(This is why, even after everything we know, it is still possible for the New Yorker to put up a long article praising Woody Allen, as they did last week—"The Existential Genius of Late Woody Allen"—praising him from beginning to end, in every line, as though none of that other stuff were relevant, as though it were somehow gauche to acknowledge what he'd done. That's rape culture for you, at the highest levels: not mere silence, but you have to come out and sing hosannas to the guy.)
We must fight rape culture, even in its allegedly mild manifestations, we must be grieved with the grief of those who commit the crime and those who benefit from a world built on such crimes, we must oppose men who wade in with stupid explanations and caveats and distractions, we must surrender the poisonous sentimentality that makes us believe a "great artist" over a less well-known woman. Indeed, we must be willing to let anyone go—think of any man you admire, any man at all, alive or in history, close to you or far away, and think to yourself that you must be willing to let him go—if such things are true of him too. And understand that such things can be true of any of them, of any of us.
We must be allies in this, in a subsidiary but vital role, to the generations of women who have been fighting it since forever. Why should it be easy? It can't be. We will have to face even the complication of confronting those few women who are themselves invested in perpetuating rape culture. It will cause us extreme discomfort, but our discomfort will be nothing compared to the pain of being a victim of rape or assault or harassment.
Needless to say, if one is certain of the guilt (alleged/real regarding sexual assault) of people in the spotlight such as Bill Cosby, Stephen Collins and (not paid attention to in the US) Rolf Harris/the late Jimmy Savile, but unsure of or have questions about the child molestation charges against Woody Allen from two decades ago (and his guilt or innocence), you're likely to be banished by certain members of social media.
And I'm not singing hosannas to Woody Allen--who demonstrated industrial-strength selfishness during the Soon-Yi affair discovery in the early 1990s--either.
