Over the course of the last few months, it seems that everybody and their dog has developed an opinion on the Hollywood sex abuse scandal. This is pretty much to be expected, though, seeing as it's been on every front page of every newspaper and website since we first found out about
Harvey Weinstein's actions back in October.
The vast majority of these opinions have been in support of the victims, as was evident from the '#metoo' hashtag on Twitter, the outpouring of warmth and affirmation from other people in similar situations, and Time's decision to give their Person of the Year title to 'The Silence Breakers'.
However, there is a significant amount of people who believe that some of the allegations are false, or that the victims are at least partly to blame for what happened to them.
Matt Damon has already come under fire for making comments of this nature, and now it appears that Sir Ian McKellen, too, has taken a similar stance.
The 78-year-old actor, famed for his roles in Lord of the Rings and X Men, came forward in a public speech at the Oxford Union to imply that women pretty much asked to be assaulted in the film and TV industry.
"People must be called out and it's sometimes very difficult for victims to do that. I hope we're going through a period that will help to eradicate it altogether," he said, which is fair enough. However, he then went on to say:
"But from my own experience, when I was starting acting in the early sixties, the director of the theatre I was working at showed me some photographs he got from women who were wanting jobs ... some of them had at the bottom of their photograph 'DRR' — directors' rights respected. In other words, if you give me a job, you can have sex with me.
"That was commonplace from people who proposed that they should be a victim. Madness. People have taken advantage of that and encouraged it and it absolutely will not do."
In other words, because it used to be expected that male directors would take advantage of their employees as a sort of perk of the job, that same expectation still applies today - but now those being taken advantage of are "proposing" that they are victims.
However, McKellen - who describes himself as an "actor and activist" - fails to note that the 1960s were a time of rampant misogyny, and women conformed to these male-enforced regulations because they really had no other choice. Sleeping one's way to the top was never the first choice when it came to making progress in a challenging industry but, unfortunately, a lot of women learned that allowing themselves to be used in such a way would give them a job that they'd otherwise worked incredibly hard for.
Even back then, it was still assault. Though women may have "respected" the "director's rights", it should have never have been within the director's rights to sleep with an employee anyway. That's like saying that corporal punishment isn't child abuse in some places because it's permitted by law.
McKellen also mentioned the allegations against
Kevin Spacey, noting that his choice to come out as gay instead of fully address the complaints against him was a poor one. "The circumstances in which he chose to [reveal his sexuality] are reprehensible because it linked alleged underage sex with a declaration of sexuality."
In doing so, Sir Ian, who came out as gay in 1988, seem to paint himself as more of a victim than the hundreds (if not thousands) of women who were sexually assaulted against their will in order to keep their jobs.
This problem still exists in Hollywood, and indeed in many other industries around the globe. While McKellen might not have realized the full implications of his statements, he should really consider the impact that assault cases have on women, and that nobody would ever
choose to be a victim.
