If 2017 was the year of me too, 2018 must be the year of real change

We should applaud the brave women who spoke out. But the obligation to prevent harassment falls on all of us—and means questioning the nature of insecure work

by Dawn Foster / December 11, 2017 / Leave a comment

Published in January 2018 issue of Prospect Magazine

Politics, film, the media: in each, a culture of insecure work is exploited by abusers.

To his tweeted chagrin, grabber-in-chief Donald Trump was not Time magazine’s person of 2017. That honour fell instead to a group: the “Silence Breakers,” the #metoo movement of people first in Hollywood, then globally who risked their careers, professional relationships, and in some cases personal safety to blow the whistle on sexual harassment, abuse and assault.

That certain industries—Hollywood, the media, theatre and politics—have been hit by near-identical scandals is hardly surprising. All operate on similar structures, with unconventional working arrangements, a large number of young, powerless people working with far older men, and a high degree of precocity and jostling for a small number of positions. Sexual harassment exists in all industries: I’ve experienced inappropriate advances as a paper girl, working minimum wage cafe jobs, in admin roles and in the media. But certain industries are set up in a way to make abuse far more likely, and to close off the avenues for raising disputes over colleagues’ behaviour.

The fear, not unfounded, within these industries, is that if you make a fuss, you’ll never work again. While within these fields, many people have set up ‘Whisper Networks’—behind-the-scenes, ad hoc methods of alerting junior staff to known sleazes—so much work is reliant on word of mouth. Causing a stink over inappropriate behaviour carries the very real threat that the people around your abuser will ensure you’ll never find work again. You can too easily be marked as a troublemaker, or a careerist.

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Comments

Jennie Kermode
December 11, 2017 at 22:06
There's another issue here where Hollywood is concerned, and that's the precarity US actors face where health insurance is concerned. Losing a job can mean having no healthcare for oneself or for family members, who may be dependent on it for their very lives. I think it's difficult for those of us fortunate enough to have an NHS to fully appreciate the terror that situation can instill. Additionally, because a small number of successful actors make a lot of money, people tend to assume that everyone in Hollywood is rich. They don't realise that people can be in high profile films and still be struggling to make their rent each month.

Dawn Foster is a writer with a focus on politics and social affairs. She is a contributing editor at Guardian Housing and the author of Lean Out (Repeater Books, 2016)