And after all of these years of me having suppressed the fact that your slithery, violating hands touched me, I have since really forgotten that they were even there to begin with. But that doesn't excuse the fact that they were here and there and there and there.
I spoke with Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato who both starred in Ugly Betty as well as Judy Reyes from Scrubs.
On the topic of the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and sexual assault, Reyes said, “I think we’re all literally haunted, constantly every day. It’s been a hard reality in our lives, all of our lives, particularly people of color.”
Ortiz added, “Especially women and anyone in the LGBTQ community.”
It is a reality that women are disproportionately victims of assault, but particularly women of color and those in the LGBTQ+ community, like transgender women who are often killed or brutally assaulted.
“I’m [. . .] happy that action is being taken, and that it’s been swift, and that so many people continue to speak out; [there’s] strength in numbers,” Reyes said.
Ortiz said, “I think it’s our turn to feel emboldened. I think the predators have felt emboldened for so long, and they have [gotten away with it]. And now I think we’re seeing that they can’t if we recognize our own voice and our own power. And I think that these people who are coming forward and tonight is a testament to it that we’re not going to be quiet, we’re not going to be silent.”
From left: Judy Reyes, Mark Indelicato, me, and Ana Ortiz
America Ferrera, star of the eponymous show Ugly Betty, recently took to Instagram to reveal that she was assaulted at the young age of nine. Her former cast mates told me that they are “of course” supporting her.
“She’s so eloquent, so well-spoken; she’s such a good spokesperson for whatever it is that she puts out there. She’s just one of those people that you want to watch and stand next to, and hold her hand,” Ortiz said.
They said that we need people like Ferrera be the foundation of acceptance and support for our future children and the next generation. Reyes and Ortiz, whose children are friends, admit that they try to instill these values in their children, especially when it comes to accepting our transgender peers.
Recently, on Good Morning America, Blake Lively (Ferrera’s BFF and fellow Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alumna) said that we can’t just tweet about sexual assault; we need to be actively supportive of victims. “But it’s more than just like we’re talking about it and we’re supporting it; it’s action. Everybody says that they stand in solidarity, but you have to show that you stand in solidarity.”
Indelicato said besides tweeting, “being an ally is as important as coming forward, and those that are coming forward have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, and they have to know that they have a community around them that is standing in solidarity with them. I think that that is what emboldens survivors or victims to come forward." He added, “I think that having a strong community to stand in solidarity [with], that’s really the kind of crux of all of these social movements that we’re seeing today, the idea of standing in solidarity with one another [and] strength in numbers.”
Sexual assault and the conversation of sexual assault is not a new concept, nothing new. It happens every day and will unfortunately still occur.
It is a frequent occurrence in the entertainment industry, especially with young, aspiring actresses who are at the start of their career, though assault does not discriminate against any industry. Regardless of age, men and women are harassed; however, the younger or less experienced (in terms of the work field) a person is, the more vulnerable they are to assault from their male co-workers and higher-ups. And even worse, their stories may not always be believed because people with more power silence them and use their power to their own advantage.
Actress Ellen Paige has commented on sexual abuse in the media: “Look at the history of what’s happened to minors who’ve described sexual abuse in Hollywood. Some of them are no longer with us, lost to substance abuse and suicide. Their victimizers? Still working. Protected even as I write this. You know who they are; they’ve been discussed behind closed doors as often as Weinstein was.” Such celebrities as Rosanna Arquette justify this by claiming that people like Weinstein have ruined their careers, and this happens all the time when there’s a power dynamic involved. Former child actor Corey Feldman has publicly spoken out about the substance abuse and subsequent suicide of friend and actor Corey Haim, who is just one of the many examples of actors as described by Paige. Asia Argento, one of Weinstein’s victims, expressed to The New Yorker that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her and she had not spoken out until now because “I know he has crushed a lot of people before. That’s why this story -- in my case, it’s 20 years old; some of them are older -- has never come out.”
Vocalizing sexual assault does not come easy to the victim, especially when there are power relations and a clear superiority complex that invalidates or at the very least not prioritizes the stories of the assault victims. One such example includes one of Weinstein’s victims, model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez who actually did go to NYPD in 2015 to accuse Weinstein and they sent her to record a confession from him. Despite voice recording evidence, which revealed Weinstein admitting his assault to Gutierrez and forcibly coaxing her into his room, the police deemed the evidence as not substantial. She and other women eventually signed a non-disclosure agreement so that their accusations would not make it into the press. A lot of actresses or just women in general are too afraid to jeopardize their career and any other possible opportunities if they do not comply to their assaulters. However, this was not an issue for Gutierrez who courageously and intuitively went to the police, only to be ignored and silenced.
The allegations against Weinstein remain remarkably similar to each other. These allegations include how he would isolate his victims, proposition them, ask them to massage him, touch them in vulnerable areas, or overtly masturbate in front them. Sickening, right? Isolation, sedation, and coercion are common tactics when it comes to assault. Bill Cosby, who also had a lot of rumors speculating him that happened to be true, would drug his victims as well.
The idea of Harvey Weinstein being, for lack of a better word, a perv, is not a new idea either. And numerous jokes have surfaced over the years, suggesting that this had been a rumor. The most notable joke includes the 2013 Academy Awards, in which Seth MacFarlane joked, “Congratulations you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” MacFarlane has recently noted that the joke was predicated on Jessica Barth’s accusations against Weinstein.
According to Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks, a progressive Youtube broadcast news channel, “He got away with it for so long--for decades! And what’s amazing was that it was like this dirty little secret.” Quentin Tarantino admits that he had known about this secret about Weinstein and his reputation for harassing women and regrettably so.
In a recent interview, he said, “I knew enough to do more than I did. . . . I’m calling on the other guys who knew more to not be scared. Don’t just give out statements. Acknowledge that there was something rotten in Denmark. Vow to do better by our sisters.”
He calls himself out and apologizes for not using his power and voice to prevent other women from experiencing this assault in the industry, especially as his past girlfriend, Maria Sordino, was assaulted by Weinstein herself.
Through Tarantino’s confession and Terry Crews (among other male celebrities who have admitted to being assaulted), we are continuously recognizing that sexual assault is not just a woman’s issue; it is a human issue that affects our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces and friends alike, whether we are victims, supporters of victims, the voice of the victim, the ear for the victim, or the witness.
Rape culture is essentially the perpetuation of silencing women who have been assaulted and encouraging boys and men to objectify and violate women. If we do not actually educate young men and women, the new generations, about consent, STI’s, and recovery and support, “locker room talk” will still be a thing, men and women’s stories will still not be believed while the perpetrator gets away with a “get out of jail free” card. A lot of this silencing actually may take decades to come out.
At Elle’s Women in Hollywood event mid-October, Reese Witherspoon, for example, discussed, “I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly and I have found it hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate. A lot of the feelings I’ve been having about anxiety, about being honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action.”
She continued, “And I wish I could tell you that that was [the only] incident in my career [when assaulted at age 16], but sadly, it wasn’t. I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault, and I don’t speak about them very often, but after hearing all the stories these past few days and hearing these brave women speak up . . . the things that we’re kind of told to sweep under the rug and not talk about, it’s made me want to speak up and speak up loudly because I felt less alone this week than I’ve ever felt in my entire career.”
We still live in a reality when women are silenced and accused of seducing men as if men are uncontrollably impulsive and weak in the knees for some female skin. The irony in this argument is that men are usually depicted as strong and authoritative; however, in the court of law, they can be seen as weak as we justify that they couldn’t help themselves. And let’s not get started on Brock Turner.
Let’s be real, Weinstein is a grown man; he knows what he’s been doing, even though he denies the allegations of 13+ victims. First of all, the numbers are climbing; don’t deny that, Mr. Weinstein. Second of all, the fact that you think you could get away with it is deplorable. You’re just an older bully, the way you lure and trap women, then provoke their dignities and prey on their vulnerabilities. Though he has been fired from his own company, The Weinstein Company, he and his team claim that he “resigned,” which says a lot about how he likes to sweep things under the rug.
If a rapist doesn’t take accountability for his or her actions, they must consider not only what they have to live with, but what their victim(s) has/have to live with for the rest of their lives. These experiences are not forgettable and correlate with numerous long-term mental, emotional, social, and even physiological effects.
So Weinstein did us a favor. We’re talking about sexual assault by the masses now. We’re having discussions about this issue because they greatly violate our bodies and cause us much trauma, anguish and more.
If you’re a sexual assault victim and you’re ready to come out, use the #metoo. We need to hear YOUR story and if you’re not ready, take your time, but do not give your harasser the power they get off on. We need other victims who may not know that there are other victims out there to know that they are not alone; their experiences are very common.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit these resources for more information: End Rape on Campus (http://endrapeoncampus.org), Know Your IX (https://www.knowyourix.org), National Sexual Violence Resource Center (https://www.nsvrc.org), and RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) (https://www.rainn.org).
