It could be that a movement toward female equality in the entertainment industry won't be able to progress the way that most other equality movements have. The entertainment industry has been so toxic for women for so long that it could be that there are not enough women there to change anything.
Of the women who are there, so many of them are brainwashed that they either don't want change or have no idea how to articulate or discuss what's wrong.
Social movements for people who didn't have a choice about where to live might not be perfect templates for equality movements that are about what people want to do for work. The only choice that black Americans who didn't want to be subjected to American segregation had was to leave the United States or to try to end segregation. The only choice that American women who haven't wanted to be subjected to American sexism in their own homes have had is not to get married and not to have boyfriends; every heterosexual relationship in the United States is affected by sexism in one way or another, in 2016.
Sometimes, you have to demand that you be treated according to the truth of your equality, because not to do that is to spend the rest of your life at risk for being murdered. That was obviously true for black Americans, and has continued to be not quite as obviously true for American women.
Fairness is not always incorporated into logic; it depends on your perspective.
For example:
Marriage
Mary wants to get married, but she doesn't want to marry a misogynist. If everyone's a misogynist, then, if she doesn't get married, it's not because she doesn't want to get married, it's because she doesn't want to marry a misogynist.
A misogynist won't think about Mary's thought process that way; a misogynist will characterize Mary as a manhater who doesn't want to get married.
Work
Mary wants to work, but she doesn't want to be harassed. If she gets harassed everywhere that she works, and not objecting to being harassed is what is expected of her at work, then either she has to work while being harassed or she has to stop working.
A misogynist who expects Mary not to object to being harassed at work will tell Mary and everyone else that Mary isn't being mistreated. A misogynist will tell Mary that if Mary has a problem with the conditions at work, it's because Mary either doesn't want to work there or shouldn't be working there. Since Mary has had the same problems everywhere, the misogynist will say that Mary must be the problem, that SHE, Mary, is what is wrong and that nobody other than Mary is doing something wrong.
The only women whom the misogynist will hire and not fire are women who don't object to being harassed or who don't object when Mary is harassed; those are also women about whom the misogynist will say, when confronted by Mary or anyone else about how Mary is treated at work, "Nobody other than Mary has a problem with the conditions at work, and that includes all the women."
Even if some or all of the women where Mary works also feel harassed and know that Mary is not lying or crazy, they see what's happening to Mary because of Mary's objections and they don't want it to happen to them.
The Entertainment Industry Is Not Like Any Other Industry
If you write a script in which all the female characters have to be naked, then it is accurate to describe nudity as a requirement for the female roles. The word "accurate" in that context has no additional connotation; it doesn't mean "right," "fair," "respectful," "equal" or anything else. Actresses who want to work but who don't want to have to be naked to work and who refuse to be naked to be hired will accurately be told "You're not what we're looking for." If that happens for a century, then a lot of people in the entertainment industry and in the rest of the world will think that nudity is part of what actresses do, because most actresses do it.
A woman who has graduated from medical school and who is told "We only hire female doctors if they work naked" can file a lawsuit. That's true for every industry except the entertainment industry, because no other industry is able to abuse the right of free speech the way that the entertainment industry can. "Follow the script or get out" only happens without any restrictions in an industry where there is an actual script which can be written in any way that the people who have the power want it to be.
That is how men have continued to tyrannize the entertainment industry and to define the roles of women in that industry in ways that men in other industries haven't, as much as they would have liked to be able to. That is also why so many men in the entertainment industry are grotesquely, obliviously misogynist when their male counterparts in other industries aren't. Many other industries have changed because of the women's rights movements and because women have worked without being tyrannized in those industries for decades. Even though equality isn't entirely implemented anywhere, no industry hates, ridicules and attacks it as much as the entertainment industry does.
I don't know how the entertainment industry could be changed so that equality for women is normalized there; I think it should, but I don't know how.
Copyright L. Kochman, June 5, 2016 @ 7:54 p.m.
