DONALD TRUMP, HARVEY WEINSTEIN, AND MY FATHER - Tales of my Life in the Entertainment Industry

My son and me

about 1977

The recent uproar about the assaults and rapes of women by powerful Hollywood characters and prestigious men in government is giving me flashbacks to what I experienced as a young woman working in Los Angeles in the 1970's. In fact, my whole life has been shadowed by sexual assaults of one variety or another, and I know that I am not alone. The world is not a safe place for women and girls to live.

Like many women in the American work force, I had to fend off the advances of men who felt that, since they were attracted to me, I therefore owed them my body.

I had been fighting off the unwelcome advances of employers, landlords and random guys in elevators since I was a kid. I'd gotten my first office job at age 16, shortly after I moved out of the house, and it was remarkably easy to get hired.  I endured a constant barrage of indecent proposals, lewd jokes and offers of "a ride home" on a daily basis. I had actually been chased around the house of a famous actor after he'd ordered up a secretary from a temp agency. Despite assurances that it was a "real job," I quickly learned that everyone was star struck and complicit in the trading of young flesh for the pleasure of the famous.

The entertainment industry is not the only one in which women are objectified. When I worked at E.F. Hutton, the entire department watched porno films during Friday lunches in the conference room. It was an all-male department. They hooted and hollered at me over the vulgar moans and groans blaring from the raunchy film they were watching. The traders yelled at me to come in and join them. I immediately started looking for another job. I couldn't quit. I had no money and no one to whom I could run for help.

Shortly after going to work in that commodities department, my boss, the head of the department, propositioned me to go to Las Vegas with him over a long weekend. I refused and reminded him that I wasn't old enough to enter a casino, being only 20 at the time. He fired me and blackballed me in the industry, telling prospective employers that I was "lazy." Yes, I was too lazy to have sex with him, so he lied about me.

Lying about their victims is typical for predators. Just read the news. Every woman that has come forward and told the public about their assaults has had their reputations sullied - in some cases beyond repair.

A few years later, I learned that my own father was one of those creepy guys who demanded sex in exchange for employment. He was the line producer for a popular television series, after a successful career as a writer on such early television shows such as Combat!, Mod Squad, the Rockford Files, and many others.  I had been helping out in his office at the television studio while his secretary was on vacation when I stumbled into his office one day and discovered that he actually used the couch in his office as the cliche'd "casting couch," I was dumbfounded. He was PROUD of it. He crowed about how he deliberately left the door unlocked because the possibility of discovery was all the more exciting for him. It was horrifying.

He had a woman living with him at the time who had appeared in some bit roles in the series my father produced. Is that how she got the job? Is that how she got him?

The use of the casting couch as a method of choosing which actress would be given a role is a blatant and concrete example of the misogynist's theme, i.e., that women are interchangeable and that talent, skill and experience are irrelevant to the work at hand. If an actress were to make a fuss about the status quo, she could easily be replaced, because one woman is the same as any other in the mind of the predator. Nothing is relevant except obedience. Spread your legs, or you don't get that television role.

Apparently, I was the last to learn about this casting couch. EVERYONE seemed to know about it when I queried them.  His was not the only casting couch on the lot, of course. Having a couch in your office was the hallmark of a powerful man. It was a status symbol - something akin to the corner office in the corporate world. I was revolted.

I let him know how I felt in no uncertain terms. Being a classic narcissist, the slightest hint of disagreement or disapproval of anything he did or said was enough to send him into a paroxysm of rage, and this topic was no different. He didn't even have the sense to be embarrassed or ashamed.

A few days after our confrontation about his casting couch, he stole a screenplay assignment from me in retaliation.

These assignments weren't given in writing at the time. You took a meeting, pitched a story, got the assignment for the story treatment. If the story treatment met with approval, you got the go ahead to write a first draft of the script. I'd gotten the go ahead, and had started work when we had our tiff about the casting couch.  The Writer's Guild couldn't help me because I had not used an agent in my negotiations and I had no proof. I didn't figure I needed one, for obvious reasons, but I was innocent and unprepared.

I was so overwhelmed by it all, I decided to abandon my writing entirely. I turned my back on the industry and never wrote another screenplay or teleplay or tried to do anything in that business ever again. My entire being revolted against what I had experienced.

Although we'd had a fight about his abuse of women, I could not make myself stop loving my father. It was a terrible interior conflict that tore me up inside. I ran away from it. I had to remove myself from the ringside seats. I fell into a deep depression. I couldn't find work. I ran out of money. My car got repossessed. I got a beat up old wreck of a car and moved to Arizona for a year, to take some college classes and clear my head.

Meanwhile, my father began telling lies about me to other family members in order to mask what had actually happened. He had to reframe the events to favor himself and hide his adultery from his wife. He had to destroy my reputation so that no one would believe me.

I was not able to resurrect my reputation in the family, becoming the scapegoat for his sins. No one questioned his version of events because people who live in the reflected light of the glamour of stardom  suspend disbelief of anything that the star has to say. Otherwise, they may lose their access to all that yummy glamour - and money. The religion of celebrity is a vile aspect of American culture. We're seeing it now with Donald Trump. His starry-eyed worshippers attribute God-like status to him and resolutely deny his very public moral and ethical bankruptcy.

I suffered a lot for walking away from my writing career, but I could not face the horror of what that industry deems commonplace. In a business where even one's father would steal from you, who could be happy? Then there was the fact that my father was a sexual predator.  From an emotional standpoint, I could not live with the reality of my father's involvement in a sexist system that had always abused me.

I understand completely why all these women who are now bringing suit against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer and Donald Trump did not come forward sooner. I know what it is like to be immersed in a culture that protects the powerful men and sneers at women who complain of being sexually abused. 

When I heard the Access Hollywood conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush, I became nauseous. Long buried memories came rushing back.

Donald Trump was bragging about grabbing women. "Grab 'em by the pussy," he said. Billy Bush egged him on in a smarmy, sycophantic manner so typical of the hordes of people I'd seen worshiping at the church of celebrity. Trump suggested that, when they saw the actress they'd come there to see, that he might just start kissing her. "I can't help myself," he said. "I just start kissing them." Bush cheered him on, like a frat boy encouraging a more senior member of the tribe.

As I watched Trump pillory the women who came forward to confirm that yes, he IS the sexual predator he bragged about being on that video-tape, I grew furious. I have seen this constantly during my many years  in the entertainment industry. Their stories rang true. Trump's assassination of their character was exactly what I had experienced, first hand. I had seen all sides of it.

During Trump's campaign, I was stunned by his obvious, overt bigotry and racism. His reduction of women to their physical parts was consistent, base and vulgar. His dog whistles were easy to hear. He put rich white males on a pedestal and urged his devotees to venerate that image and hate every other. The comprehensive nature of the hate takes my breath away.

I was struck dumb when Donald Trump was elected president. 40 years after I bailed out of the culture of celebrity, thinking that I had escaped that environment, I find that it has spread! Even women voted against their own best interests and EXCUSE Donald Trump's behavior. They have bought into the supremacy of the RICH WHITE AMERICAN MALE. This dark and evil soup of malevolent white male dominance and aggression, has spread, widened and deepened.

In the United States, women still make only 70 cents for every dollar a man makes, the glass ceiling is still very firmly in place, and we have never had a female president, despite the fact that many countries have had female leaders for quite some time. We have a serious problem in our country. While we have this arrogant, boasting nationalism that claims an exceptionalism we do not possess, at the same time, we have backward, primitive ideas about women, minorities, the aged and the infirm.

Donald Trump's naked display of the very worst aspects of our culture has caused my PTSD to kick into overdrive. His vision of an America that is hostile toward everyone but the rich white male, is frightening and evil. His childish, virulent twitter storms are a drumbeat that incites the primitive drive of angry white men who dream of  power and the subjugation of inferiors. He even defended NAZIs who marched in Charlottesville, chanting slogans against Jews!

I ask "conservatives" how they would feel if one of the women now suing Donald Trump were one of their daughters, or their wife, or their sister. They get mad at me because they've convinced themselves that the 16 women who came forward against him are all liars. The ease with which they skewer the characters of more than a dozen unrelated women they've never met and know NOTHING about infuriates me.

It has always been thus. Women are sexually assaulted on a daily basis and, if the rapist is a star or a favorite candidate, the sycophants conspire to ruin their reputations. They attack the victims with a cold vengeance. It makes me ill.

I find it ironic that in "liberal" Hollywood, the tide is now turning against sexist monsters who have used their fame and money as a weapon against women and girls, while in so-called "Christians," circles, people are excusing the sins of Donald Trump.

Harvey Weinstein has had some bad press and has lost his position. Louis C.K. has lost a lot of jobs as a result of his exhibitionistic masturbation scandal. Kevin Spacey has lost his job on the hugely successful HOUSE OF CARDS. Billy Bush lost his job on Access Hollywood as a result of that video with Trump, but I THINK he got in trouble because it leaked, not because it happened. Matt Lauer has recently been fired from his award winning, hit television news program on NBC.

Yet nothing happened to Donald Trump as a result of the release of that Access Hollywood video in which he brags about assaulting women. People voted for him anyway. They don't care that he is a serial assaulter of women, a bigot, a vulgar liar and a misogynist.  The women he assaulted are called liars and whores by his followers, who say they have "forgiven" the Donald for his crude behavior and they're SURE he's no longer using that "locker room talk." Some of them say the equivalent of "boys will be boys." A lot of people on Facebook say that he's the best thing that's happened to the Christian Church in years.

The fact that conservative Christians are defending the sex perverts in government while going after their victims is what keeps my PTSD fully engaged. America is a dangerous place to live for women and girls.

I have a granddaughter who is now the same age I was when my boss fired me for refusing to have sex with him. I pray that she is never exposed to the kind of pressure I experienced, but considering the support that Donald Trump enjoys from the very people I would expect to defend the innocent, I am not confident that she is safe, and I pray for her constantly because the only time the "trickle down" theory seems to work is when it involves the subjugation of the innocent.

It is worth noting that one of the reasons predators are not made to answer for their crimes is that there a small number of women who betray other women by taking advantage of this sick arrangement. There ARE some who deliberately trade sexual favors for jobs, and this muddies the waters for the rest of us who do not want this type of commerce in our working lives. There are also women on the Christian right, oddly enough, who follow their men blindly and participate in the savaging of the reputations of the women who HAVE come forward.

God save us all.


Silver Rose Parnell
(c) Copyright 2017
All rights reserved

VEILING

Long white lace chapel veil for sale on Etsy

at Rosa Mystica Boutique

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in church, my hands folded in my lap, my head bowed, in deep prayer after receiving the body and blood of Christ when some woman broke from the communion line, came over to me and grasping my hands, said, "your hair is SO beautiful!" I was astonished and appalled.

I hasten to add that I had done NOTHING to feature my hair. In fact, it was a mess. I hadn't even brushed it before leaving the house, as I was late getting ready for my ride. I had just put a few home-made scrunchies in it at varying spots down the length of it to keep it in line. It is a combination of gray and my natural reddish auburn color, and is on the frizzy side, so it isn't something I wear like a trophy.

To cover or not to cover?

Over the last couple of years, I had been considering the issue of veiling in church. Women originally veiled for another purpose, but having my hair become a distraction to someone else's devotions as well as my own was yet another reason to give serious consideration to the practice.

Of course, my physical condition has deteriorated to such an extent that I am currently unable to sit through mass, but I am praying for healing and I am also losing weight in the desperate hope that it will have some effect, even though I know that my joints are now "bone on bone" and my spine is becoming fused in the lower back. Hope springs eternal, especially when one is Christian and we have a long tradition of miraculous healings, going back to Christ Himself. I may or may not be able to return to regular mass attendance, so I have to get this issue of veiling settled in my mind for when and if I do return.

I know, of course, that women are no longer required to veil in church, but many Americans fail to recognize that the requirement having been dropped does not signify that it has no value. It just means that there is no longer an official proscription against women going bare headed into the church and one will not be PUNISHED in any fashion. One is no longer penalized for failing to veil in church, but it does not mean the practice has no value.

I recognize, of course, that many people are violently opposed to this practice because they interpret it as a vestige of toxic patriarchy.

Long white mantilla style veil

at

ROSA MYSTICA

In all of the churches I have visited since I became Catholic about 9 years ago, I rarely see more than 2 or 3 women who are veiled. Many times, no one is veiled. I find no fault with that. It is just an observation about the current habit. Occasionally, I have remembered to bring a scarf or crocheted lace shawl with me to wear at church, and I noticed several women eyeing me as if I had broken some feminist code or something. Some women have told me that wearing a veil is a cooperation with the patriarchy that suppressed women for thousands of years.

I was struck today by a response from a Muslim woman, ironically, with regard to the wearing of the Hijab, the large scarf that covers the hair and necks of Muslim women.

Malaysian woman wearing an hijab

Hanna Yusuf makes the point that the wearing of the head scarf is a way to opt out of the sexist culture that views all women as sex objects to be used in everything from selling cars to actually selling themselves. By dressing modestly and "covering up," a woman may reclaim her body. Obviously, she is not talking about those instances where a woman is forced, sometimes with violence, to wear obscuring clothing. She mentions that in her video. She makes her own case much better than I can, so, if you are interested, please see her video HERE.

When I was in the Hindu convent, several of us "younger ones" regularly wore simple handkerchiefs that were folded into triangles that were then tied at the nape of the neck, especially when doing dirty jobs, when the weather was breezy, or just for the heck of it. The tendency toward modesty is natural among those attracted to monasticism, in most instances. Then, there are the artists, and you never know what kind of getup they will adopt. Guilty, here, with my occasional outbreaks of pink. I still wear one of those headscarves on many occasions, especially as fall approaches.  These days, it is usually black in color, as a friend gave me 5 for my wardrobe. She is a lay Carmelite and wears a scarf to church.

Here I am, in the Hindu convent, wearing the scarf I mentioned.

In researching this article and studying the topic for myself, I found numerous fascinating articles and videos about veiling, both within the Catholic tradition and in others. Orthodox Jewish women, for instance, are required to cover their hair all the time unless in the presence of their husbands alone. Some Jewish ladies wear wigs, but a growing number of them are adopting an arrangement of a collection of scarves wrapped ingeniously around the hair that has been bound up in a scrunchy. Pretty elastic bands and sparkly brooches are sometimes added for extra flair.

This is an example of the Orthodox Jewish

"Tichel" I described, above.

While it is assumed that covering one's hair is simply a matter of some perceived modesty, in the Catholic tradition, it pertains rather more to the mass and to the Eucharist and probably has little or nothing to do with considerations of modesty or demure appearance. It is, in fact, a declaration of woman's essential holiness and special relationship with the Lord.

Everything considered holy in the Catholic mass is veiled or covered in some way. Woman is holy because she has an extremely intimate relationship with the Lord in which she helps bring God's beloved children into the world. For 9 months, a woman's body sustains two souls. Like the chalice that holds the precious blood in the mass, woman is the carrier of God's precious ones, just as Mother Mary carried Jesus within her womb.

Remember that the "holy of holies"  that was the inner sanctum of the Temple of Jerusalem in which the Ark of the Covenant was kept was separated from the rest of the temple by a veil, so the veil has great significance in the context of the mass, and it is deep and layered in meaning.

Rather than symbolizing the inferiority of women, the veil announces a woman's authority and close relationship with the Lord. It recognizes the essential holiness of the state of womanhood, in general. It is her crown and her privilege to wear.

One shouldn't extrapolate this meaning from the universal to the particular and think that if one is not of childbearing age or is infertile that the honor is not for them. No matter the condition of fecundity of the particular woman, this honor is proper to all womankind, as it is her sex that is elevated by its nature in the Lord's scheme of creation. A woman's receptive nature lends itself easily to an intimate relationship with the Lord, of a different type than that which a man may experience. It isn't just a woman's body that is honored, but the necessary emotional openness to the Lord 's love with which her sex is endowed which is a part of the great mystery of her vocation.

Ages ago, when a woman would enter a convent, it was often referred to as "taking the veil," and all nuns did wear veils, not like today, when you can hardly tell the difference between a nun and a random person walking down the street.

If a particular woman does not want the honor that the veil endows, the Catholic Church will not force it on them, but why renounce it over some false feminist doctrine that seeks to strip man and woman of their essential differences? I am not saying that this is the reason why every woman who has given up the veil has done so; I am speaking in general terms pertaining to the age in which we live and the concepts that currently inform it.

Silver "Rose" Parnell
Copyright (c) 2015