According to the recent news reports, the world now knows what those in Hollywood have known for years: Harvey Weinstein is (allegedly) a predatory, serial sexually harassing, pervert.
The common denominator to all Weinstein’s alleged conduct is the presumption that women are merely objects who exist to be lusted after, used, and disposed of by males for their sexual pleasure.
This is often referred to as the objectification of women.
Now, granted, there is nothing new to the concept. Men have been objectifying women since the Fall of Man.
However, with the advent of media, meaning photography, film, video, and the internet, this age-old sin has been magnified to the nth degree. It’s what’s at the core of the pornography industry and, to a lesser, but no less real, degree much of the Hollywood film industry.
The University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism did a study of screen portrayals of women verses men for 100 top-grossing films from 2009. They found females more likely than males to be shown in sexy attire (25.8% vs. 4.7), with some exposed skin (23.6% vs. 7.4%), and referenced as attractive (10.9% vs. 2.5%). They found that even teenage females ages 13-20 years are just as likely as adult women to be portrayed in a sexual manner.
It’s ironic then that Hollywood is now uniformly lambasting Weinstein for his treatment of women. For them to act surprised that one of their producers is a sexual predator is like the Nazis criticizing Hitler for being anti-semitic. GS