I saw a post on Facebook: “Geez, Rose McGowan has gone cray-cray…”
“Cray-cray.” Crazy. OK, let’s tackle that.
Imagine being a twenty-three year old actress, wading through the swamp known as Hollywood.
And you’re raped.
Not randomly, you’re targeted because of your profession. Someone with a ton of power in your industry, someone who can stifle your career, who can have you blacklisted, rapes you.
Afterwards, you’re given money and told to shut up about it. Read that in full context: you’re given money and told to shut up about being raped.
You still try and tell people about what’s happened to you, and to warn others so it doesn’t happen to them. Meanwhile, your rapist continues on about his business and his career isn’t harmed in the slightest. Not only isn’t his career harmed, it continues an upward trajectory into the stratosphere. He makes successful movies. Millions upon millions of dollars go into his bank account. He receives awards, Oscars, glory, and the respect of his peers.
And all the while, he keeps assaulting and raping other women. The entire time, you’re being marginalized. Your words are being ignored; your pain is dismissed.
This happens for twenty years.
Twenty. Years.
Twenty years of watching your rapist continue on his sordid ways; twenty years of knowing he is hurting people and no one is doing anything to stop him.
Then, one day, the dam breaks. Your rapist is finally exposed.
Would you be silent? Would you make a single statement and be done with it? Or would you shout your Walt Whitman barbaric yawp from the top of the mountain, making sure that in this moment, when all the attention is focused where it needs to be regarding the problem of sexual violence against women, you were heard?
Call me cray-cray, but I’m going with the last option.
Maybe I don’t agree with every single thing that Rose McGowan has Tweeted. Blasting James Cordon for his jokes? I think he was mocking Harvey Weinstein, not making light of the situation. But that’s just me, and that’s my opinion. Rose McGowan has her take on things, and maybe if we’d listened to her years ago, she wouldn’t sound so “cray-cray” to some ears today.
Just saying.
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