Sexual misconduct claims against Argento, which caused a rift between her and fellow campaigner Rose McGowan, won’t stall the movement, say activists
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| Italian actress Asia Argento, left, and US singer and actress Rose McGowan, both accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. |
Almost a year after the Weinstein scandal first broke, a critical eye is being trained on Asia Argento and Rose McGowan.
Some worry the accusations leveled against Argento will discredit the #MeToo movement. Others hope it will spark a more nuanced discussion.
“The consciences are waking,” Asia Argento told the Guardian last November, six weeks after she publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of rape. “Every time one of these pigs fall, it’s a badge of honour. What I see is that this is like an avalanche.”
Argento’s visions were accurate; it has been almost a year since the Italian actor and director spoke out about Weinstein and her accusations against one of the most powerful men in entertainment have been instrumental in setting in motion an avalanche of accusations of sexual impropriety. But now, this avalanche has enveloped Argento herself. On 19 August the New York Times reported that Argento had paid $380,000 to settle a complaint filed against her by Jimmy Bennett, a musician and actor, who said she sexually assaulted him when he was 17 and she was 37. The age of consent in California, where the assault allegedly took place, is 18. Argento had known Bennett since he was 7, when she’d played his mother in the movie The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.
After the Times broke the story, Argento admitted to paying Bennet but asserted that she had “never had any sexual relationship” with him. Argento claimed that Bennet’s assault claims stemmed from “severe economic problems” the young actor was facing; she further stated that her then-boyfriend, the celebrity chef and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain, who killed himself in June, had encouraged her to pay Bennett off, to avoid bad publicity.
The allegationshave sent shockwaves through the media, and been seized upon with relish by detractors of #MeToo. An attorney for Weinstein, for example, quickly put out a statement criticizing Argento’s .
The accusations have also caused a rift between Argento and Rose McGowan, another high-profile face of #MeToo. McGowan was quick to distance herself from the disgraced actor. Shortly after the news about Argento broke, she posted on Twitter: “I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. My heart is broken. I will continue my work on behalf of victims everywhere.”
In recent days, it has also been revealed that McGowan’s partner, the model Rain Dove, had received text messages from Argento, in which the actor admitted to sleeping with Bennett and said that she had been receiving unsolicited nude photos from Bennett since he was 12 years old.
‘There is no model survivor’
While there are those who have leveraged the Argento allegations to discredit #MeToo, others have viewed it as an opportunity to advance the narrative around sexual violence. After the story first broke, Tarana Burke, the activist who first launched the #MeToo moment, back in 2006, stated on Twitter that “I’ve said repeatedly that the #metooMVMT is for all of us, including these brave young men who are now coming forward.”Burke stated that “It will continue to be jarring when we hear the names of some of our faves connected to sexual violence unless we shift from talking about individuals...and begin to talk about power. Sexual violence is about power and privilege.” She further emphasized that, for #MeToo to progress, we must all become “comfortable with the uncomfortable reality that there is no one way to be a perpetrator ... and there is no model survivor”.
Speaking to the Guardian, Laura Palumbo, communications director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, stressed that many people who have been impacted by sexual violence don’t feel that they embody what it means to be a ‘perfect victim’, which stops them coming forward about their experiences. Palumbo believes the conversation around Argento has the potential to advance the understanding that someone can be both a victim and a perpetrator.
Steven Thrasher, a journalist and future Northwestern university professor, notes that the Black Lives Matter movement has done important work in rejecting the dangerous myth of a ‘perfect victim’; the idea that you had to be angelic to deserve empathy. Thrasher observes that “Black Lives Matter rallied around us as complex humans.” By contrast, the media response to the Argento accusations, he says, seem like a “reactionary throwback”.
Where the movement goes from here
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been much discussion about whether the accusations against Argento will have an impact on the wider #MeToo movement. That this question is even being asked has irritated some people, who worry that privileged white Hollywood voices like Argento’s and McGowan’s have hijacked years of under acknowledged work, by black feminist activists.
Lexi Alexander, an Oscar-nominated Arab-German film and television director, told the Guardian she believes Argento’s fall from grace “won’t derail the original #MeToo movement created by Tarana Burke. As for #MeToo the Hollywood version, those of us who have been outspoken about toxic issues plaguing Hollywood before the Weinstein scandal broke knew all along that this would be a fickle endeavor. We were watching from the sidelines as longtime enablers of sexual misconduct suddenly jumped on the bandwagon and certain celebrities pushed themselves into the limelight.”
The acclaimed women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, who is representing one of Weinstein’s accusers, also believes that the current conversation around Argento will not harm #MeToo. When the accusations against Weinstein broke last year, Allred says, victims of sexual violence were energized and empowered in a way she hasn’t seen before in her 44 years of practice. “The movement is bigger than Asia Argento,” Allred said. “It will go on and it will grow in size. It will become more powerful than ever. There are many more names that will come out. I know where many of the skeletons are buried, to use the cliché. It’s only a matter of time.”
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