Once upon a time when I was an aspiring screenwriter, I wrote stories that centered on women or at least included them, and Hollywood explained to me that if women characters did anything that didn’t revolve around male characters, it would cause a movie to bomb. It wasn’t their fault, they said; it was the audience. I was assured there were reams of hard data to prove this belief, and “you can’t argue with numbers.”

Had I believed their claims about the audience’s backward thinking, I would have stuck around, making my lead characters all square jawed white dudes while trying to break smaller barriers with my female characters. I would have tried to educate that knuckle-dragging audience slowly, without bombing any films. But I’d grown up around boys and men who talked a lot of sexism and even misogyny, and I had noticed how not a one of them let women leads stop them from enjoying good movies. I repeatedly asked for hard data and was repeatedly directed to box office figures that really said nothing either way about audience gender preferences.

I’d also grown up around fundamentalists and knew a dogmatist when I saw one. So I gave up my dream, left the film industry and eventually started this site.

Knowing you can indeed argue with numbers if you have contradictory data based on better methodology, I presented what little I could. We looked at how action films with female leads seem to do better when the female lead isn’t dressed particularly sexy. We talked about William Goldman’s thoughts on the myth of the “fluke”, that movie that does well “despite” having a female lead or four. We looked at how the numbers get reinterpreted to perpetuate the myth that audiences don’t want women. We noted when demographics showed that 55% of moviegoers are women (see previous link), and maybe this is where I stated the problem best:

It’s not that we don’t generate the numbers – see above. It’s that no matter what numbers we generate, the film industry is working from a data set which assures them it’s just not possible that women are actually worth appealing to – and once you’ve eliminated the impossible, you consider the improbable. Hollywood has always managed to find any number of improbable scenarios to explain away the (im)possibility that women are consumers and somebody ought to want our money.

I had done what I could. I didn’t have the resources to commission someone of great repute to crunch the numbers realistically… and even if I had, it could have been argued that their findings were influenced by me because I was footing the bill. I’d shouted loudly and told my story, and it had been mentioned by some fairly significant news outlets. And Hollywood had eventually changed a tiny little bit as they saw success in Twilight and The Hunger Games.

But the other day, epic levels of validation arrived in a way I’d never expected. (Thanks, SunlessNick, for sending me the link!)

FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s outfit, with their proven reputation for meaningfully crunching data and statistics to get at what’s really going on, took a look at Hollywood’s claims that audiences prefer movies that marginalize more than half the species. They found that movies which pass the Bechdel test actually cost less to make and earn more at the box office, internationally as well as domestically, than their more male-dominated counterparts. Variety’s reporting this, too. If this doesn’t get people in Hollywood to reconsider their entrenched beliefs, nothing will. But then, Hollywood isn’t doing so well financially for lots of reasons, so if they don’t take a long hard look at all their entrenched beliefs, they will probably get replaced by something from the 21st century.

Now, as we’ve discussed, the Bechdel test is not so much a test to be passed as a startling metric which points out a systemic problem. It’s gobsmacking to realize just how few movies feature the extremely common reality of (1) two identified women (2) talking to each other (3) about something other than a man. And the reason it’s so rare in movies is that female characters are not seen as having anything to contribute to the plot independent of male characters. It’s not that every filmmaker should go insert a scene in which Barb and Deb discuss a shoe sale; it’s that maybe Barb and Deb should actually be part of the story in the first place – or else not be there at all. That is the fundamental issue the Bechdel test exposes for discussion.

As far as I’m concerned, the discussion about the numbers you “can’t argue with” is closed, and we won, and Hollywood lost. Nate Silver has spoken. Anyone who refutes him will be associated with the embarrassing spectacle of Karl Rove claiming a Romney victory based on numbers that even Fox News staff knew were wrong.

Prepare to laugh. Ted Cruz asked on March 24, on his own Facebook page, whether people were better off now with Obamacare. One can only assume he expected the same kind of negative responses that happened during that awkward period when people were struggling to sign up on the screwy website and hadn’t yet experienced the coverage itself. But that’s not what happened. The overwhelming majority of responses Cruz got were “Yes” with stories to back it up.

And so on and so forth. What’s interesting is that Cruz is apparently so off in La La Land that this surprised him. A lot of Americans used to be “uninsurable”, or pay premiums that were higher than their mortgage or rent, or paid huge premiums and still owed so much in co-insurance and copays that one accident or semi-major illness could bankrupt them. Are they better off? Gee. I would think so. Does Cruz just not understand that these people exist? Or is he one of those people who never looks at the price tag of things because he doesn’t have to?

Anecdotal stories I’ve heard:

• Before ACA: a family with a child who has dwarfism (but is overall healthy) was quoted $1200/month just to cover that child. After ACA: whole family got covered for $800/month.
• Before ACA: a local hospital had a lot of empty beds. After ACA: they say they can barely keep up with the patients because now all these people who used to do without both insurance and treatment have got insurance.

I’ve criticized ACA myself because I believed it should have been tax-funded rather than a compulsory purchase. I warned that the government’s idea of “what you can afford” would not actually match up with the real lives of actual poor and working class people. But ironically the only problem with that seems to have come from Republican governors and state legislatures who hope to wreck the whole thing by refusing to accept the Medicaid subsidies that would have made it more affordable for people in lower income brackets. But it’s looking more and more like the Republicans are fighting a losing battle, so I expect they will soon give up or lose the right to refuse Medicaid expansion. It would be hard for even this Supreme Court to buy that one’s state has a right to make it incredibly difficult for one to comply with federal law (the mandate to purchase the insurance).

Yes, Senator, even though it’s beyond your comprehension and I’m sure you think it’s some kind of liberal conspiracy involving aliens, Elvis and socialist Europe, people who had no good insurance options at all before ACA are indeed better off having at least one semi-decent choice now. But please, please continue this crusade. It makes it so clear that you just are so awash in your own privilege that you have no idea how less privileged people live. Are you getting PR advice from the people who brought us the 47% comment, or maybe the intriguing concepts about how rape works? Keep it up, Ted, you’re doin’ great.

Recently I described what you need to believe about Woody Allen to in order to believe he molested Dylan Farrow. Today I’m considering the other side: what you need to believe in order to believe Allen’s version of events. Namely, that Mia Farrow coached Dylan to believe she was molested by Allen, and that this brainwashing has held for twenty-eight years. Once again, I’ll be relying on the facts established in court.

The mechanics of the plot

Before the alleged abuse incident, Allen was already in therapy for his unhealthy fixation on Dylan which involved his ignoring the other children when she was around, following her everywhere, etc. Mia Farrow therefore had a standing order for the household employees that Dylan was never to be left alone with Allen. The alleged abuse took place on a day when Farrow and her friend Casey Pascal were out shopping, but at the home were: Pascal’s three children, Alison Strickland, a French tutor, the baby sitter, Dylan, Satchel and Allen. The babysitter would later testify she had lost track of Allen and Dylan for a while, but didn’t tell Farrow about this until Dylan had alleged abuse. Ms. Strickland also testified that she had seen Allen kneeling in front of Dylan on the couch with his face in her lap.

For Allen’s version of this to be true, Farrow would have had to see in Allen’s fixation on Dylan an opportunity to frame him for molestation. She would have had to persuade the babysitter either to give Allen a window of time alone with Dylan but testify otherwise, or to lie flat out about Allen having been alone with Dylan (which would have been trickier because then one of the many witnesses at the house might well have had Allen in their sight the entire time). She also would have had to persuade Strickland to tell the odd story about Allen’s face in Dylan’s lap. I call the story “odd” because it’s not how most people imagine sexual molestation happens – they imagine flat out straightforward assault. But as most survivors can tell you, they often also engage in behaviors that are quasi-sexual or not sexual but still boundary-busting. And unfortunately law enforcement and courts are still often so ignorant that they might find a story like this less persuasive than if Strickland claimed to have walked in on Allen doing something overtly sexual to Dylan. So it’s a curious choice for Farrow in constructing her elaborate web of lies.

Mia’s psychology

Allen believes Mia is so angry with him for dating and marrying Soon-Yi that she’s made all this up and sustained it for decades without any tangible reward, and that in order to achieve this she ruined Dylan’s life maliciously. The sort of person who’s capable of doing that to a child would be diagnosed (in the United States – classifications vary internationally) with either Narcissistic, Borderline or possibly Antisocial Personality Disorder. None of these personality disorders are known for their ability to sustain an obsession from a distance for more than a few years without some reward. Neither Mia nor Dylan seems to have made any money from this, gained any fame, etc. Nor have they had the pleasure of watching Allen’s career go down in flames.

If Farrow was obsessed with revenge, why didn’t she apply her amazing brainwashing skills (which we must believe worked not only on Dylan, but also the babysitter and Alison Strickland) to other young actresses with whom Allen has worked since then?

You have to believe she’s obsessed with revenge against Allen for dating Soon-Yi, and yet content to just spout some vemon every few decades. It’s not a consistent profile, and if there’s anything abusive personalities tend to be, it’s consistent – depressingly so.

The behavior of Mia and Dylan is more consistent with people who feel they were wronged and never got justice. It’s more akin to people identifying war criminals who are living under assumed identities forty years after the end of a war in which they were imprisoned or lost family. All those years, they stay quiet because there’s nothing to do but try to heal and focus on the future, and then they see someone “getting away with” what he did to them or their loved ones, and it all comes to a boil again.

Dylan’s psychology

This is the sticking point for me. When Dylan was allegedly first brainwashed by Mia, she was 7. She is now about twenty-nine. During that time, her brain will have undergone massive changes as part of the usual development process for humans. The teenage years alone are a time of rapid brain changes and reorganization, which is why most teenagers change their minds almost daily, exercise horrible judgment at times and rebel against anything and everything. In our twenties, as we begin to explore adulthood, our perspectives can change greatly – not as rapidly or chaotically as during the teen years. We often experience a lot of disillusionment during these years – this is when we find out the world doesn’t work like we were led to believe.

ETA: “There is no rep­utable research to sup­port the notion that chil­dren can be brain­washed to believe they have been sex­u­ally abused when they have not.” (Thanks, SunlessNick!)

To believe Allen’s story, you must believe Dylan’s brainwashing by Farrow held steady through all those natural phases. That never at any point did her maturing mind overcome Mia’s brainwashing. To determine how likely this is, let’s think about a more common form of childhood indoctrination: strict religion. The more strictly you raise a child in a faith, particularly one that’s very rigid and demands adherence to a code not common in the child’s society (i.e., no sex before marriage at all, period, end of story), the more likely the kid is to question or even act out against those beliefs when she hits her teenage years. Then come the twenties, when we discover the world isn’t as simple as we thought and much of it is a big disappointment. People raised in a challenging faith – one that sets them aside from their culture – tend not only to question but to leave that faith for one that’s less challenging, or none at all.

Dylan Farrow was confronted with two major challenges to her personal narrative about this abuse: (1) tons of people insisted Mia Farrow engineered the whole thing, and (2) Mia Farrow continued to support Roman Polanski, who pled to lewd and lascivious acts with a minor (and you only plead to a lesser crime than the one the police believe you committed). It is simply unfathomable to me that Dylan Farrow never questioned whether perhaps all those people who thought her Polanski-supporting mom brainwashed her were onto something. And yet, she still maintains the same account of events.

Recently, I stated that what I would most like to see come from this Woody Allen controversy is simply the understanding that there is no exonerating trait that precludes a person from being a child molester. And for that matter, no trait that precludes Dylan from having told a truthful and accurate account of events. What conclusions we all come to are less important than that don’t base those conclusions on anyone’s social status.

For those who want to go further and attempt to solve the mystery to their own satisfaction, here is a link to the judge’s original ruling in the custody hearing. I strongly recommend reading it in its entirety. For those who can’t or won’t, I’ll present a little summary – which leaves out a lot – and then explain the significance of it with some psychology references. If you’ve already read it, you can skip the section “Summary.”

Summary

After having promised Mia he would never attempt to get custody of Dylan, Moses or Satchel (Ronan), Woody Allen filed a suit for custody of Dylan, Moses and Satchel seven days after learning of Dylan’s accusation of sexual abuse. Multiple witnesses reported seeing Allen behave inappropriately around Dylan, including kneeling before her with his face in her lap while she stared vacantly at the TV. The judge takes issue with the team of two social workers and a pediatrician who concluded that no forensic evidence of a finger in a vagina = no assault, because they weren’t qualified and that’s an unfounded conclusion. He also took issue with the family therapists (already seeing Allen about his inappropriate fixation on Dylan) who thought there was no abuse – one of them changed her story at least once, and the judge felt their main loyalty might be toward Allen, and that they might be reluctant to admit a sexual assault happened on their watch.

He finds no evidence that Mia brainwashed or coached Dylan, and points out that they had a household rule that Allen never be left alone with Dylan. When Mia learned of Dylan’s assault, she had no reason to think Dylan had been alone with Allen on the day it happened, so why would she have concocted a story about abuse happening in a setting where lots of witnesses were around? He refers to Allen’s “stereotypical ‘woman scorned’ defense.” He finds that Mia has been an imperfect mother (probably failing Soon-Yi at some point in her teenage years) but overall a good custodian. She has allowed supervised visits between Allen and Satchel, which counters Allen’s contention that Mia wants to turn the kids against him. The judge finds that probably Farrow’s worst fault as a parent is having stayed with Allen for so long.

He also finds that Woody doesn’t know anything about the kids. Not who their pediatricians are, their pet’s names, their friends, how they’re doing in school. Nothing seems to indicate he has any sort of fatherly potential.

He finds that Allen separated Soon-Yi from her family and had no regard for the fact that, from the kids’ perspective, their father was now dating their sister (legal though it might be).

He says, “In short, I find Mr. Allen so self-absorbed, untrustworthy, and insensitive that he should not be permitted to see Satchel without appropriate professional supervision.” (Satchel was Woody’s biological child, in whom he’d shown no interest, ignored completely when Dylan was around, and once threatened to “break your fucking leg” because the little boy, then five, kicked him. This is all in the court ruling.) Needless to say, he also concludes Dylan is in danger from Allen and must not see him outside a family therapy setting, and then only if it benefits her well-being.

The judge refers to this lawsuit as a “frivolous action.”

He lays out his reasoning very thoroughly so you can question it and decide if you agree or not.

Psychology references

I’m not going to tell you what to think. First, you have to decide if you find the judge’s thinking and reasoning persuasive – judges can be wrong. What I am going to tell you is this.

The judge paints Allen as a narcissist – so self-absorbed that other people’s needs and concerns don’t factor into his thought process at all, and blaming others for his problems. Narcissism is strongly associated with child abuse and in particular child sexual molestation:

Of course all narcissists are not sex offenders, but child sex offenders display narcissism in its most destructive form…But, enter the profile of a sex offender…the ultimate narcissist. Whose needs are more important? Does that offender think of the child and what that child needs? Are the child’s needs put above their own? Is the offender aware of the life-long devastating effects on the child? Do they consider the fact that self-esteem, trust, and healthy sexuality will be a life-long struggle? And, that the child is at risk to carry the shame forever? Do they care? No they don’t. Then add the child’s burden of keeping the secret that is embedded by the sex offender’s manipulation and grooming. Pile on a culture that sadly encourages this denial.

Sam Vaknin has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (the most extreme and virtually untreatable version of narcissism). When his self-absorption landed him in jail and a therapist diagnosed him, he was sufficiently motivated to get treatment (a set of events that unfortunately rarely befalls narcissists). He is still very self-absorbed – this cannot be changed – but he claims he’s learned to behave with consideration (even if he doesn’t feel the empathy, deep down) and now channels his self-absorption into writing about his condition with tremendous frankness. You should take him as a primary source to be vetted, not an academic research source, but on the subject of why narcissists molest their siblings or children, what he says matches up with what is understood about the disorder generally (and in any case, is one of the few glimpses we have into the NPD’s possible motivation for this crime):

At first, he perceives his offspring or siblings as a threat to his Narcissistic Supply, such as the attention of his spouse, or mother, as the case may be…

As siblings or progeny grow older, the narcissist begins to see their potential to be edifying, reliable and satisfactory Sources of Narcissistic Supply. His attitude, then, is completely transformed. The former threats have now become promising potentials. He cultivates those whom he trusts to be the most rewarding. He encourages them to idolise him, to adore him, to be awed by him, to admire his deeds and capabilities, to learn to blindly trust and obey him…

It is at this stage that the risk of child abuse – from emotional incest and up to and including outright incest – is heightened.

To believe someone is a child molester, you must believe they are narcissistic – that is, so self-absorbed that they have no respect for the boundaries of others. This is the picture the judge painted.

Monsters?

Gawker published a piece by a molestation survivor the other day entitled Woody Allen Is Not a Monster. He Is a Person. Like My Father. I recommend this article because while there are some variations from one molestation case to another, the larger point it makes is important: these people are humans. Twisted humans, but human. When we paint them as demonic freaks, we are pushing them away from our idea of people. It’s like victim-blaming in reverse – if we can see them as less than human, and see ourselves as fully human, then we think we are safe from becoming them.

And, okay – a mature adult personality doesn’t suddenly develop the urge to molest kids. But the reality is: you could have been a child molester. All it takes is a childhood full or learning that boundaries need not be respected, and you need not be accountable for your actions, and anyone accusing you of wrongdoing is automatically wrong and you should go forth and accuse your wrongdoer of all things and play a plausible victim so everyone will believe you and not the accuser.

It’s horrifying to realize we are so malleable as children that we cannot only be victimized, but turned into people who do monstrous things. But the good news is: we can do something about this. The more we learn about these patterns, the better we can learn to identify abuse and do something constructive about it. I’m talking child welfare, child psychologists, law enforcement, etc. If you are a parent who is at all concerned about whether you’re parenting your kids well, you’re very unlikely to produce narcissists. The parents of narcissists are usually pretty narcissistic themselves, and therefore do not care for advice.

Regardless of what conclusions we all draw about who did what to whom in this single case, the case itself provides a lot of thought-provoking material for those wondering how child molestation – and child molesters – look from the outside.

Dylan Farrow has shared her very personal account of being sexually assaulted by Woody Allen, her adopted father, in the New York Times. Most commenters around the web are rushing to defend Allen, claiming he was “exonerated” back in 1993 when it was first reported. Claiming that the fact that Mia and Dylan didn’t take it all the way to criminal court means it was a lie. Claiming Mia is the guilty one, because coaching her child to tell a story she was too young to even understand is the sort of thing she’d do.

Her story is credible. She describes a grooming process that is the sort of detail liars don’t think to include because it doesn’t sound that bad. She talks about asking her mom if that’s simply something dads do to daughters because, for all she knew at that young age, it was. Her story is completely credible. If this isn’t the true story of what Allen did to her, it is the true story of what someone’s sexually abusive father did to his daughter. As an adult, maybe she could make this stuff up or seek out a victim to help her write it. As a child… no.

That said, it’s not really important that we all choose sides here and argue. What is important is that people open their minds to the absolutely real possibility that this happened. That Jerry Sandusky did what he was found guilty of doing. That Roman Polanski did what he pled guilty to. Having social standing and being a predator are not mutually exclusive. The sky will not fall if we all acknowledge this reality. If there’s any chance of the sky falling at all, it’s much more likely to happen because so many of us insist on interacting with personal mythologies instead of reality.