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After coming forward about director Brett Ratner's alleged sexual misconduct, actress Olivia Munn has written an open letter about Hollywood's constant subjugation of women and the systems that keep problematic men in power.
"The system that lets men like Ratner and Allen back in, is the same system that creates disparity," Munn wrote for Entertainment Weekly. "It’s tilted to roll back into their favor while the rest of us are saddled with a Sisyphean task."
SEE ALSO:6 women, including Olivia Munn, accuse director Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct"In our world today — and it’s not just Hollywood, it’s the same for girls and women all over the world who have survived sexual abuse and/or harassment — abusers don’t usually get in trouble unless the victim is broken first, because the violating act alone is not damaging enough to spark society’s outrage," Munn wrote. She described the cycle as "a marathon towards self-destruction in order to gain credibility and a vicious circle of victim-blaming."
In November, Munn and five other women accused director Brett Ratner of sexual misconduct. Munn spoke further with the Los Angeles Times about the systemic gender problems in Hollywood and how it will be difficult – but possible – to cure the entertainment industry of its egregious flaws.
"Imagine Hollywood as a mountain with all of the powerful people positioned at the top," Munn wrote in EW. "The rest of us have to push a boulder up this hill while running through numerous gauntlets and any abuse we encounter is just par for the course and accepted. I know it’s acceptable abuse because no matter how badly certain people fuck up, they fall right back to their position of power while most people have to go to the back of the line and earn their way back up."
Once again, she's referring to Ratner's years of success and Allen's continued acceptance into Hollywood's inner circle (Dylan Farrow has maintained for decades that Allen sexually abused her, from 1993 through to an L.A. Times column on Dec. 7).
Finally, Munn insisted not only on a seismic change, but on the fact that it ispossible if everyone – in Hollywood and beyond – commits to creating a better environment for women in the future.
We can use this moment to create a lasting shift. We should create a zero-tolerance policy with actionable consequences for sexual assault and any other forms of abuse. Heads of studios, bosses, and CEOs should enforce equal pay because continuing to pay us less perpetuates a bias that women are inferior. This trains boys at a young age not to recognize when girls are refusing their advances and grooms young girls to believe they can’t or shouldn’t fight back. So when a 14-year-old girl is on a date and tells her boyfriend she doesn’t want to have sex but he pushes her to do it anyway, there is an inherent feeling that he’s allowed to do what he wants because he’s worth more. It’s not a conscious thought, rather it is the collective unconscious of the world that has been encoded in all humans for centuries.
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