These are not easy days to be a feminist in America. The film industry, as well as other progressives in American society, are still reeling over the election of a man who admits to having sexually assaulted women, knowingly using his celebrity to exploit them. Over the last several days a video surfaced (thank you, Elle) from a 2013 interview with the Academy-Award-winning Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, in which he talks about how he and Marlon Brando conspired to film a rape scene involving butter with the actress Maria Schneider on the set of the Last Tango in Paris, a film that was nominated for two Academy Awards and many other accolades.

It’s important to note that Schneider, who died in 2011, told the Daily Mail in an interview way back in 2007 that she “felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci”. Although the rape scene was simulated, stories differ as to what Schneider was told in advance of the shoot. What is not in doubt is that a 19-year-old was blindsided by a bunch of older men who, according to Bertolucci, “wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress”.

This woman said she was “a little bit raped” almost a decade ago yet there was no response, no outcry, like there was this weekend. The common theme is that we continue to disbelieve women who are assaulted. It took over 50 women to come forward for the world to believe that Bill Cosby might have been sexually assaulting women for decades. People (even our best and most feminist actresses) still have no problem working with Roman Polanski or Woody Allen, and others whom the world knows have multiple issues with women. And, by the way, Bertolucci was one of the signers of a 2009 petition demanding that Polanski be released from Switzerland while the US was trying to extradite him.

It took Bertolucci admitting to facilitating the rape scene and saying that he “felt guilt but not regret” over what he did for people to believe Schneider, who unfortunately is no longer here to realise the benefits of his confession. Neither is Brando, who according to the reports was also traumatised by what happened. If you read what happened to Schneider after making the film, the suicide attempts and drug problems which were attributed at the time to the onslaught of fame, in hindsight we can see that this woman had PTSD (something that is common with people who have suffered from rape and other traumas) because she had to cover up her own violation and it tortured her for the rest of her life.

The fact that Bertolucci has no “regret” over the scene – because I guess he thought in a warped and unacceptable way that she wouldn’t be able to act like she was being violated if she knew it was coming – belies a complete lack of responsibility. Say “I was wrong and I shouldn’t have done it”. Own it. You made a career as a result of this film, off the back of a woman whom you conspired to mislead for your own interests. She was a 19-year-old actress and you could – and should – have trusted her to do her job on that scene, just like you trusted her to do in other scenes. Maybe you didn’t tell her because she would have said no, and you didn’t want to deal with that?

It would be a different story if this sad tale of Maria Schneider were an isolated incident in the film community – but it’s not. The so-called progressive community of Hollywood hides behind its liberal values while paying men more, not hiring women in equal numbers, sexualising women, kicking women out when they are no longer “fuckable” and, yes, raping them. Rose McGowan and Tippi Hedren are two women actors who have been vocal about their own sexual assaults.

Rape is used as a device in TV and films with such regularity that we are almost immune to it. It is used over and over again in one of the most contentious movies of this awards season, Elle. For those who haven’t seen it, Isabelle Huppert’s character is raped multiple times in the film. There have been a variety of differing opinions related to the “grey area” of whether her character is complicit with her rape. Huppert is no Schneider in this piece. She knew exactly what she was getting into and is winning accolades for the film; she won a Gotham Award last week.

For me there is no grey area. Rape is rape. The stats suggest that between 90-98% of rape survivors tell the truth, yet rape is a felony where the victim is often disbelieved and in turn the conviction rate is absurdly low. When any movie tries to create nuance over an issue that is an epidemic in our culture, we all need to stand up. Movies are not just movies. They are touchstones, reflections of our culture of where we are, of who we all want to be.

• This article was amended on 7December 2016 to remove the impression that the rape scene in Last Tango in Paris was not simulated.