Please, can we get this straight? Back in those ancient times -- the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s -- we did not accept violence against women in the workplace or any place else. It's true we hesitated to report it to employers or the police, because when we did, we had to watch them laugh it off or send us packing. But we did call it out. We named it. We described it. We wrote books about all forms of violence against women -- all those "man-hating" books that these days, if anyone cares to look, may not seem quite so obsolete.
We worked for change. And now only 40 or so years later, here it seems to be. Los Angeles Times reporter Glenn Whipp broke the story of James Toback's predation based on the complaints of 38 women. Within days that number had grown to 200. By the time I emailed him my story, the number reporting Toback assaults had hit 310. In a follow-up article, Whipp mentioned that the Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit wanted to hear from women Toback had attacked in their jurisdiction. I called and left a message, making good my threat to bring in the law after only about 45 years.
For the first time, someone other than my best friends might listen. Somebody might even call me back. But today, as I write, New York Times reporters Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, Susan Dominus and their colleagues describe in hair-raising detail "Harvey Weinstein's Complicity Machine," a catalogue of "enablers, silencers, and spies, warning others who discovered [Weinstein's] secret to say nothing." With their collaboration, Weinstein, like Toback, has preyed upon women since the 1970s.
The Times reports that among Weinstein's closest media pals is David J. Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc., which owns The National Enquirer, a gossip rag whose reporters Weinstein could use to dig up dirt on his accusers. Reportedly, Weinstein was "known in the tabloid industry as an untouchable 'F.O.P.,' or 'friend of Pecker.'" It's no surprise to learn that another predator who shares that untouchable F.O.P. status in the tabloids is Donald "grab 'em by the pussy" Trump.
The question is unavoidable: If serial sexual predation disqualifies a man from being a film producer, screen writer, movie star, network newsman, talk show host, journalist, venture capitalist, comedian, actor, network news director, magazine editor, publisher, photographer, CEO, congressman, or senator, why shouldn't it disqualify a man from being president of the United States? Shouldn't sexist serial sexual assault constitute an impeachable high crime or misdemeanor?
We may find out. Time magazine passed over the president as its "person of the year" to name instead the "Silence Breakers" -- the brave, outspoken women who inspired the #MeToo campaign. Pictured on the cover along with actress Ashley Judd and pop star Taylor Swift is a Mexican strawberry picker, using a pseudonym for her safety. Her presence and the arm of an unidentified hospital worker seated just out of the frame signal that we might yet learn how this cultural awakening is playing out in ordinary America for women working in the far less glamorous worlds of fast-food chains, nursing homes, hospitals, factories, restaurants, bars, hotels, truck stops, and yes, strawberry fields.
So where do we go from here? This train has left the station and rolls on. In some photos of those smart young relentless women journalists at the Times, I've noticed that their footwear tends not to stilettos, but to boots, which as every woman knows, are good for marching and for kicking ass. That's promising.
But since I've traveled this route before, you'll have to excuse me for thinking that when this big train passes, it could leave behind a system -- predators, enablers, silencers, spies, and thoroughly entrenched sex discrimination -- not so very different from that of the 1970s. And if that happens, no doubt those lying dead on the tracks will prove, upon official examination, to be female.
Ann Jones, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of several pioneering feminist books, including the classic Women Who Kill, Everyday Death, Next Time She'll Be Dead, and with Susan Schechter a handbook for women who made the mistake of marrying predatory and violent men: When Love Goes Wrong. nbsp;She is also the author of the Dispatch Book They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars -- the Untold Story .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Copyright 2017 Ann Jones
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