Rose McGowan is More Than Just An Angry Woman
Rose McGowan was sexually assaulted for over a decade while in the Hollywood film industry. Now, she’s an angry woman, and has every right to be.
Rose McGowan, also known as Paige Matthews from the early 2000 hit tv show Charmed, is an American Actress who has been making headlines recently after coming out about her sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein. In 2016, McGowan came out on twitter about her rape by Hollywood mogul, Weinstein. In January of 2018, McGowans book Brave was published and received a lot of attention. Written as a memoir, McGowan accounts for the many tribulations she has faced throughout her life, including the night that forever changed her life and her career in Hollywood. Born in Florence Italy, Rose was a member of the Child of God cult until the age of 10. In her memoir, McGowan recounts traumatic times growing up in a cult, including times of sexual assault by older men. When she was 10, Rose and her family moved to the United States and left the Child of God cult. Life did not get much better for McGowan; Rose spent most of her teenage years as a runaway and at the age of 15 was emancipated. Rose McGowan moved to Hollywood after this in hopes of becoming an actress.
In 1997, at the age of 24, Rose McGowan met with Harvey Weinstein for a meeting during the Sundance Movie Festival in Utah. Initially the two were supposed to meet in the hotel’s restaurant, but Weinstein sent for McGowan to meet in his room instead. Once there, Rose McGowan details her traumatic rape by Weinstein. In her memoir, Rose describes the numbing feeling and explains her reaction to the attack. She describes Weinstein as “the monster” and explains how that morning forever changed her life. After this attack, McGowan meets with a criminal attorney, wanting to press charges. She is told that no one would believe her and she eventually decides not to go through with legal actions. Later in the year, Weinstein pays McGowan $100,000 for the obvious reason of not pressing charges. For the next couple of years McGowan struggles in finding work as an actress, but eventually finds success once she lands a role as one of the three main characters in charmed.
It is not until many years later, when other women came out against Weinstein, that Rose began to tell her story again. Since her first tweets about her assault, to her book Brave being published, and her documentary being aired in January of 2018, McGowan has been met with wide range of reactions. Some support McGowan telling her story and experiences of sexual abuse in Hollywood, while others have labeled her angry, emotional, and unstable.
The truth is, Rose McGowan is angry, and she has every right to be, as does every other woman who has fallen prey to sexual assault. The years of abuse McGowan encountered not only as a woman, but as a human being gives her every reason to be angry. Angry at her assailants, angry and the film industry that breeds sexual abuse, and angry at the society that has constructed gendered violence. Why is it that so many are reacting to McGowan with contempt? Society is not used to an angry woman, nor do they want one.
In society, women have always been gendered as mothers, caretakers, and sexual pleasers. Women are suppose manifest their emotions to happiness or sadness, whereas their male binary counterpart manifest their emotions to contentedness or anger. In a New York’s Time article written by Leslie Jamison, the topic of female anger is analyzed. Jamison speaks about how anger and women do not go hand in hand in the public sphere, but rather is hidden within and manifested as a smile to the outside world. Women are supposed to be content in their life and satisfied with the gendered role they were given. For women, anger does not play a role in the social construct of a functioning society.
Of course, this is untrue. People are angry, people feel anger and experience anger, despite of gender. Although society does not want to see women in such a way, it’s inevitable. As more and more women in the film industry come out about their sexual assaults, the more anger is going to be seen.
As in the case of Rose McGowan, not everyone is going to like this. As much as society has grown in openness and acceptance of the evolution of gender, there is still far more for it to go. When it comes to the angry woman, and more specifically, the angry raped woman, society is going to need to find some empathy in understanding where these women are coming from. Instead of labeling Rose McGowan as emotional and unstable, why don’t we consider what she has gone through? Personally, as a female victim of sexual assault, I sure know where the anger McGowan is feeling stems from. Rose McGowan is justified in her feelings and has no need to further explain her emotions. She is a voice, a singular voice in a large arena full of other women with similar stories. I stand with every angry woman, every abused woman, ever raped woman. As a society we must not put woman into a category of emotion, but rather see them in all their intersectionality. Rose McGowan is an angry woman, but not only that. She is a strong woman, a voiced woman and a soldier in the fight against sexual exploitation in Hollywood.
