Modern Day Witch Hunt

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In one of my previous blog posts, I spoke about the issue of sexual harassment and assault in the entertainment industry. Since then a lot of different men in the entertainment industry have been accused of sexual harassment and assault. Some of these accusations have been shockers others less so.

Now you might be thinking, why is Lara writing about this again? Isn’t it old news? Well, it’s a topic I keep very close to my heart as seeing as I am a feminist I will always be in favour of people speaking out against their harassers. On the other hand, I feel as if the number of allegations and the type of allegations has become slightly over the top and the repercussions have gotten out of hand. Liam Neeson, the actor best known for his role in Taken, has spoken out against the sheer amount of allegations flying around recently.

There is a bit of a witch hunt happening too. There's some people, famous people, being suddenly accused of touching some girl's knee or something and suddenly they're being dropped from their programme....

Neeson, in this case, was referencing the allegations made against Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman is being accused of touching a 17-year old’s breasts in 1985 while she was interning on his television show.

Now I’m not saying I agree with what these men did. What I am saying is that not every single accusation should be made public and I am indeed questioning the motives of some of the accusers. For example, if you were at a party and some guy grabbed your ass you would be annoyed but that’s it. You wouldn’t file a police report. You wouldn’t wait 10 years and then tell the whole world about it and ruin his career. I’m not saying it was right for the man to grab your ass, I’m just saying it’s not so bad that you should ruin his life. Especially in the entertainment industry where people spend 12 hours a day together and become extremely comfortable with each other. Sometimes people get too friendly and they don’t realise that they’ve overstepped a boundary. I myself have seen this happen far too many times by both men and women after 2 months straight of rehearsals.

I understand that this is a very sensitive subject and some people may disagree with my views. Some may even want to revoke my feminist card. All I’m saying is that even though there are many many genuine cases where women actually want their voices to be heard there also a few bad seeds out there that unfortunately are just doing it to break the man that groped them once 30 years ago.

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