Listen To The Weinstein Tail

Harvey Weinstein was shouted down when he started talking about the culture that he was working within as an abuser.  It sounded like he was blaming the culture of accepted abuse as an actual reason for his behavior, and if that was what he was doing it was right to shout him down.

But, he did put a smudgy finger on something, and until that’s addressed the culture will really not change.  So, right now, let’s not shout anyone down, let’s examine two sides of the same coin and approach this with the full realization that something can be a part of the culture, and still be morally, even legally, wrong, and shouting won’t make it better.  In fact, the root cause might be drowned out by the shouting.

Let us also address the fact that women are still not treated as equals in American society.  We can denigrate the Muslims in the Middle East—and we should continue to pressure them to at least move out of the twelfth and embrace at least the twentieth century—or the Baptists or Roman Catholics in America; but until we, ourselves as a nation and culture, embrace the fact of equality and act that way, we have no moral ground to stand on to castigate others.

Because, this is the culture of Weinstein, and not just of Hollywood, but manufacturing of all types, the entire IT and computer industry, public education, everything, including churches.  There are pockets in industry and the commercial world where women are accepted as equals and paid and treated as such, but they remain pockets while the whole cloth is stained and tattered.

If American conservatives truly recognized and accepted human equality, then why are they—they being mostly men, and the men being mostly white, and all of them identifying as religion-driven—chipping away at the simple self determination of women to make the choice what their own moral beliefs are, and what they can and should do with their own bodies?  Why are they not accepted, too, for equal treatment in the marketplace?  

It’s not women standing in the way of equal pay for equal work, and since white men still control most of the commercial world, it’s white men who control that inequality.  But, not all white men are the problem, any more than only white men are the problem.

And while there are women who do oppose self determination for their own gender, happy to be subjugated by men, most apparently do not share that belief.  The questions begin, then, with why it’s so hard to move forward, and what needs to be done to remove the obstacles to equality?  I self-define the questions as follows:

Why, in an age when medical science does not support the anti-abortion position, so they must rely only on their religious beliefs to push them along; are we allowing religious beliefs to dictate what is socially and legally acceptable?  At a time when most Americans don’t identify themselves by one religious dictate, embracing not one of the three warring religions but, rather, the pursuit of spiritualism; why are we allowing the minority religious community to drive our democratic processes?

Isn’t the passing of laws with which a small group of mostly white men use their highly conservative religious beliefs to dictate to all Americans, the very part and parcel of a violation of the separation of church and state?  And, if so, then why are non-extreme conservatives, and progressives for that matter, not pushing back that much harder with the rest of us?

And if there is an Us and Them, the Us is the 70% or so moderates in America, and the Them are the 30% that run things by voting in every election.

The extremists are so far from the middle, the middle looks to be an extreme distance; by contrast, the view from the middle is able to see the extremes on both sides.  Of the many differences between Us and Them, the most stark is how We have the most comprehensive view, but are allowing Them with the most restricted views to run the country.

So, what to do?  How do we make that change?  If we know—cognitively, unconsciously, intuitively—that equality is real and applies to all people, then how do we create a world in which equality is not just what we know, but what the laws reflect, what the courts rule toward, what society stands behind and refuses to move back from?

The massive cultural change needed to achieve true parity is generations in coming for full realization, though the momentum has picked up considerably in just the past fifty years.  Part of that is job-related, where one no longer marvels at a woman working, or even owning the business, even if disparity prevails yet.  

Much of that change, though, is throwing off the man-made chains of organized religion and the embrace, instead, of spiritualism, where humanism is most deeply rooted.

Education is a catalyst—if one cannot read, one cannot grow except by exceptionalism—though not one that always defeats the constraints of religion on the individual. Those chains are broken not by mere education, but from an opening mind; since not all educated have opened their minds, but all opened minds do result from some level of education, it takes something more than merely learning.

So, if true freedom born of equality is generations away, then where comes the more immediate relief, a more current equality?

Vote.  Become informed and vote.  In every election.  Local elections?  Vote.  State?  Vote.  National?  Vote.  There is almost no question asked as: How do we change…, that is not answered with either Education or Vote.  Or both.

So long as old white men—and many younger—control the world, real progress will be refracted through the broken lens of emotionally squinting men, afraid of change and the change that forces them to do more than just dominate the fearful.

Thus, if ever there was a time that youth should come forward and wrench the reins of power from the wrinkled hands of the intellectually enfeebled, that time is now.  If ever a time for the disadvantaged—by color, by gender, by any identity held down due to difference from the norm—to step up and vote the change we need to advance—as Americans, as a people, simply as humans—now is the time to start.

No one will likely remember Harvey Weinstein for whatever successes he had, but for the failures he manifested in his abuse of power.  We will also likely remember he was just the tip of a very deep iceberg, and the only way to reveal its depth was to shrink what we can see to get to what is well below the surface.  For that we need to not shout down the guilty, but, rather, listen to them define their guilt.