This week, Selma Blair spoke out as a victim of sexual assault. Last week, Eliza Dushku did the same. Every day, more and more women in Hollywood speak out against men in the industry, and it’s very satisfying. What was traumatic and tragic for them is transmuted into a public revenge, made more gratifying because the claims lack the pettiness of personal vendettas. Rather, the stories are being told in the wake of “Time’s Up,” an antiharassment initiative launched in the new year and popularized by over 300 women from Hollywood. These women are getting their own back, and it’s wonderful. One of the highlights was watching Natalie Portman at the Golden Globes saying pointedly about nominees for Best Director: “And here are the all-male nominees.” I’m sure that, like me, many women have been smirking at their phones for the last two weeks as men, both harassers and those who have just passively enjoyed their privilege, were made uncomfortable. Take that, men!
And then we put our phones down and go back to work, where we proceed to endure tiny, normalized, sexual micro-assaults and all the colorful forms of sexism to which we’ve become accustomed. The Time’s Up movement is nice, but it’s hard to identify with for many reasons—mostly that those who have promoted it are mostly white, mostly wealthy, mostly privileged, and mostly able to have legal recourse. We just don’t have that luxury.
Time’s Up is a good start, the more politically charged product of the “#MeToo” hashtag on social media. Despite the cringy, airy words that have been used to promote it—“locking arms in solidarity,” “sisterhood,” “speak your truth”—it stands on very solid footing. It’s not about speaking up against sexual assaulters. It’s creating an atmosphere where systemic sexism and abuse will not be tolerated, whether in entertainment or other, low-wage professions. Not only does it have a legal defense arm and a GoFundMe to help victims of sexual assault, it also seeks to change legislation from the ground up. It’s a nice idea that one day, companies who don’t give equal pay to men and women workers will be penalized, and for the first time that actually seems to be possible—in the United States, far away from the Filipino women who endure abuse at home, in the workplace, on their commutes. Time’s Up and its momentum are made possible by the things that those women have now—influence, a platform, wealth—hard-earned though these may be, and that most of us here don’t have. Even if Filipino celebrities, socialites and professionals banded together to start a local Time’s Up, it would not have the same support or effect. It would be on a lesser scale, and the accusations of sexual assault would seem less like heroic announcements than gossip-mongering.
And it’s unfair, but though Filipino women may not have that kind of support or public outrage, there are women’s groups in the Philippines making steady steps toward providing safe and supportive spaces for women, whether victims of sexual assault or those displaced from their homes or livelihoods. It takes a simple Google sweep to find them, but more of an effort to show active support. Even Gabriela, the most vocal and politically aggressive of women’s groups, has been ridiculed and sometimes isn’t taken seriously, and that’s on us, and our failure to show mainstream support for those initiatives targeted at women who are—as VP Leni Robredo’s campaign described—on the fringes of society. To my own dismay, it’s time to say some cringy, airy words of my own: It’s time to stop letting these women fight their battles alone while we comfortably show our support for people an ocean away. If we can share posts about Hollywood actresses condemning Woody Allen, we can support local projects, we can connect victims of domestic abuse to the relevant hotlines, we can raise issues of workplace sexism with our own HR departments, we can make hiring decisions more consciously.
Maybe we can’t yet create a nationwide movement to show that systemic sexism won’t be tolerated. But maybe, we can, on our own, tolerate it a little less.
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