@OneEyedDiva Yup. People still say, "Why don't women make an outcry when these things happen!?"
It's all part of the
"What America needs is tougher, smarter victims" theory of law. It's also blame-the-victims rhetoric. When society blames the victims for not being louder, smarter, stronger, knowing the laws of the land, then society doesn't have to take a long, hard, piercing look at itself.
I don't know about your high school, but there was not a PEEP of basic law taught in mine as a required course and I don't think any legal class was required of my kids either.
Nowadays I believe a Basic Economics course is required in high school, to teach good ol' capitalism (which did so well in America partly because past generations exploited the
free labor of a a minority race, and of women, for two centuries), but I don't think a basic Constitutional Law class is required.
And the thing is, when you live in a society that ignores you, you do begin to realize that over the years. You learn your place. It's just like a bad marriage - you learn your role, your place in the hierarchy of things, and you also know that
if you dare to keep what you have, you cannot rock the boat.
Hollywood is a dysfunctional system all its own and believe me, women know their places there. They go along with the unwritten rules (like, one rule is don't piss off a powerful man or you will never work again) because they are trying to get hired
to work.
Mira Sorvino, a really good actor, was put on Weinstein's blacklist I believe because she wouldn't meet with him for one of these sordid hotel meetings? She was on the A-list for a while, starred in a very funny film,
Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, Roger Ebert gave it 3 of 4 stars.
After that she kind of disappeared into small role purgatory. When all the Weinstein stories were coming out, that's when I'd heard on one of the entertainment shows that she had been unofficially blacklisted by Weinstein because she would not "play".
Her father, Paul Sorvino, was a strong character actor with a very long career - one of those guys you've seen in a hundred things.
ANYWAY - don't tell us, establishment, this is not how life works in oh so many fields. People, male or female, don't want to piss off their powerful bosses lest they never work again.
Even in retirement - how many of us would talk trash IN PUBLIC about former employers? Some would, but others might remain silent because we know the bosses' supporters will shout us down. Free speech ain't free, regardless of what the laws of the land say.