Rose McGowan Defends Her Anger About Hollywood Complicity

Rose McGowan has been one of the major voices in the #MeToo movement after she publicly named producer Harvey Weinstein as her alleged rapist. Her bravery was part of what caused the dam to burst in industries all over as more and more men are accused of sexual misconduct. Eight of the women who have come forward over the past few months (John Hockenberry accusers Suki Kim and Kristen Meinzer, Louis C.K. accuser Rebecca Corry, Donald Trump accusers Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks, and Harvey Weinstein accusers Mimi Haleyi, Dominique Huett, and Rose McGowan) sat down together on December 12 in a video for The Cut, in which McGowan led a conversation about the pervasive problem of sexual assault, and made an important point about female anger.

The conversation broached the topic of anger when Leeds said that she felt anger wasn't enough.

"Being angry was okay for a little while, so it's like, what do we do from here?" she asked. "How do we address it?"

McGowan disagreed, saying anger is what spurred her forward, how we got this far in the first place, and what will, ultimately, incite change.

"I think anger, righteous anger, propels," she explained. "If you look at activism throughout the years, being passive and more gentle about things hasn't really propelled society forward. For women, especially, not at all. For me it propels strength to keep fighting back."

Specifically, McGowan said she reserves her anger for "all of the people that are complicit. "That's the people that I find the most reprehensible," she said.

The women discussed the many people who worked with and knew about the behaviour of their respective alleged abusers, allowing it to go on for years, sometimes decades.

Four days after this conversation took place, McGowan made headlines with a now-deleted tweet that named Meryl Streep as someone who was complicit with Weinstein's behaviour.

"Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem," it read, according to CNN. "You'll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa."

In response, Streep said in a statement that she "wasn't deliberately silent. I didn't know."

The women in the video do feel like their anger was working, and that real change was slowly happening in the industry. It started with the Women's March, Crooks said, and now it's #MeToo, and ahead we can hope it takes them as far as getting elected to office where they can start enacting this change so no women have to go through what these women went through ever again.

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