Five years nearly to the day since the New York Times and the New Yorker published their explosive exposés on Harvey Weinstein and his myriad misdeeds – all of them leveraging his vaunted position in Hollywood to extract sex and force humiliation on hopeful actresses – Weinstein and several other men accused as part of the broader #MeToo movement are seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Weinstein, who was already sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault in New York, now faces trial for similar crimes in California (Weinstein is appealing the New York conviction). Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for directing the film Crash and has famously pulled back the cover on the Church of Scientology, goes to trial next month in a civil suit filed by a film publicist who says he raped her. And Kevin Spacey is also facing a civil suit filed by actor Anthony Rapp, who says Spacey got on top of him and made a sexual advance when he was just 14 and Spacey was 26.
All three men have a few things in common. They are (or were) among Hollywood’s most powerful men. They are a tiny minority among men accused of assault as part of the #MeToo movement to actually see the inside of a courtroom. They have all been accused of sexual wrongdoing by multiple people. They all deny the claims against them. And they all demonstrate both the benefits and the limitations of the legal system adjudicating sexual assault claims – and their stories, five years on, show how much the #MeToo movement changed, and how it hasn’t.
That these three men are in court at all is itself extraordinary. The vast majority of sexual assaults are never even reported to police, let alone prosecuted or heard in a civil proceeding. And the fact that Weinstein has been convicted once, even though he is appealing, is a highly unusual outcome, especially for powerful men accused of sexual violence.
These men also haven’t been made into heroes or martyrs, and at least in mainstream media, the women and men accusing them of wrongdoing have not been smeared or shamed. Their trials have been covered but not turned into sexist spectacles.
And so the fact that these men are in a courtroom facing up to at least some of their alleged crimes and bad acts is a step forward, as is the coverage of those bad acts and subsequent trials. But the legal proceedings themselves are nonetheless following a familiar playbook. Without much in the way of exculpatory evidence, the defense lawyers are going after the accusers and attempting to sow greater empathy for the accused.
Spacey’s lawyer has zeroed in on minor inconsistencies in Rapp’s story, the kinds of small incorrect or told-differently-later details that frankly don’t seem particularly surprising coming, as they do, about an event that happened to a kid at a party in the 1990s. Haggis has just been granted permission to argue that the accusations against him are part of a Scientologist plot against him – a claim denied by the woman who has sued him, who has no known ties to the Church of Scientology, and is not the only woman to accuse Haggis of sexual assault. And Weinstein’s strategy in his New York case – we will see if it’s repeated in California – was for his lawyer to suggest the women accusing him of rape and sexual assault were manipulative, lying social climbers, using Weinstein for access and opportunities and now exploiting this moment for personal benefit.
And consider the trajectory of the Johnny Depp v Amber Heard case – whatever one thinks of that story, it’s undeniable that Heard was brutally harassed, threatened and made into a cartoonish villain by Depp’s supporters.
Between Heard’s ordeal and what many #MeToo accusers have been subjected to in court, it’s hard to see these cases as unmitigated triumphs of the movement in courts of law.
And yet it seems almost unimaginable that even a decade ago a Hollywood darling like Kevin Spacey could find himself pushed off his hit show, largely ignored in Hollywood, and in a courtroom because of decades-old accusations from a male actor - and that the public would see straight through his craven attempt to come out of the closet in response.
Whispers of Weinstein’s assaults were practically the white noise of Hollywood, a kind of invisible and pervasive static in the background until all of a sudden women’s voices rose to a chorus. Harvey Weinstein is not only behind bars but, according to his lawyers, barely able to walk, practically blind, and being held in a fetid, unhygienic and medieval cell? That would have been awfully difficult to predict just a few years ago – and was hardly the obvious outcome of the stories in the Times and the New Yorker, which in turn amplified a movement started many years before by activist Tarana Burke.
In the last five years, the national conversation on sexual assault has radically shifted; we understand better than ever that these crimes are not about sex or uncontrollable desire, but rather about power, and a very controlled and intentional exercise of it. Many men (and some women) are re-evaluating their past behavior and asking themselves if there is perhaps something to change or apologize for; many women (and some men) are finally putting language to interactions and events that never sat quite right, or were abjectly humiliating, painful, or violent. Workplaces have changed their policies; states have changed their laws.
And courts of law, notoriously and intentionally slow-moving institutions, are working their way through the tiny number of cases that meet the very high standard for prosecution, and those that meet the slightly less severe standard for a lawsuit.
Is this justice? No, not for everyone; not even for most. And while many of us are pleased to see punishment meted out for so much wrongdoing, it also probably doesn’t give many feminists much pleasure to hear that men like Weinstein are now suffering the same cruelties and dehumanizing humiliations our criminal justice system has long leveled on more invisible men.
Courts of law have always been imperfect venues for victims of sexual assault, and it has never been the case that victims of a sex crime have consistently seen justice from the legal system. But these latest #MeToo trials and the muted response to them are useful mile-markers in a movement that is much more a wide-ranging marathon than a narrow sprint. Looking back on the last five years it is clear that there has, in fact, been forward motion – in the courts, in our workplaces, in society. And there have also been stumbles and setbacks; a movement that shot hot out of the gate has slowed down, and in some instances been walked back.
There is still a long road ahead for feminists and other advocates who are working to reshape the world into a place that is less hostile to women, less accommodating of destructive men, and more embracing of both female pleasure and female freedom. Five years on, the #MeToo movement hasn’t gotten us there, and courtrooms simply may never be the primary venues in which a more just society is built. But they can be places in which justice is carried out. And when the trials of this autumn conclude, we’ll see just how prepared they were for that task.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
