Enough is Enough
Bringing Sexual Assault Into The Light
Abject abuse of power by men has been tolerated and encouraged by the corporate and institutional structures on America since its founding. And nowhere is the abuse more outrageous than in the sexual abuse of women and men by men who have perceived power over them across all swaths of our culture.
We cannot continue this blind-eyed approach and evolve and improve our society and culture without destroying what we were raised to hold dear; compassion, mutual respect and fairness.
I am taking a stand for a better world, giving a voice to all the girls and boys and men and women who cannot – either through fear or inability to name their attacker. To the man who sexually assaulted me in an office during a business meeting I say to you, your office is not a private brothel. By turning meetings with professional women – who have trained and studied and apprenticed and poured years of their lives into being the best producer, writer, actress, director – into your sexual poaching ground to play out your own power games is a total betrayal of trust, decorum and anything resembling appropriate behavior. I wonder how you would feel if you daughter came to you traumatized and sobbing with a tale of being attacked during a business meeting the way you attacked me. What you would say to her? Would you tell her to “Shut up and get over it?” or “Hey, men are men, grow up?”
You are an embarrassment to our industry and an embarrassment to all of the amazing and good men in our business who respect their female colleagues, who are friends with the women they work with, who know personal boundaries and have a deep sense of morality and right and wrong. You are the minority, but you are a poison that can seep into the culture and infect the workplace and turn a vibrant, creative organization into a cesspool infected with secret, violent abuse.
It is time for you to go, to be taken from your perch and dropped into the thorny bed of your own making. There is no place for you in our moral society the one people teach their children about when they are small. No more are women and men going to be silent. The subject of abuse and sexual abuse has to come out of the dark and into the light. That is how we as a society and a world become better, that is how we give our children and grandchildren a more just life. I don’t think any parent would want their son or daughter sexually assaulted in their church or school or locker room or place of work. Only by exposing assault can we stop it and send a loud message to those who carry out assault in the corners of their dark worlds that they will be brought into the light and dealt with by society – NOW. Enough is enough.
storytellerla 