Years of silent oppression, abuse, and disregard of women’s experiences with sexual harassment, assault, and rape, has recently taken a turn. In late 2017, continuing into 2018, a movement started that continues to grow in recognition and potency with the fury and unrelenting dedication of women who will accept being silenced no longer. This new empowerment was brought about largely in the film industry, with actresses sharing their experiences of being taken advantage of and then oppressed into silence. With a relaunch of a hashtag #MeToo by a well-known actress, an air of solidarity was created that became the Time’s Up Movement in Hollywood, a coalition of actresses and actors who demand perpetrators’ accountability for years of abuse. This has opened the door for other men and women to come forward and name their attackers in fields from health care to tech to agriculture to hospitality and beyond (Zacharek, Dockterman, & Edwards, 2017). Many ask, why now? What has happened in society to allow for this freedom of expression and enfranchisement? The many previous years of hushed suffering and this recent phenomenon can be examined through a social psychological lens. Looking back in our evolutionary history, the need to belong and the threat of social exclusion have come with powerful enticements and consequences respectively. Acceptance and rejection were the differences between safety and being cut off from a social group, which provided resources and protection in a threatening world. Thus, we live according to the rules of a social reality. We look to others as a guide for action, as their behavior provides valuable information but also leads to potentially maladaptive conformity pressures. Many factors increase this conformity, including unanimity, social proof, and the characteristics of the group, however those same factors if altered can lead to divergence. Looking specifically at women in the film industry, these variables of conformity were present in the years of their oppression and have been altered in the process of change, enlightenment, and progress in the past few years.
In understanding the numerous years of hundreds of women’s imposed silence in Hollywood, many of whom were taken advantage of by the same people, one must of course take into account historical and societal oppression of women; however, looking from a social theory standpoint, issues arise of conformity and group thought. The conformity pressures imposed on these women were strengthened by the appearance of unanimity. Aronson and Aronson (2018) describe the absence of dissenting voices as creating an illusion of unanimity. In this condition, individuals are dissuaded from believing that another option or path might exist. They must contend with their own goals and opinions versus being accepted by and staying in the good graces of the majority. People are vigilant to social information, and this may help explain how latent thoughts or experiences translate to overt choices and actions. MacCoun (2012) describes this concept in a framework of the “burden of social proof.” This states that for many issues we must track social consensus, meaning who shares our position and who favors an opposite position. Whether an individual conforms to the consensus or takes an opposing position is affected by uncertainty, normative influence, coercive power, expert power, attitude importance, accessibility, and more. Looking back 25 years, NPR provides a clear example of the perpetuation of women’s silence in the face of abuse in the entertainment industry as a function of social proof. When internationally-known playwright Israel Horovitz sexually assaulted and raped multiple women under the guise of expecting appreciation for helping them with their careers, a few of them came forward. A reporter took up the story and published an article outing Horowitz’s practices, and no consequences followed (Schmidt et al., 2018). Many other stories followed this line, where reporting the abuse of a powerful figure in the industry changed nothing except the accuser losing his or her job. The takeaway of social proof for women being abused was that the industry sanctioned this behavior of powerful individuals and there was no outlet for recourse—a dissenting voice would not go very far. Thus, the status quo was maintained not to come forward regarding experiences of abuse.
Conformity to this idea is also influenced by how an individual feels in a particular group and the characteristics of the ones exerting pressure. The security and acceptance a person feels in their belonging to a group greatly affects conformity to group pressures (Aronson & Aronson, 2018). In this case, perpetrators of abuse in the industry not only threaten actresses’ careers but also promise physical harm in retribution if they speak out. To illustrate this, actress Selma Blair reported that a director, after sexually abusing her, threatened to stab out her eyes with a Bic pen if she spoke about it, and then continued to slander her in the industry for years (Zacharek et al., 2017). These are extreme pressures but they point to the issue of the absence of organizations and legislation that protected and advocated for individuals’ rights to feeling safe and secure in the industry (and beyond) for many years. Policies on sexual harassment in the workplace did not even exist until very late in the 20th century (Siegel, 2003). Without that sense of security, people are not as likely to voice disagreement with the group to which they belong. To speak to the group exerting the pressure, or the perpetrators of abuse, Aronson and Aronson (2018) state that people are more effective at driving conformity if they are experts, have high social status, and have certain similarities with the group. These descriptors are ringers for those in the industry abusing women—high powered, acclaimed, “experts” of the field in which many of their victims were aspiring to climb.
This combination of existing social proof, the normative influence of powerful individuals in the industry sanctioning this behavior, limited accessibility to outlets to express this pain, lack of security within the group (and in general), and characteristics of the oppressors converged to create a norm of repression and silence for those affected. So, what changed? The same factors that created this level of conformity began to shift, and when certain people were in the right place at the right time they induced a major transformation. This would be described by Gladwell (2000) as the “tipping point.” Security for women within the industry increased with additional laws and Supreme Court rulings: punishing someone for reporting sexual harassment was made illegal, funds were distributed to ensure fair trials and living situations for victims of sexual assault, and sexual harassment trainings in the workplace were increased (“Facts,” n.d.). This increased sense of safety combined with new outlets for expressing shared experience (e.g. social media, diverse news media, etc.) emboldened widely known actress Ashley Judd to expose producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual advances towards her in The New York Times. Soon after, another popular actress shared a friend’s Twitter hashtag of #MeToo, encouraging women to post if they had ever been sexually abused or assaulted. This ignited a wildfire of retweets and collective experience, and a few short months later Time’s Up was founded, which was a call to action against sexual harassment in the industry as well as a legal defense fund to support low-income individuals seeking justice for such issues. Finally, this all was leading to actual consequences for the accused, thus altering the landscape of social proof. The unanimity of repression and silence was shattered—starting with these famous, talented actresses, more and more dissenting voices to the past precedent began to diminish the power of the pressuring group. Very quickly, just as these women had been under the heel of group pressure, the scale tipped to the other side. Defending the perpetrators of abuse became dangerous, and many abusers lost support even from within their own families.
The social system of conformity that was at play in women’s forced silence regarding rampant sexual abuse included illusory unanimity, lack of support and security in the oppressed, and authority and influence in the oppressor. As the foundations of these factors began to shift in the 21st century, a momentum of empowerment began that eventually rendered once formidable group pressures fragile and mutable. The implications of this analysis must be to view certain patterns of oppression as heavily impacted by social psychology. While this paper approached an inspiring women’s movement from the perspective of “why now?” this was not to place blame on victims of abuse for a hesitancy or delay to come forward. Instead, this was done to examine the power of social structures, the need to belong being exemplified to equate survival—keeping a job, avoiding social stigma, escaping physical danger—even when the consequences of that belonging are so high. This social psychological theory can be applied to other populations facing stigmatization and oppression. Group pressures to conform to potentially unpopular, dangerous, or unjust practices should be evaluated to determine whether every member of the group has equal footing, the platform to openly express opinions, and organizations and regulations set up to protect them. This could also be expanded to include how social theories explain the opposite side of the Time’s Up movement, and others like it, to understand what structures our society has in place to enable years of successful coercion and harassment by certain individuals. Taking a wider perspective of these issues from this social lens allows more understanding of complicated trajectories of movements such as #MeToo or Time’s Up. It allows us to understand what changes in our culture and society allow for positive transformation, and it is those factors along with the sheer tenacity and fire in these women’s stories and spirits that have turned the tables on negative conformity pressures and have broken through to the other side. And they have only just begun.