By Katherine Blakeman
If reports are true that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted many women over his lifetime in the movie business, what is it that drove him to do so? The larger question is, why are sexual assault and sexual harassment so prevalent in our society, so much so that the Weinstein scandal incited a #MeToo social media campaign generating over 12 million posts from women all across our society?
It is an important question, the answer to which could change culture and save lives. I would argue that men who sexually harass or assault women are products of our pornified culture, one that teaches boys, and girls, that a woman’s value lies predominantly in her sexuality. Some men valiantly resist our pornified culture’s influence; others run to it.
Thankfully, I never met Harvey Weinstein in person. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and their ilk are the only men in America whose behavior has not been influenced, and their sexual templates warped, by a culture that glamorizes sexual predation, rape myths, and the Playboy lifestyle.
And we are blind if we fail to see how drenched our country is in pornography and hyper-sexualized images, mostly of women.
