Viraldice: This Is How Male Celebs Plan to Protest Sexual Assault at This Year’s Golden Globes

2017 has been a banner year for speaking out against sexual assault.

In early October, reports surfaced that producer Harvey Weinstein of the eponymous Weinstein company had sexually harassed, assaulted and raped over 80 women, and that he'd further kept his victims from speaking out by hiring actual Israeli spies to gaslight and intimidate them. Within days, numerous other accusations against other prominent men came gushing out.

 

There was Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, James Toback, Roy Moore, Louis C.K., Mario Batali – and the list went on and on and on. Across industries, a major upheaval was taking place. Women and men were finally speaking out, and they were using varied means to do so.

NEWS BREAK: A powerful person has been accused of sexual misconduct at a rate of nearly once every 20 hours since Harvey Weinstein.

— Dave Vescio (@DaveVescio) December 29, 2017

There was the MeToo hashtag, and MeAtFourteen. There were the protests, the pussy hats, the heartrending exposes in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Hollywood Reporter.

And then, in November came the news reports that prominent actresses were planning on dressing in black to the Golden Globes as a silent protest. This was not an altogether unexpected move. Observers had been looking to Hollywood to see how actresses would handle the scandals going into awards season.

After all, they were the ones most affected by the scandal. Of Harvey Weinstein’s 84 victims, most were actresses or aspiring actresses, and more than a handful were big names, including Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Heather Graham, Rosanna Arquette, Salma Hayek, etc.

While many lauded the protest, many more decried it as a meritless gesture that would bring about no real change. In fact, Rose McGowan, Weinstein’s most vocal accuser lambasted actresses in a now-deleted tweet stating, “YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa.”

Now, another group of Hollywood insiders is getting into the protest game – Hollywood men.