And Here We Are Again

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A man holds a position of great power and influence. He's at the top of his field, the top of his company. He rubs shoulders with the rich and famous and influential. He is rich and famous and influential. With a word, he can make or break careers.

And he is a sexual predator.

This week, it's Harvey Weinstein's turn in the spotlight. Last year, it was Donald Trump's. Before that, it was Bill Cosby's. The list is long and it stretches back forever, and I can tell you this: in the coming weeks, Hollywood will almost certainly be rocked by reveals of other predators amongst their ranks. Producers, directors, stars, casting directors: I expect we're going to be hearing a lot about men who have been using their power to make women miserable (yes, there are tales of men being harassed, too, and that is terrible, but the board is tilted far the other way).

The question is, "What causes this?" What causes a man to decide that it's okay to greet a woman in a hotel room while wearing nothing but a bathrobe, or demanding she watch him shower, or masturbate in front of her? What makes a man think it's okay to make what is essentially a job interview into a quid pro quo, I'll give you this job if you give me that job kind of thing? Are these men--the Harvey Weinsteins and Donald Trumps and Bill Clintons and Cosbys and Louis Mayers of the world time bombs of predation that will go off sooner or later, regardless of where they are and what they do, or are they products of power, corrupted by knowing they have so much control over another person's destiny?

The good news--in as much as there can be good news in all of this--is that women are becoming emboldened, are starting to speak out. Now we have to figure out a way to stop this from happening in the first place.

In Which I Make a Horrible Admission: Locker Room Banter

(Author's note: I wrote this piece yesterday in Writers' Circle. I'm very much troubled by the recently-unearthed audio of Donald Trump on the "Access Hollywood" bus with Billy Bush. This has been very difficult to write, and pressing the "Publish" button is a little scary. I fear I may not have articulated things that well. Let's hope I have.)

Words matter. Words have the potential to influence the thinking of others, to change their actions and behaviors, maybe even their lives. But sometimes words are just words, not uttered or written with any particular intent beyond entertainment. They're used to funny, or to shock, or to gain attention. Whether we're aiming for influence or just throw-away entertainment, we still need to think about what we say, how we say it, and to whom.

Image from Wikipedia

I'm a guy. I hope this comes as no surprise to you after all this time. And as a guy, I've engaged in my fair share of locker room banter. Also golf course gabbing. Barroom bombast. I have told--and laughed at--jokes that cover every -ist and -ism out there. Racist, sexist, misogynist? Been there. I have slurred and slandered, engaged in stereotyping and objectification. Gay bashing? That, too. In certain situations with certain people, this side of me comes out.

I say all of this not because I'm proud of it. I'm not. I say this not to excuse it, because there's no excusing it. I say this because it's simply the truth. And the other truth is, in the right setting with the right people, I will almost certainly engage in "locker room banter" again. It's the simple truth of the matter.

What would you do if you heard me say these things? Would you become angry, tell me off, then leave and tell everyone you know that I'm an utter ass? Perhaps you would chuckle politely, then change the subject and find an excuse to leave soon thereafter, never to see me by choice again. Or maybe you'd join in with gusto. It depends on what kind of person you are. What will you do now that I've confessed these things to you? Will you comment? Stop following? Spread it far and wide on Twitter and Facebook and bring the hammer of Internet Outrage down upon my head? It all depends on what kind of person you are.

And now we come to Donald Trump. The recently-unearthed "Access Hollywood" clip has Trump bragging about putting the moves on a married woman, just kissing women, whether invited or not, and that as a rich, famous person, he can do whatever the hell he wants. Trump has brushed all of this off as locker room banter, and, in his typical fashion, has used his best second grade "I know you are, but what am I" rhetorical style to say that Bill Clinton is far, far worse (and he may well be, but this is not about Bill Clinton).

Do we let Donald Trump off the hook for his ten-year-old crudities on the "Access Hollywood" bus, or for the things he's said while guesting on the Howard Stern show five, ten, or twenty years ago? Do accept his excuse that he was just playing a role, or playing up (or down, as the case may be) to a particular crowd, and that it doesn't reflect who he is as a person? At this point,

And what's my excuse? What's the difference between me and Trump on this (besides the millions of dollars and millions in audience, that is)? I'd like to believe the difference is that one of us means what he says, and puts it into action, while the other is just engaging in locker room banter. I can tell you that I have never forcibly kissed a woman or put my hands on one uninvited. Nor would I. Meanwhile, there's mounting evidence that Trump's words to Billy Bush were not just him being "braggadocious." The allegations that continue to surface about Trump--from former business partners, from cast and crew of "The Apprentice," from contestants in the various pageants he has run--indicate that he these are not mere words.

Locker room banter is not going to go away. Men and women (but mostly men, I suspect) will continue to engage in it, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that--provided it remains just that: banter. Words, not action, exagerration, not reality.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting.