Behind The Veneer Is Hollywood’s Sociopathic Gatekeepers As They Make Their Prey
If it isn’t safe for Terry Crews then it is absolutely treacherous for women
Disclaimer: It certainly didn’t take the ongoing battle against sexual assault and injustice with Terry Crews to elicit this response from me. I have been aware of such forms of deviancy from a tender age. It is one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” instances of suppression where you are simply overpowered, overwhelmed, and overly stigmatized by an intractable stream of consciousness that pervades our society and damages its collective psyche. When such deviancy becomes the social norm it is beyond appalling, it is demonstrably cannibalizing and disgusting.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t dilemma is the kind of thing that simply wears you down into submission in light of the consequences. Consequences that range in the various circumstances of having invested in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The journey is not without its tolls on you; the wear and tear on you; and the maintenance and upkeep of your sanity.
Why does it have to be this way, and why can’t we simply change this for the better?
It seems we have been taken in by this narrative written and directed by Hollywood of course about rape culture in America. The Harvard Crimson illustrated this well in a piece titled Rape and The Gatekeeper Narrative.
The problems with the gatekeeper model are many, but its most harrowing consequence is that it makes our culture unwilling to try incidences of sexual assault that do not look like “dark alley” scenarios in which women are raped by strangers. It has been well documented that the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults are committed not by strangers in dark alleys, but in private spaces by assailants who know their victims. Yet in a culture where the dominant sexual narrative is one in which men are aggressors to whom women halfheartedly cede sex, sexual assaults committed by acquaintances or partners all too often go unprosecuted because they are evocative of the model that pervades our cultural vocabulary.
When the imagery is not evocative of the Hollywood narrative of sexual assault as in the case of Terry Crews, a black man whose 6’ 3’’ muscle-bound stature resembles that of a defensive linebacker in the NFL, then there is a failure to register what exactly is sexual assault all of a sudden.
What further confounds these social ills is that the ahistorical record has it that Black men have the monopoly on rape. The way President Trump tells it today Mexican men now have that monopoly. However, there is no racial monopoly on rape.
Mr. Crews, who is 49 alleges that Adam Venit a Hollywood agent groped him at a event in 2016, an accusation that Venit has denied but seemingly has other similar gatekeepers caught off-guard and alarmed by the reaction of Mr. Crews seizing this moment to call out what appears to be a Hollywood norm that is being misunderstood. To them Crews is blowing this out of proportion, by their look at it, which is given to be an unsubstantiated claim for perception is the reality.
Variety has reported that Adam Venit will not face prosecution for the sexual assault alleged.
Mr. Crews seems to be having to go to great lengths to beg and plead his case. He has gone as far as testifying before a Senate Committee in Congress.
“The assault lasted only minutes, but what he was effectively telling me while he held my genitals in his hand, was that he held the power,” Mr Crews told the committee in his opening statement. “That he was in control.”
It is important to note that Mr. Crews went on to make these statements without racializing it, by mentioning that…
“This is how toxic masculinity permeates culture.”
Control mechanisms
But this assault didn’t adhere to Hollywoods standards, which seems to set the standards for society in general in so many perceptively perverse ways. Standards that are conveyed through the narratives they perscribe as our reality. Standards that are either extremely rare and hard to live up to — much less imitate, and that are sometimes just devoid of reality. Their unsolicited dictates precede law and order in many cases and could only be seen as fundamentally tampering with the jury of public opinion.
The gatekeeper model is also harmful to male victims of sexual assault. Typically cast as aggressors of sexual activity, male victims, too, face hostility and skepticism.The myth that males can’t be victims of sexual violence, rooted in our cultural perception of men as sexually aggressive initiators rather than reluctant receivers, deters men from reporting sex crimes and prevents us from prosecuting the rape of men. Shockingly, until October 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s definition of rape — “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” — failed to acknowledge even the possibility of male rape. (In fact, an estimated 10 percent of rape victims are male.)¹
The sentimental trepidations of and with the Hollywood elite and its privileges are the only aspects of the discourse and deliberation that is being overblown and plainly highfalutin. Their misappropriating of social capital is mired in the sociopathy that they curate as prized human possessions in their highly regarded milieu.
The Hollywood standard has always been male dominated and it continues to this day. But with the welcomed contribution of more women and people of color joining the ranks in gatekeeper roles, it is my hope that they redefine and discard the gatekeeper mentality altogether that either directly or indirectly is used for exploitation. Sexual assault is often oversimplified and rooted in strong unrestrained sexual desire, but it really is more so about control.
