Rose McGowan arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “Confirmation” in March. (Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)

The national conversation about sexual assault that was reignited a week ago in relation to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s personal history has carried over into cultural zones beyond politics.

And the women coming forward to tell their stories, sometimes many years after the alleged incidents, aren’t all among Trump’s growing list of accusers. Though his now-infamous tape may have gotten the discussion restarted, his is just one live story involving a male public figure whose treatment of women is under close scrutiny.

Actress Rose McGowan on Thursday tweeted her own claim that she was assaulted — raped, in fact — by a powerful studio executive. Later, she said, she got the collective cold shoulder in Hollywood even though she did not bring charges against the man in question.

READ: 2016, the Year the Good-Ol’-Boy Brand of Sexual Harassment Took a Big Hit

Below are McGowan’s comments, which she sent out via Twitter with the hashtag #WhyWomenDontReport, referring to ongoing debates about why some women maintain silence after incidents of assault:

For those with some knowledge of Hollywood’s power elite and/or with rudimentary Googling skills, it doesn’t take much work to read between McGowan’s tweeted lines. As Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson did last July through formal channels in her case against the network’s former chief (and current Trump campaign adviser) Roger Ailes, and as Bill Cosby’s, Bill Clinton’s and Anthony Weiner’s accusers have done in recent memory, McGowan is confronting a high-profile leader in an influential industry with her charge. Although he isn’t named in her tweets, based on her hints his identity is practically a foregone conclusion — one most of his colleagues have probably already arrived at.

Taken together, these various examples also could suggest, as did this recent article as well as this one, that the societal needle is moving with regard to how sexual harassment is recognized and called out — even in scenarios involving men whose power has often served as a kind of prophylactic against accountability.

The use of Twitter-enabled hashtagged protest as a means of signaling solidarity — in this case among women — and drawing attention to an issue was mobilized by more than a million women last weekend. At writer Kelly Oxford’s invitation, they offered their accounts of harassment and worse, accompanied by the hashtag #NotOkay. The campaign was a coordinated response to the footage of Trump’s hot-mic “banter,” as he called it, recorded before a 2005 “Access Hollywood” appearance as he boasted about aggressively kissing and groping women without their consent.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson

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In this Article:
#anthony weiner#bill clinton#bill cosby#donald trump#gretchen carlson#hollywood#rape#roger ailes#rose mcgowan#sexual assault