If the past year and a half has taught us anything, it’s that tolerance for sexual assault is slowly eroding. Harvey Weinstein, Michael Orestes, Bill O’Reilly, Larry Nassar, Roger Ailes, Mark Halperin—these are the names of some of the men who have recently come up against this cultural sea change and lost. With the help of social movements like #MeToo, the country is now grappling with the issues of sexual assault and sexual harassment openly and passionately. The current conversation was a long time in the making, though, and it wasn’t without casualties. In fact, in retrospect this watershed moment seems to have taken too long to arrive. As screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who has written about the fallout from the Weinstein revelations, writes, “Maybe we didn’t know the degree. The magnitude of the awfulness. But we knew something.” The truth is Weinstein and these others got away with their actions for decades because nobody said anything. In these situations, people know, but if nobody says anything, nothing can be done. If a person hears or sees something bad happening and does nothing to stop it, what does that make that person? Part of the problem. We can all do better …
