Blind eyes

I’m not going to rant about Russell Brand and what he is accused of doing to women in the past, because if we don’t respect the concept of being innocent until proven guilty then we really are all lost (although one has to ask how on earth you do prove that a person is guilty of a sexual assault if he is guilty but there is no witness and no evidence - hence why only 30% of these incidents are even reported).

What is, however, undeniably upsetting about this is that Brand’s behaviour and actions are being described as having long been an ‘open secret’ in the TV industry, to the point that one group of TV execs discussed removing women from the staff on his shows but keeping his role intact. Now whichever way you look at it, this is very wrong. Either the belief was that he was innocent of these rumours or accusations, in which case no need to stop women having a job on his show. Or the belief was that women were at risk from him, in which case action needed to be taken against him. Instead, it seems that the pretty strong belief was that he was a risk to women, but the solution was for everyone to turn a blind eye on his behaviour, continue to employ and reward him and push the women out instead.

But now the open secret isn’t secret, and even with no proof of guilt, all the Blind eyes seem to have suddenly rediscovered their vision and are cutting ties and income streams. And what this really says is that nobody actually cared about what this man was allegedly doing to women, or about the women he was allegedly doing it to (because they would have opened their eyes and taken action in some form long ago if so) - what they care about is the impact on them of being associated with him now that this is a big media story.

These were not Blind eyes. These were eyes that could see very clearly, but decided that what they were seeing wasn’t important. They decided, let’s face it, that women (and their safety) were not important.