Wonder Woman Is A Bad Ass Or Hitting Them Where It Hurts

I want to write about Gal Gadot and her stand on sexual harassment by refusing to do any more Wonder Woman movies if Brett Ratner is involved.  You can read about this here.

Because it is brilliant.

Not just that she is taking a stand but how she is doing it. Because, you see, unfortunately for women - and for men, too - who have been abused, the only way to really get people to notice is to hit them professionally and/or financially.  Abusers take responsibility when their livelihood is at stake. Not before. It's when they loose their paycheck or their standing in the community; it's when their bottom line is hit. 

Abuse is about power and so the best way to fight abuse is to undermine that power. And in our current culture, power is about status and money. This is what we value. This is how we know we made it. It's about how high up we are and how much we make, because when we make a lot it means we have value - we're being paid our worth. Status and money, these are the pinnacle of success.  

And so, the way to make them notice, put the abuser on notice, make them pay attention and make them truly feel it is to topple their status and to take away their money.  

Hit them on their bottom line.

Of course then comes conditional apologies, if you can call them that, and the half-baked statements of responsibility - maybe, and the "I'll try to be a better person" and "please support me as I change and grow." And all the other bullshit that is really a dancing around what they should be saying which is "Yeah, I'm an asshole and a predator and I used my power to make you all feel like shit and feel shame and I was never really sorry but I am now because you're hurting my bank account and making me look bad to my friends." 

But ya know what, they're feeling it. They've moved from the "these are all lies" and the victim shaming and flippant write-offs to at least pretending to care. Because they know that if they don't they'll lose a lot. They'll lose what they have. Their reputation. And their stuff.

It is naive of us to think that we can make someone who has systematically abused people over and over again to all of a sudden start to care.  And so we cannot speak from the part of us that wants to be heard and understood because that part of them is not there. If it was they wouldn't have been pulling out their junk or cornering women in hotel rooms in the first place.

So we have to speak their language.

And this, this brilliant and talented and strong and fierce woman, she is speaking to them, she is hitting them there. Right where the money is. And I love this.