Tag Archives: feminism

The Other Side of Power: White Women, Male Survivors, and the Accountability Hollywood Has Yet to Confront

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Written By Jordannah Elizabeth Graham-Mayer

Thank you, Tarana for your courage and work.

Hollywood has a problem it has never adequately investigated: what happens when the person accused of sexual misconduct, stalking, or abuse is a woman whose professional standing, wealth, whiteness, or proximity to celebrity makes her difficult to challenge? The entertainment industry has spent years examining the sexual exploitation of women by powerful men, exposing the professional networks, financial incentives, and institutional silences that allowed misconduct to continue. Yet a corresponding investigation into the experiences of men who report sexual harassment, coercion, stalking, and other forms of abuse by women in positions of influence remains underdeveloped. Actors, musicians, comedians, producers, executives, and other prominent men can occupy positions of extraordinary public power while still having their privacy, bodily autonomy, and personal safety threatened. Their professional success does not make them immune to abuse, and their gender should not determine whether their accounts receive serious consideration. The question this investigation asks is whether Hollywood has developed a consistent standard of accountability—or whether that standard changes when the alleged perpetrator is a powerful woman.

The subject requires precision from the outset. The argument is not that women are responsible for most sexual violence, that women and men experience identical patterns of victimization, or that the evidence establishes a criminal pattern among white women as a group. It does not. The argument is that female-perpetrated misconduct exists, that men experience sexual violence and stalking, and that entertainment institutions should be examined for how they respond when allegations involve women with professional influence, money, social standing, or reputational protection. Race is relevant to this investigation because whiteness can intersect with institutional privilege and cultural assumptions about innocence, desirability, and credibility. But the claim that white women in Hollywood perpetrate these acts at a particular rate would require evidence that is not currently established by the available industry-wide research. A serious investigation should pursue that question through documented cases, interviews, legal records, and comparative analysis rather than present a conclusion before the reporting is complete.

The history of #MeToo provides an essential starting point. Tarana Burke founded the original me too movement in 2006 to support survivors of sexual violence, particularly young women and girls of color. Her work centered on empathy, community support, and helping survivors understand that they were not alone. The movement became a global cultural force in 2017, when the hashtag spread rapidly amid extensive reporting about Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men accused of sexual misconduct. That visibility helped expose the ways professional dependence, intimidation, nondisclosure agreements, and institutional protection could suppress reports of abuse. But the distinction between Burke’s original movement and the mainstream campaign that followed matters. The movement’s roots were in survivor support, not celebrity public relations, and its history raises a legitimate question about what happens when an institution adopts the language of accountability without extending the same seriousness to every person who may need protection.

The concern here is not that women who spoke out during #MeToo were wrong to do so, nor that the movement should have diverted attention from women who experienced sexual violence. It is that a movement organized around bodily autonomy and freedom from sexual exploitation must be able to address misconduct without making gender a prerequisite for recognition. Men who report unwanted sexual contact, coercion, or stalking should not have to prove that their experiences are sufficiently unusual or dramatic to deserve attention. Nor should a woman accused of misconduct be presumed guilty because she is powerful, wealthy, or professionally connected. The same principles must apply in both directions: allegations should be investigated, evidence should be evaluated, and organizations should respond to documented risks. A movement’s credibility depends on whether its core principles can survive beyond the cases that first made them culturally visible.

National data demonstrate why male victimization deserves attention. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s research on sexual violence, intimate-partner violence, and stalking among men reports that approximately one in four men in the United States has experienced some form of contact sexual violence during his lifetime. The CDC also reports that about one in 17 men has experienced stalking. The sex of the perpetrator varies according to the type of violence. In its national survey findings, 79 percent of male victims who reported being made to penetrate someone identified only female perpetrators, as did 82 percent of male victims of sexual coercion. Among men reporting unwanted sexual contact, 53 percent identified only female perpetrators. Among male stalking victims, 46 percent reported only female perpetrators, while 43 percent reported only male perpetrators and 8 percent reported perpetrators of both sexes.

These findings establish that women perpetrate some forms of sexual violence and stalking against men; they do not establish the racial identity of those perpetrators or the prevalence of such conduct in Hollywood. They also should not be misrepresented as evidence that women are responsible for most sexual violence overall. The CDC’s findings distinguish among types of victimization for a reason: rape, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and stalking are not interchangeable categories. Nevertheless, the data make it untenable to dismiss female-perpetrated abuse as merely hypothetical. If entertainment institutions are serious about consent, they must be prepared to investigate these experiences when they arise, including when the person reporting them is a prominent man and the person accused is a woman. The absence of industry-specific statistics about this particular pattern is a reason to conduct further research, not a reason to presume that the problem does not exist.

The workplace evidence is also significant. A 2020 study by Kathleen C. Basile and colleagues, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined sexual violence by workplace-related perpetrators using data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The researchers found that approximately 2.5 percent of men in the United States reported some form of sexual violence by a workplace-related perpetrator during their lifetimes. Male victims reported perpetrators of more than one sex, and the study documented fear and other adverse impacts associated with workplace-related sexual violence. This research was not restricted to entertainment, and it cannot tell us how often a female producer, casting director, comedian, or music executive sexually harasses a male colleague. It does, however, demonstrate that workplace-related sexual victimization of men is measurable and that a gender-neutral investigation of workplace safety is warranted.

Hollywood offers particular reasons to examine how these experiences may be handled. The industry is organized around professional access, reputation, personal relationships, and recurring opportunities to work with the same people. A casting director can influence an actor’s prospects; a producer can affect a project’s future; a manager can shape a musician’s professional relationships; and a comedian with industry connections may influence who receives opportunities on a tour or at a venue. Power in these environments is not exercised solely through formal job titles. It can also operate through introductions, recommendations, financing, publicity, access to influential networks, and the ability to affect someone’s professional standing. These structures can make it difficult for workers to challenge conduct they experience as unwelcome, particularly when the person involved is socially influential. Whether these dynamics affect male survivors of female-perpetrated misconduct in the same ways they affect other survivors is a question that requires direct reporting.

The Hollywood Commission’s research offers a foundation for investigating that question. Its 2022–23 survey gathered responses from 5,259 entertainment workers across television and film, live theater, music, talent representation, public relations, broadcast news, and related settings. The Commission found that workers continued to lack confidence that powerful people would face accountability for misconduct. At major studios, 71 percent of respondents believed it was unlikely that a powerful person would be held accountable. The survey also found differences in perceptions of workplace progress among demographic groups. These findings do not establish that powerful white women routinely abuse men, and they should not be used to imply that they do. They do establish that doubts about accountability persist across the entertainment workplace and provide a compelling basis for examining whether the industry’s systems respond consistently to allegations involving powerful people of different genders.

The issue of whiteness should be investigated as a question about power, representation, and institutional response—not as a substitute for evidence about individual conduct. White women have held prominent positions in Hollywood’s professional and cultural networks, including as performers, producers, casting directors, executives, comedians, and talent representatives. Their influence varies enormously, as does their economic security and institutional authority. It would be inaccurate to assume that all white women possess equivalent power or that whiteness alone determines whether someone is believed. But it is reasonable to investigate whether cultural expectations about white femininity, sexual desirability, innocence, and respectability influence how allegations against certain women are interpreted. The central question is whether institutions apply their standards consistently when the accused person is a woman whose reputation is commercially valuable or whose relationships place her close to the center of an influential network.

That inquiry must also consider the possibility that female-perpetrated misconduct is framed differently from comparable conduct by men. Unwanted sexual attention from a woman may be dismissed as flirtation or humor, particularly when the recipient is a man who is assumed to welcome sexual attention. A persistent attempt to establish contact may be described as romantic determination rather than a boundary violation. A public disclosure about an intimate relationship may be treated as celebrity gossip even when the underlying circumstances raise questions about consent, privacy, or professional retaliation. These are plausible patterns of cultural interpretation, but they should be tested through evidence rather than asserted as universal facts. A rigorous media analysis could compare how journalists, entertainment publications, employers, and audiences describe similar conduct across cases, paying attention to differences in language, sourcing, and the distinction between allegations and established findings.

The music industry provides a particularly important case study because musicians’ public identities are often built around intimacy with audiences. Songs, interviews, concerts, and social media create a sense of personal familiarity that can blur the boundary between public performance and private life. That visibility can make performers vulnerable to unwanted approaches, repeated contact, and intrusion into their personal relationships. In some cases, conduct may escalate beyond unwelcome attention into behavior that warrants a stalking investigation. In April 2026, the Los Angeles Times reported that a woman accused of stalking and attacking former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham had been arrested and faced seven criminal counts. Earlier court filings described Buckingham’s allegations of repeated unwanted contact, threats, appearances near his and his family members’ homes, and a false emergency call that led police to respond to his residence. The case illustrates the seriousness of alleged stalking involving a prominent male musician, although the allegations must be distinguished from a criminal conviction and the available reporting does not establish the accused person’s race.

Buckingham’s case matters because it moves the discussion beyond an abstract debate about whether men can be victims. It demonstrates how allegations of stalking can involve a person’s home, family, reputation, and sense of physical security. It also illustrates why a celebrity’s professional success should not be confused with an absence of vulnerability. A musician may have the resources to seek legal protection, yet still face unwanted contact or alleged threats that require intervention. A case like this cannot establish how prevalent stalking by women is in the music industry, but it can inform questions about threat assessment, security procedures, documentation, and legal remedies. A broader investigation should examine additional cases through court records and independently corroborated reporting, while taking care not to infer a pattern from a single example.

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Publik / Private Essay: on Gisèle Pelicot’s call to survivors

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Gisèle Pelicot in 2024 – Publik / Private does not own this photo.

There are moments in public life that do more than interrupt the news cycle; they rupture the very architecture of shame itself. Gisèle Pelicot’s emergence into collective consciousness is one such rupture. What she has invited the world to witness, to feel, and to reconsider is not simply her own story—harrowing as it is—but the deeper social lie that murder, theft, and assault leave stains on the victim’s soul, and that humiliation is a cost to be absorbed quietly, in private.

This lie is ancient, pernicious, and coded deeply into the way society talks about sexual violence. It insists that the violated should cover their wounds, carry their pain behind closed doors, and perform discreet silence as if harm is a private blemish. Gisèle Pelicot refused this inheritance. In the mass rape trial that unfolded in Avignon, she did something extraordinary: she waived her right to anonymity and demanded the trial be public. She said she wanted “all women victims of rape … to say: Madame Pelicot did it, we can do it too.” And she declared with quiet gravity that “when you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them.”

To say “never have shame” in a world that reflexively trains victims to internalize blame is to challenge the very grammar of violence. Shame doesn’t spring from the wound itself; it is a social product, a mechanism that protects power by making the vulnerable feel small, isolated, and unworthy of witness. Pelicot stood against that mechanism, insisting that the weight of disgrace belongs not with the one attacked, but with those who inflicted the harm. 

This shift—simple in phrase but seismic in effect—is a reallocation of moral responsibility. Pelicot’s experience was nearly unimaginable in its scope: over many years, while drugged unconscious by her husband, she was raped repeatedly by dozens of men he invited into their home. The revelations emerged only after police investigating unrelated voyeurism found disturbing footage on her husband’s computer, revealing the systematic nature of the abuse. 

The instinct of the criminal justice system in many societies is to protect the privacy of victims, to sequester their experiences in sealed rooms and sealed pages. But Pelicot refused this protection precisely because that privacy historically serves perpetrators far more than survivors. By opening the courtroom to the public gaze, she made the crime visible on her terms. She turned the spotlight from hidden shame to exposed accountability. The shame was no longer something lodged in her voice or bowed shoulders; it was something placed squarely on the acts of her husband and the men who participated with him. 

Her words—it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them—are not a palliative or a slogan. They are a methodological shift in how we think about collective responsibility. When Pelicot articulated this during her testimony, she was not issuing a comforting platitude; she was proposing a restructuring of who bears the emotional and moral cost of violence. Victims are too often taught to apologize for surviving. Her stance interrupts that conditioning. 

And yet, there is humility in her refusal of the language of heroism. When observers called her brave, she deflected—not because she was unheroic, but because courage abstracted from consequence is a story we tell to feel comfortable again. Pelicot described her persistence as “will and determination to change society,” not simply personal endurance. Courage for her was not a static trait but a sustained commitment to truth-telling in the face of denial, minimization, and cultural avoidance.

In insisting that victims should “never have shame,” Pelicot forces us to examine the structures that scaffold shame in the first place. What does it mean that we accept a culture where consent is poorly understood, where “I didn’t think it was rape” is offered as a defense? What does it mean that survivors must navigate not only the trauma of assault but the expectation of self-silencing? These questions are not rhetorical. They point toward the very conditions that allow violence to become normative rather than aberrant. 

There is no quick fix here, no singular legislative moment that will instantly dissolve centuries of conditioning. But there is a shift that begins in language and extends into empathy. When we stop locating shame in the body of the victim and start locating it in the conduct of the perpetrator, we begin the work of dismantling stigmas that function as social glue, holding in place systems that protect the powerful and isolate the vulnerable.

Pelicot’s call is, at once, an invitation and a demand. She invites survivors to reject the internalization of shame. She demands that society change the terms of its moral imagination. To reject shame is to reclaim narrative authority over one’s own life. It is to declare that harm is not a mark of dishonor but a testament to an injustice that must be addressed, not hidden.

In a cultural moment saturated with testimonies—some celebratory, others mournful—Pelicot’s voice resonates because it refuses to locate dignity in silence. Her message matters because it disassembles a foundational assumption: that victims should be quiet. Instead, she insists that silence belongs to the perpetrators who hide their acts behind euphemism and denial.

This is not merely about visibility. It’s about truth. To say “never have shame” is to assert that survivors deserve a world where their stories are not obstacles to justice but bridges to change.

And if we are listening—truly listening—we might begin to understand that the redistribution of shame is not an act of forgiveness, but an act of radical accountability.