planetwebber

Advice for the World Regarding the Treatment of Women

For the past couple of years, I’ve been trying to make the comedy community safer for women. Sometimes I connect women who have the same abuser. Sometimes I contact theaters directly to warn them about dangerous men. Sometimes I make a post on social media warning other people about dangerous men. Sometimes I tell show bookers names of dangerous men so they don’t book them. Sometimes I talk to reporters, when it seems like no one is listening to these women, and everyone is siding with their abuser.

Before I started doing this, I was just, ya know, doing comedy. I was on improv teams and sketch teams and did stuff at different theaters, and it was cool. After I started doing it, it became what everyone associated me with, which is also fine. Women started hitting me up more and more, just to talk, or to ask me if other women had come to me with a name of a certain guy that they’d just had a bad experience with, or to ask me for resources to get help dealing with rape and abuse, or to ask me how to get a restraining order.

In these past few years, most people have been awesome and had kind things to say about this whole process. Other people, though, labelled me difficult, or a feminist bitch, or said I must have some sort of ulterior motive to be doing all of this (although I’ve still yet to hear what that ulterior motive might be). People I had been cool with for years started ignoring me, or saying stuff behind my back (which yes, always gets back to me, by the way), I never got a job out of being “the woman who helps other women talk about their assault.” I never made a team at a theater because I was “the woman who tells people not to book the guy that raped seven women.” Quite honestly, it would be dope as fuck if I could go back to just, ya know, doing comedy. This has all been exhausting, and I’ve spent countless hours doing it, all the while hoping that eventually, it would get significantly better, and I wouldn’t have to do it anymore.

Here’s the thing, though: Every time something like the Harvey Weinstein thing happens, people talk about it for a while and wring their hands and say they’re shocked and things have to change and oh! Look at this! It must be changing if this happened and soon there won’t be guys like this anymore! But there are always guys like that. Most of the guys women have come to me about in the comedy community are still actively performing in the comedy community. Most of them have not been banned from theaters. Most of them are still highly regarded. Most of them will never be “outed” as predators, and will continue victimizing newer, younger improvisers.

So, I have some advice if we ever REALLY want things to change for women. This can be applied to any community you’re in. It doesn’t just work for comedy. It works for sports and chess and poker and theater and tech companies and basically anything where men and women interact (and even places they don’t). This is based on some of the things I hear most commonly (mostly from men, but there have also been women as well) when stuff like the Weinstein thing happens. By the way, if you’re reading this right now and thinking “I really want to talk to Gina about X, Y, and Z because maybe she’s never had that conversation with a guy before,” I have. Trust me, I have. I have patiently had hours long conversations with guys who have said and done every single one of these things on this list to me. I had one just yesterday, and it was about the 10th guy I’d had that conversation with. If you’re a guy and you doubt women, or think some women are telling the truth but a lot of them lie, it’s not my job to educate you. If you don’t know the statistics on false rape accusations, or how infrequently rape cases go to trial, or the psychology of why a victim might not go forward to the cops about a sexual assault, yes, I will likely patiently explain them to you over and over and over, but every time I do, I die a little, because that shouldn’t be on me. You should be actively educating yourself about those things or, ya know, shutting the hell up about them. Hopefully this guide is a first step to doing that. Without further ado, here is a pattern of behavior I’ve noticed when guys get outed as predators:

Some women will say, “He never did that to me!”

Yeah, we know. Someone can still be a murderer just because he hasn’t murdered every single person he ever met. You know the same is true of rapists, right? Tip for the women: stop saying this. For real. Stop saying it. It makes it harder for the women who HAVE been assaulted by those guys. To be 100% fucking clear, I’m not saying lie and say “Yes he did that to me” when he didn’t. But there’s no reason to weigh in on threads where other women are sharing their stories. There’s no reason to have that be the first thing you say. Because when you do that, it leads right into my next thing…

Men will hear that a guy didn’t do it to EVERY woman, and assume the women he did it to are lying

Yes, this seems nuts (again, see my previous statement about murderers) but it happens more than you’d think. I have heard “Well my girlfriend worked with that guy for a while and she said he never did anything to HER, so maybe those other women are lying, or maybe he was joking around with them and the women didn’t realize it.” Again, I will say this a billion times: people treat everyone differently. This should not be a hard concept to grasp.

People will say they’re shocked

I absolutely understand the impulse to say this, but think about what it’s actually doing. It’s showng women that, unless a guy is so blatantly a piece of shit to women in front of men, people will always be shocked when she comes forward about her abuse. It makes a hard hard hard hard thing even harder. It also makes other people who didn’t bother looking into the details say “Hmm a lot of people are saying they’re shocked. I wonder if there’s more to this story than just what the women say.” Change your public proclamations of “I’m shocked” to “I’m horrified, and I believe women.”

Men (and some women) will ask if the internet is the best place for these allegations to be brought up

Yep, women realize that making a series of tweets where you out a predator isn’t the most ideal circumstance (mainly because she will IMMEDIATELY start getting death threats from the toilet bowl that is the internet community) but what’s your solution? Institutions and the justice system have failed women over and over and over again (again, not my job to give you statistics on it, but go look it up) and when rape is one of the most under reported crimes, and one of the most under prosecuted crimes, and when institutions would rather ignore what’s going on than open up a whole can of worms by actually investigating this stuff and then publicly outing rapists, it’s the best system we’ve got. I agree that in a perfect world, where men and women are legitimately equal, and rape victims aren’t shamed and don’t have their careers ruined and relationships affected by this, we wouldn’t have to do it that way. But we don’t live in that perfect world. We live in this one. You saying this helps jack shit, and it’s not an original thought either, so keep it to yourself.

Men (and some women) will ask why the internet was the FIRST place a woman went to, instead of the cops

First of all, it isn’t. No woman gets raped and then immediately goes online to post about it. It’s an agonizing decision, and in almost every single case I’ve dealt with, it’s a last resort at the end of a long road. Many women DO go to the cops (look up the number of untested rape kits in New York alone). Many women DO go to the theaters (or whatever institution they’re involved in). Many women DO go to HR and their employers. If you’ve never gone through any of these systems, you don’t know how utterly impossible it is to see any real action. The Weinstein thing blew up online and then it was taken seriously. You see this time and time and time again. A company doesn’t fire a rapist until there’s public backlash (Bill O’Reilly, anyone?). A theater doesn’t ban a performer until their bad behavior is common knowledge. Again, unless you have a solution, with detailed steps of how to put that solution in place, stop saying this.

People will say they believe most women, but are worried false allegations could ruin a man’s life

So, if this is your priority, one imaginary man who has been falsely accused, instead of real victims, you seriously, seriously have to reevaluate some shit. First off, there are actual rapists and assaulters and harassers who have faced zero repercussions even when everyone knows exactly what they did. People knew Bill Cosby drugged and raped women for YEARS. Look up how much he’s worth and how he still books speaking engagements and shows. Casey Affleck won an Academy Award the same year his bad behavior came to light. Roman Polanski still makes movies. NFL players hit women on camera and CEO’s are given 15 million dollar severance packages and then move on to another company and another six figure job. Donald Trump is president. Who are these imaginary men whose lives are ruined? Second of all, if this is your first, knee jerk reaction thing to say, are you that concerned about people being falsely accused of other crimes? Unless reform of the justice system is like, your passion project and what you went to school for, why is this the hill you want to die on? Yes, it would be absolutely terrible for anyone to be accused of something they didn’t do. But telling women to be quiet, and telling people not to believe women because you’re concerned about someone being falsely accused ignores the statistics on how infrequently that happens.

Someone will say, “But I knew a guy once who got falsely accused”

By far the thing I hear the most when debating with guys is anecdotal stories about how someone’s friend knew a crazy woman with a vendetta. Great. Thanks for that. You do realize statistics speak louder than anecdotal evidence, right? You do realize that people who say “Oh but one time, I was mugged by a POC, so it makes me suspicious of all POC now” is racist, just like “Oh a woman did this thing once, so now I’m suspicious of women and their motivations” is sexist, right? Also, by the way, unless this happened directly to you, have you considered your buddy is lying to you about what DID happen? Because, ya know, it really wouldn’t behoove a dude to say “Oh yeah in college a woman accused me of this… and I totally did it! Crazy, right?”

It’s okay to have sympathy for your guy friend who is outed as a predator, as long as you have WAY MORE SYMPATHY for the women he victimized

I know a lot of woke dudes who claim they believe women, make the right posts on social media, march in all the women’s marches, who also immediately close ranks when a dude being accused of something is their friend. I get it, it sucks when you’re friends with the dude. It’s happened to me many, many times. In most cases, I don’t talk to those guys anymore. I know there’s a lot at play here. Some guys feel so guilty that they were friends with a guy like this (and maybe looked the other way when some questionable stuff happened) that it’s way easier to just assume the women are lying than to deal with your own guilty feelings. I also know it’s hard to tell a friend “Hey you’re a rapist, I believe women, I will no longer be associating with you.” It’s hard to kick that guy off your team, or out of your apartment, if he’s your roommate, or un-book him from a show, or un-invite him to a party, or to firmly decide to never work with or refer him for anything again. You know what else is hard? Dealing with being raped. I’d wager that second one’s harder. Just know that the guys that do this stuff are often masters at hiding it. They’re masters at covering it up, too, or downplaying it, or making it seem like it’s an isolated incident and the woman is just a jealous ex, or a jilted lover. So, which is more likely? Is it more likely that a woman hatched a plan, falsely accused a man, put her reputation on the line, was ostracized from her peer group and her community just to accuse a guy on the off off off off chance that this one accusation would ruin his life, even though that almost never happens, and then she doubled down on it and kept repeating the story, or is it more likely that you maybe didn’t know that dude as well as you thought?

Someone will ask why some women kept dating a guy, or kept in contact with a guy, after he raped her

Again, I don’t have the energy to explain the pathology of victims to you, so I’ll try and simplify it. Do you believe that Bill Cosby is a rapist? Hopefully, with over 50 accusers, your answer is yes. Do you know that a lot of those women kept in contact with Cosby after he raped them? A lot of the time, it’s the only way the brain can process a terrible thing happening to them (uh oh I guess I do have time to explain some of the pathology). Keeping in contact with an abuser can make a woman feel like she has some modicum of control. She thinks that if she can just understand why it happened, if she can change the guy’s behavior, maybe what happened to her doesn’t have to shatter her life. If you accept that there are women who stay in abusive marriages and relationships for years, you ALSO have to accept the fact that maybe that girl your buddy was dating texted him a couple times (or yes, even slept with him a couple times) after he raped her or assaulted her. It happens. Start understanding that.

I need more details/names/evidence that something happened

Okay so this is probably the most common thing I hear when stuff like this goes down. I get it. I’m a curious person. I’m a logical person, almost to a fault. I want to know every detail of everything at all times. But also, you get why a woman who has been dealing with being raped might not want to talk to every dude in the improv scene directly so he can question her at length about how she was raped, right? You know that, in most crimes, there isn’t any evidence, right? You know that even if those women DO release statements, like the Cosby victims did, they still get so so so much shit for it, and there will still be doubters, right? And finally, who decides when there is enough proof? For me, I believe women, but once a second woman comes to me with a similar complaint about a guy, I 100% fucking believe. For some, they need text/chat/email evidence. For others, they need the woman to go to the cops and get a rape kit (which won’t be tested, likely). You’re not the arbiter of what a woman has to do to come forward about her abuse. At this point, I have dealt with enough abused women to know what they sound like. You could research stories, read psychology textbooks, get certified as a counselor to learn what to listen for, and how women talk about these experiences, and then you’d know for yourself, but it’s much easier just to doubt, right?

Some guy will be worried that women will go too far, and start accusing everyone of everything (including him)

Look, if you’ve never raped or harassed or assaulted a woman and you’re worried about women in the community talking, I get it. You’re a good guy who might be a little awkward around women and you’re concerned that you unknowingly offended a woman once or flirted in a weird way and now you’ll be named online and your life will be ruined. Let me allay those fears for you. That’s not how this works. It’s not how it happens. It’s not what women want. We want to be protected from predators and abusers. Please please please please please please trust us that we know the difference between an awkward dude and a predator. We’ve been dealing with men since we hit puberty. This is also why you need to believe us when we say a guy is bad. If someone lived in Ohio for 20 years and said to you, “Oh let me tell you this thing about Ohio,” you wouldn’t be like “Oh okay yeah but I know Ohio casually and think your take on it is wrong.” So, if a woman says “I’ve been dealing with creepy guys for 20 years, and I know this guy is creepy” you shouldn’t say “Oh no he’s just a little off kilter, you’re wrong. I know I’m not a woman and he’s never been like that to me, but your experience is wrong.” Just, trust me, we know the difference, and that means we know the difference with you, and again, if you haven’t done anything, you have nothing to worry about.

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If you’ve made it this far, kudos. My suspicion is you were already someone who didn’t do this stuff, and that the people who REALLY need to read it probably read the first sentence and said “Ugh Gina. She has some ulterior motive for writing this. Let me go make a passive aggressive tweet about her or make fun of her tonight with a buddy at my improv show” and then didn’t think about it again. Hopefully that’s not the case. Hopefully, the next time a guy gets accused of something (I feel like with the rate we’re going, it’ll be any day now), you take a second to read back through this and think about it, and do some research.

I’ll end by saying this: Typically, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s two women, there are almost always more. If you want a bare minimum to take away here, it’s that if two women speak out about a guy, or had an experience with a guy involving rape, harassment, assault, etc, that should be it for you. You should believe those women. Ideally, you believe it when it’s one woman, but baby steps. Guys, it’s easy to hate Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, but what we need you to do is speak out when it’s your friend, or your coworker, or your roommate, or your teammate. We need you to speak out against him, or, at the very least, distance yourself from him. We need you to stop saying things like “Oh yeah I know two women came forward but one is his crazy ex and the other is that other crazy woman, so…” This is why society is the way it is. It’s not going to change until everyone actively tries to change it.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Advice for the World Regarding the Treatment of Women