Harvey Weinstein represents a culture in which women are deemed either screen-bait or difficult. If these men are ‘dinosaurs’, bring on the asteroid

The Secret Actress is an Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated actor who lives and works in LA today.

I had a thought the other morning. Yet another actress I know was coming forward with her story of a foul encounter with Harvey Weinstein, and this thought swilled around in the grubby impression left by the details.

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I imagined three other powerful men I know in Hollywood. You can imagine them, too: they are sitting in bathrobes, sitting on terraces with (take your pick) canyon/ocean/city views; drinking (you decide) coffee/green tea/green juice, reading the news on paper/tablet/phone and wondering: “If the news is exposing Harvey, will it be coming for me next?”

Will the previously silent voices of interns/assistants/actresses (don’t pick – it’s all of them) come together through the edifying effects of solidarity, and finally say these men’s names, and the deeds they have done, because suddenly they will be heard. Suddenly we are listening.

And that’s only the three I know of.

It is time to remember that Hollywood is full of such men. Men who believe the natural order is to sexually advance on women who either work for them or are trying to get hired. I lost count of the number of unwanted hands that have touched my body in what I thought was a business situation. And I particularly remember one executive who sat stone-faced and silent for the 30-minute drive home after I refused to sleep with him following the Oscars. His parting shot before the car door slammed was to tell me I was a tease, and that I was making a “big mistake”, and that I’d never work for his studio again. While he has been true to his word, I took some satisfaction in telling him it would be my pleasure not to. What a tool.

As you can imagine – and as Emma Thompson so eloquently put it the other day – Harvey Weinstein is the tip of the bloody iceberg. The base of the iceberg seems to be a culture where there is no middle ground. Weinstein is vilified as an anomalous predator. But he is not an anomaly in Hollywood. He is the manifestation of a male-driven culture where women are deemed either screen-bait or difficult.

Everyone is rabidly reading the gory details of sexual assault and the fall of a Hollywood mogul, but this story is everywhere. We shouldn’t pay attention to this because the players are rich and famous. We should take it as an indication of what we are accepting.

I know it is hard when the president of the United States has himself endorsed the practice of “pussy-grabbing” and people who voted for him sanctioned that as mere “locker-room talk”. But for those of us who think this is not locker-room talk, but the reflection of deep misogyny – we are the ones who have to believe the women when they are brave enough to come forward. We have to hold these men accountable, and we have to hold ourselves accountable too.

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Weinstein referred to himself as a “dinosaur” and I have to say, I do like to imagine him and countless other men in positions of power, who seem to have such a slow and unevolved appreciation of women, standing in their bathrobes surveying their empires as the meteor streaks across the sky towards them.

And to all those men in my industry and everywhere who recognize their own behavior in Harvey’s: I hope you are silently tagging your dark secrets with #JeSuisHarvey. Because I am, and we are coming for you next.