For instance, when I flip past a television cop show, all of which now seem to feature male-female partners (meant to signal gender progress), I notice the male cop is invariably wearing a suit and the female cop is often busting out of a tank top. I suppose I could read this as a display of sexual confidence and toughness rather than a billboard for sexual availability, but the mandatory brandishing of breasts does seem to offset any gains in social power. Either way, she must be freezing.

The convergence between the sexed-up wardrobe onscreen and the sexed-up treatment of women offscreen seems both obvious and the great verboten subject. Seth MacFarlane was widely denounced for his painfully truth-telling (and name-naming) musical number, “We Saw Your Boobs,” at the 2013 Academy Awards — considerable umbrage was taken. But isn’t it a curious fact that so many directors manage to portray the complexity of their male characters with so much less of the actor’s anatomy displayed?

Demands for sexual pay-to-play by a rutting producer holding all the career cards may be horrific. It may well be criminal if force is involved (or perhaps not: Quid pro quo requests aren’t actually a crime, only a violation of civil employment law). But it’s not exactly a departure. In a system already rigged for sexual manipulation, what’s most notable about Harvey Weinstein is that he tried to rig it even more, traversing the distance between expectation, insistence and (some allege) force with such alacrity that his targets couldn’t even think.

Some say women commodifying our sexuality on our own terms is a form of empowerment. It’s a subject of continuing feminist debate, from Madonna’s heyday to sex workers’ unions. For my part, I wonder about the practical problems of transactional sex: How do you enforce the terms of the deal on an uneven playing field? Even in cases where women yielded to quid pro quo demands — and maybe a better term for this is “decision” rather than “choice” — it’s not clear that Mr. Weinstein actually came through with the goods. Wow, who would have thought such a stand-up guy couldn’t be trusted?

Traditionally, women are socialized to be sexually strategic; men not to take no for an answer. Feminism has tried to rewrite that narrative, but the culture remains saturated with images that normalize it, that make women’s sexuality our selling point. It’s not like any of this is hidden. Consider the armies of young women tottering around the nightclub district of any American city in camisoles and stilettos every weekend night of the year even in the dead of winter (aren’t they freezing?) because that’s what sexiness looks like onscreen, and maybe some form of reward will follow.

There’s no overestimating the importance #MeToo has had in forcing cultural change on industries and institutions across the country. It’s exciting to see that momentum start to transform the screen images that shape the larger culture too: Women playing down the come-hither thing, more offbeat-looking women, a few chunky women (and not just in comedy specials). Now how about those “window-dressing” roles too — or maybe calling a close to the era of women as window dressing altogether?

Mr. Weinstein may be our most flagrant monster at the moment. But what if the whole system is abhorrent? The basic acceptance of gender inequality is, to me, the subtext of his trial. It also happens to be the question our courts are least equipped to deal with.