularly well-placed to do so. But perhaps more telling is how the story of the 29-year-old Farrow bringing down the 65-year-old Weinstein is emblematic of a larger cultural shift in Hollywood: namely, that Millennials (the generation of youth born between 1982 and 2002) are taking up the mantle of so many of the generations that came before them to denounce harassment.
In the past few years, the media industry has been hit by a series of high profile sexual assault cases involving public figures, from Bill O’Reilly, to Bill Cosby. So has Silicon Valley, where scandals have hit companies ranging from Uber, to Google, to the latest resignation of Amazon Studios head Roy Price over accusations of sexual harassment from his producers.
The young women who spoke out publically likely did so in the knowledge that there's often a price to pay.
“I am actually in debt for whistleblowing,” Susan Fowler wrote on Twitter, after her blog post ignited the storm around Uber that culminated with the company’s founder and CEO, Travis Kalanick, stepping down.
Ellen Pao launched a $16 million dollar lawsuit against venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
33-year-old AJ Vandermeyden filed a lawsuit against Tesla after complaints of “pervasive harassment” went unaddressed.
Emily Steele, the New York Times reporter who first broke the sexual harassment story that ultimately forced Bill O’Reilly off the airwaves is also 33.
Andrea Constand, who is now 44, was 32 when she became the first woman to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault in a 2005 lawsuit after which the allegation went viral and drew out dozens of corroborating stories.
Recent polling by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that women under 34 are most likely to self-identify as ‘feminist’, and by far the most ready to describe feminism as “empowering.” And while they may not be any more vocal than previous generations - contacting public officials at roughly the same rate on women's rights - they take advantage of having access to a plethora of communication outlets via social media to express their views and to reach vaster audiences than their elders did.
And in light of Ronan Farrow’s persistence in pursuing his inquiry into Weinstein’s “sexual assaults”, at least some young men seem to be willing to contribute their voice.
This same generation has been emboldened to speak out having grown up with Title IX (a 1972 law prohibiting discimination in schools on the basis of gender) and choosing to extend the battle lines against sexual assault far beyond the campus. Indeed, the General Social Survey from the Council on Contemporary Families, which has gathered Americans’ views on gender since 1977, shows that amidst evolving attitudes on gender, Millennials, perhaps unsurprisingly, remain the most progressive.
Even so, from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, the culture in industries where sexual harassment can be an “open secret” is often made possible by male silence. Days after the revelation of the accusations against Weinstein, The Guardian contacted more than 20 male actors and directors who had worked with Weinstein at some point: all declined to comment.
Date created : 2017-10-14
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