I’ve been a showrunner for six years now. Today is the one-year anniversary of the most difficult challenge I’ve faced in that role.
The events that unfolded the previous evening were shocking. For most of us they were unconscionable. As a society, did we really hate women that much? To elect a man who time and again proved he has no regard for us as anything other than playthings?
As the results started to pour in, I left the office a little early. I’d convinced myself I was coming down with something. Turns out that something was a full blown panic attack.
It woke me up about two thirty in the morning. My pulse was racing, heart was pounding, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was in pain. It took me about ten minutes to realize an ambulance didn’t need to be called. The pain was physical, but it was caused by the release of a catecholamines. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was Trump.
His victory dealt a huge blow to women. I cannot stress this enough. The devastation was cataclysmic because it was in that moment we all realized there was a titanium ceiling behind the glass one.
Before the hammering could begin, first we needed to heal. We needed to go through the stages of grief and come out the other side.
The next morning I walked into the quietest office I’ve ever been in, full of people experiencing stage one. One by one, every woman on the show came by my office or approached me on set. It wasn’t until about the fifth one that I remembered I was their boss. They were coming to me because they needed comfort from authority; they needed someone to tell them it’d be okay.
I didn’t tell them it would be okay. I told them it was going to suck. And it was going to suck for a long time. But we were going to get through this. The election would be a call to action. And women were going to answer it.
First we would get mad, and then we were going to lead.
The final stage of grief was reached when thousands of woman across the country made the choice to run for office. And the rest of us voted for them.
A year to the day from when we woke up in a panic, we woke up to something different. Something we haven’t experienced in a year. Hope.
But there’s a lot more work to do. Joining the political fray isn’t enough. Misogyny is an industry, and we need to tear it down piece by piece.
That starts with not letting ourselves be treated like shit anymore.
What you’re seeing in Hollywood and across the country is an unspoken allegiance between women to call out the culture which has oppressed and abused them. But to do that, heroes need to fall.
We have to say the names out loud. We have to make individuals feel the consequences of their actions. It is the only way to end the cycle.
It starts with bringing down those who have committed actual, verifiable crimes: sexual harassment, abuse, assault. But it won’t end there.
It won’t end there.