Hidden Brain - Why Now?

Episode Date: September 25, 2018

Nearly a quarter century ago, a group of women accused a prominent playwright of sexual misconduct. For the most part, the allegations went nowhere. In 2017, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, more women came forward to accuse the same playwright of misconduct. This time, everyone listened. On this episode — originally broadcast in February 2018 — we explore the story through the lens of social science research and ask, "Why Now?" What has changed in our minds and in our culture so that allegations of sexual harassment and assault are being taken more seriously than they were in the past? A note: This story includes descriptions of sexual harassment and assault. It may not be suitable for all listeners.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. A warning before we start today's show, this episode includes accounts of sexual assault and may not be suitable for all listeners. In 2016, Maya Armanson sat down at her laptop to write a Facebook post. It was about a famous playwright, Israel Horowitz. She accused him of serious sexual misconduct. He put this anger in me that I didn't have before and that wasn't going away and I couldn't let it rest.

Within months, other women stepped forward with similar stories. But yeah, no, he just locked the door and then he... Nobody was there and it was... And then he just... I never thought it would go this far. I went to the managing director and said I was quitting. The theater world was quick to censure the playwright. Several companies dropped productions of his plays. He quickly resigned from the board of the theater company

that he'd found it. Israel Horowitz was disgraced. His career in tatters. But here's the twist. Twenty-four years earlier, another group of women had made nearly identical accusations, and nothing happened. This week on Hidden Brain, we ask, why now? Why have so many women stepped forward to make accusations about sexual harassment

and assault, and why is the world finally taking them seriously? In the mid-1980s, Jocelyn Minehart was a high school student in New York City. She was known for her sense of humor and her oversized vintage clothes. She was dating Adam Horowitz, a teenage musician from the band The Beastie Boys. I went out with him from the time I was 15 to 17. After high school, Jocelyn enrolled at New York University to pursue a degree in dramatic writing. One day, in 1989, she got a call. It was Adam's father,

the 49-year-old playwright, Israel Horvitz. Israel was like, I have a play and two tickets, you know, come to see it. I was like, this is weird. And I don't even think before then I'd seen any of his plays. Like, I just had no relation. He was just like my boyfriends father. Jocelyn went to see the play with her new boyfriend. Sometime later she says, Israel invited her to have coffee. She told him she was studying at NYU. And then, you know, he was like, oh you're in dramatic writing school that silly you should be like just writing. And then, Israel made Jocelyn an incredible offer.

He asked if she'd like to work the summer at his theater in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He created a position for me where he was like, you can come up and be like the Samuel Beckett Fellow. A playwriting fellowship at a professional theater company. And get a stipend? It was unreal, a huge break for a 19-year-old student. Jocelyn says to top it all, he told her he would take her under his wing, teacher his craft, so you went.

Yeah. Of course she went. It was like a big heavy door was being thrown open. Beyond lay endless possibility. It was really the first time I was going to be away from home, like even summer camp up till then it had been like two weeks, you know. I remember not knowing how to feed myself, like I ate a lot of cereal that summer and candy bars so.

At the end of May, Jocelyn packed her stuff and headed up to the blue collar fishing town of Gloucester. The theatre company had rented a room for her. With this really cool senior citizen fisherman's wife who was really awesome. Jocelyn started settling in. The next day... Israel showed up and was like hop in my car and we'll drive up to my house. I remember so clearly because it was a really foggy day, so just everything about it was just creepy and it wasn't late in the evening,

it was just like dinner time. They drove through the fog to Israel's house. They went inside. And that door, the one she thought would lead to endless possibility Slamshot We just locked the door and then immediately like stuck his tongue down my mouth and I remember just feeling so trapped And I remember looking out the window and thinking can I run? If I had left, you know, would anybody

Help me and wouldn't I look ridiculous because I'd walked into this house and Israel could just say like, oh she's mentally unstable or whatever you know. Remember this was before cell phones, ubers and Google maps. Instead of running, Jocelyn froze. I felt like I was in shock. Like it was so shocking. It was so shocking. This is my my ex-boyfriends father, you know? Like I Laugh like but then I said I am not here for this. I don't want to do this and He said this is inevitable. This was inevitable and And I realized that he wasn't viewing it. And I started to cry.

And I think clearly you shouldn't have sex with somebody unless they're crying for joy. And so I do feel like on some level he knew what he was doing. But yeah, he led me upstairs and I was crying. And remember, it's kind of seeing it from an aerial perspective. While I wasn't grabbed by my hair and dragged through a park in the middle of the night, could I describe it as rape? Like, could I, you know, because I wasn't screaming and saying no, no, no, no, was that rape?

Jocelyn didn't say a word to anyone. I just thought, if I tell people and deal with this, I will have to go home and lose this opportunity. And it felt I would have to deal with all this shame and embarrassment over what happened because didn't I know that this would happen. So it just seemed wiser to just soldier on. So that's what she did. In the weeks that followed, Jarslyn tried to avoid Israel's advances. Sometimes she succeeded, but she says not always. One of the times was in the room I was staying where I also had my computer set up to write

and he came over to help me with my play and then put the moves on me. And it was sort of like we have to have sex before I'm going to sit down and help you with your play. And that's exactly what happened. The other time, he was like, oh, my office in town is a mess. Like, come help me clean it up. And then we're there. So it was essentially like if he was alone with me in a place other than the theater and other than his house, which now had his kids and his twins and his nanny, like if he could get me into a place and he was able to do that twice.

And both times I didn't fight him off. And I did feel like I had made that decision. Like I'm just not going to tell anyone ever. And I don't want to ruin this opportunity. So, you know, I thought I remember thinking at that time that you could absolutely forget things. I was like, I'm going to block this, I'm not going to think about it and I'll be fine. You know, like I didn't understand that that's not how the brain works. For Jocelyn, the summer became something to endure.

It was all made worse by the fact that the Glastor Stage Company was producing a searing play about the trauma of rape. It was called the Widows Blind Date. The playwright, Israel Horowitz. The play tells a story of Margi, a woman in her 30s. Back when she was 17, Margi was gang raped by seven young men, including her high school classmates, George and Archie. She's now returned to her hometown in Massachusetts to confront those two men. Much of the play depicts a world where men casually demean women. In one scene, Margi describes what it feels like to be endlessly

objectified by men. She counts off the many slang terms used to describe women's breasts and voices her exhaustion and exasperation at being groped. We had an actor perform an excerpt from the play, again, a warning that this section involves language that may not be appropriate for all listeners. You're thinking it over, Archie and George, I will gladly give my breasts over to you for whatever purpose you choose. George, you would wear them on the odd days Archie on the events and I'd be free to get back to work, to get back to sleep at night, to end the constant and unrelenting fondling.

I've saw that play like 500 times because that was the play that was being produced the summer I was there, like the worst summer of my life. And so it was really, no, it's just so complicated and ridiculous because I basically had to watch a play about a woman who was raped confronting her rapist. And, no, and that's what part of, you know, I remember Israel saying to me at one point, like, can you imagine hurting somebody, like, what that would do, like, how ridiculous that is?

And I was just like, you have hurt me. Like, it just was such a mind-bender. We repeatedly reached out to Israel Horowitz via phone, email and letters. We asked him about the allegations that Jocelyn and other women have made against him and the apparent contradiction between the message of his play and his alleged behavior. He declined an interview, saying, I'm recovering from two major cancer surgeries. My play, The Widow's Blind Date, states clearly my feeling about sexual violence against women, which I find to be a warrant and intolerable.

When we come back, we look at the psychology of when people stay silent and when they speak up. You're listening to Hidden Brain. This is NPR. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. People often stay silent even when they want to speak up. We may think something in private, but say nothing in public. This happens to individuals who've suffered abuse. This happens with the entire nations. Duke University political scientist Timur Koran says that people pay close attention to

public opinion and figure out that sometimes it's wiser to shut up. The punishments for expressing a controversial view cover a wide range. At one extreme, there can be a knock on your door at 4 o'clock in the morning and you can be dragged to prison, you can be taken to a concentration camp. There are societies where that happens, but there are much milder forms of punishment. You can be ostracized from a community, you can be rebuked, your career can be placed in danger. And so people say one thing publicly, and believe another thing privately.

To more Quran calls this preference falsification. When our views clash with what we perceive to be the prevailing currents, we realize it's dangerous to openly express ourselves. A good example is East Germany during Soviet control. For decades communism survived by making the populations it ruled afraid to express opposition to the principles of communism and express opposition to the dictatorships that were running the Soviet block countries. The silence around Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct operated in the same way. It was an open secret for decades we've learned

in Hollywood and in circles that Harvey Weinstein traveled in that he was a predator of young women, but also that if anybody called them out on this, he would ruin their careers. There are ways to talk about our secrets, ways to voice our truths while maintaining plausible plausible deniability. The best way, humor. This is from the sitcom 30 Rock. Don't do it, J-mo. You don't want to mess with weird hours. Oh please, I'm not afraid of anyone in show business. I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions out of five. And several years ago, at an Oscar nomination ceremony, Seth McFarlane told this joke. The 2012 nominee is for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Roll, R. Sally

Field in Lincoln and Halfaway in Les Miserables. Jackie Weaver in Silver Lining's Playbook. Helen Hunt in the Sessions and Amy Adams in the master. Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein. Did you hear that laughter? Everyone got it. To more says when the Soviet Union tightly controlled East Germany, jokes were common there too. Jokes about the aging Soviet leaders, jokes about how inefficient the Soviet economy was, jokes about how hollow Marxism was, but when the information about all of these deficiencies of the system were put in jokes. The person telling the joke did not have to take ownership of the claims, where they

drew the line is with writing an article that would go into a newspaper that would put in words backed up by facts, the deficiencies of the system that you were joking about. There is power in the written word. Sometimes it takes a news article to turn whispered injustices into public outrage. But this is where the story of Israel Horowitz gets complicated. Preference falsification was certainly at play in keeping women like Jocelyn Minehart silent. But it doesn't explain everything. In 1993, an envelope showed up in a Boston newsroom in the mailbox of a theatre critic.

They sort of plain white envelope addressed to me. This is Bill Marx. He now teaches at Boston University. But back in the early 90s, he was writing for the Boston Phoenix. Which is part of what was then a very proud tradition of alternative presses. Bill wrote theatre reviews. So when he tore up in the envelope in his mailbox, he was expecting what he usually received, a hate note from an angry actor.

That is not what he found. This was a different kind of note. And it essentially was a plea from an anonymous woman at the Gloucester Stage Company saying that they were being molested, that they were being sexually harassed by the artistic director that they had. I remember that they in the note mentioned that they created a buddy system to protect each other and they wanted some help. And it was really to me when I read it, it was a cry for help. Bill was stunned.

He wasn't really a reporter, let alone an investigative reporter. And yet he says, it felt like he'd been singled out to do something, like he was being tested. I wanted to check it out. I didn't immediately go, oh, this must be true, but I felt, well, I'm hearing this note. It sounded authentic to me, at least enough to where I wanted to start going out and talking to the actresses to see whether it was true or not.

He started reaching out to women he knew had worked at the Gloucester Stage Company. Sometimes I would have to call two or three times. At times they were reluctant. They will say, well, I'd like to talk but I can't talk now or let me think about this. But slowly, women began to tell him their stories. I mean, there was a tremendous amount of feeling, particularly among the actresses, that if this came out, they would not get jobs. They'd be labeled as being very difficult to work with, so that they were putting a lot on the line when they were doing this.

It's important to note that at this time, Israel Horowitz was a big fish in a small pond. He was an internationally known playwright, running a powerhouse theater in an old, gritty, fishing town. He had a bit of celebrity star power and used to drive around Gloucester in a little sports car with a license plate that had author in capital letters and he used to wear a sort of beret. Laura Crook remembers that vanity plate.

She's one of the women who reached out to Bill with a story to share. They agreed to meet in his apartment. We went in, sat down, he gave me a glass of water, and had his little tape recorder. And he said, you know, we'll start when you're ready. In the summer of 1989, she set she attended the Gloucester Stage Company's production of the Widows Blind Date. She told Bill she fell in love with a small black box theater and jumped at an opportunity to audition for Israel the following year. And I went in and I think I either asked him if he would know what he wanted or he said you know okay do the monologue

and I want you to cry three times and I said okay and I did the monologue and I cried three times. And I said, okay. And I did the monologue and I cried three times. And then a couple days later they asked me if I would understudy. And I said, yes, absolutely. But even before she started the new gig, a friend in the Boston Theatre World told her, hey, try not to be alone with him. And I said, uh, okay. You know, that's going to be... she's like, just trying not to be alone with him. Once she got to Gloucester, another actress issued the very same warning. Trying not to be alone with him.

Rehearsals began. One day, as other actors worked on a scene, Israel called Laura over. And, uh, and Israel said, hey, why don't we go in the green room so we can work on your monologue? And I said, okay, because that's totally normal. There's nothing at all that's absolutely normal to do. So we went into the green room and we sat down on the couch

and I said, so let's just read through the monologue and I started to read through it. And then he just was on me. And he had his tongue in my mouth and his hand on my shirt. And I jumped up and made a joke. I said, that's not in the script. He came at me again and I pushed him away and I don't know what I said then. I think it's a lot of blood brushes to your ears and situations like that and just kind of figure out how the hell they get out of there.

Laura says she wasn't the only one at the theater fending off Israel's advances. So she worked out a body system with another woman. Israel didn't like lipstick. It didn't like red lipstick. And so we had a tube of lipstick. I had it in my box, my dressing table. So we would always put on lipstick when he was around. Another time, Israel asked Laura to come into the shop to hand her some notes.

Laura caught the eye of her friend. I mean, in true black comedy, she was the technical director, but she kept announcing that she was coming into the shop to get a tool of some sort of like, I'm going to get a hammer. And then she'd go that she was coming into the shop to get a tool of some sort of like, I'm going to get a hammer, and then she'd go in and she'd get the shop back and walk out, like she would not get what she was talking about. And then he would try to kiss me and then she would come back in and interrupt us again. It was a kind of job a person would want to quit as fast as possible.

And yet, when Laura was asked back for another summer of work, she said, yes. You know, I've been thinking a lot about that. A lot recently, but I think over the years, I think about it. I wanted to work. Like, there's just not a lot of work out there. I mean, it's a hard job, it's a hard career. And he wasn't always assaulting you. Sometimes you had these really great conversations about show business and theater and being creative and the art that we all make.

And so I just wanted to believe otherwise. It's just trying to make sense of it so that you can live in this world. Bill Marks understood the dilemma, Laura and the other women faced. I mean, their careers were on, they felt, their careers were on the line that they would be labeled as difficult.

They'd be labeled as man haters. They'd be labeled as, you know, somehow making things up about Horvitz, who apparently was telling everyone that this is just part of his sort of, you know, theater slash Hollywood, kissy kissy, huggy, huggy demeanor. Two of the women told Bill that complained to the stage company's board of directors, but to their knowledge, nothing had been done. When Bill reached out to the board president, he was told the women's stories didn't fit the legal definition of sexual harassment.

On August 6, 1993, the Boston Phoenix published Bill's article. It included the stories of six women. They chose to remain anonymous, but said they would identify themselves if the paper was sued. A week later, the Phoenix published a follow-up story after four more women came forward, three were Nannies who'd worked in Israel's house. To me, I absolutely proved what was going on, given the number of women and the activities.

Then, you know, when the second article came out and I was called, all the Nannis had called me and suddenly I had, you know, some other women contacting me, then I felt that A, I've opened the floodgates. Now they're definitely going to have to do something. How can they ignore this? But it was ignored. Officials at the theater recently said that in 1993, they conducted an investigation and crafted a new sexual harassment policy. The theater said Israel flatly denied the charges

and that the women who spoke to Bill did not come forward to identify themselves. But in Bill's article, the board president is also quoted as characterizing the women as tightly wound. Laura Krook remembers being really angry and really sad. But mostly like, okay. That's it. Okay. I mean, we were two years out of Anita Hill, so we saw how that went. It wasn't much of a surprise.

It was just... I hadn't thought about how much it hurt until now, until all that we surfacing again. What it is to be... to know you're telling the truth and to be summarily dismissed. Laura and Jocelyn's stories help us understand why the Me Too movement didn't take off 25 years ago. To more Quran would call it preference falsification. Princeton psychology professor Betsy Palak cites a complimentary idea known as social

proof. When people are deciding whether to step forward and say something, they look at what happened to others who stepped forward before them. It's social proof that it's most basic. We want to know, we wonder how we'll be treated if we step forward to blow the whistle on a certain kind of behavior, and we need sometimes to watch someone else do it and to see what realistically are the consequences. When Laura and other actors reveal their stories and found it made no difference, Other women received a clear message. Shut up. Stay silent.

Women, especially, used to watch other women report and maybe lose their jobs or just not be heard at all or be disparaged. So that is the kind of social proof that used to inform women's decisions about reporting sexual harassment. Another young woman said she met Israel Horowitz in 1994. Yana Misteki was in turning at a small theater in Paris where Israel was working. She says he tried to kiss her and once, tried to pull her into his bedroom. When Yana discovered Bill Mox's stories, She received social proof about what would happen

if she spoke out. I had case-based evidence from a 93 article that came out that nothing happened. To Israel Horvitz or the company or the board or anybody else who was responsible for enabling and protecting that behavior. I knew that you put yourself out there and there will be nothing done other than you lose your job and you leave and you're bullied out

of it. You're listening to Hidden Brain. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. We're talking this hour about why the Me Two Revolution has caught fire at this particular moment, even though both men and women have known about sexual harassment and assault for decades. We've seen how women were silenced and why it made sense for them to stay quiet. But the science of social norms and preference falsification also explains how a code of silence can abruptly crumble. Again, this story includes descriptions of sexual assault and may not be appropriate for

all listeners. The same year that Yana Mastaki decided to remain quiet, Maya or Mansons was born at St. Vincent's Hospital across the street from Israel Horowitz's brownstone in Grenish village. From an early age, she was drawn to the stage. She started out dancing. It was Maya's dance teacher who recommended her for a role in one of Israel's horror vets' plays. She was 11 years old. Everything about the theater and the playwright delighted her.

Oh, I loved him. He was great. Yeah, it's so much fun with him. He was like a grandfather to me. There was a running thing going on during the production if anyone cursed in front of me. They had to buy me a Toblerone bar, so I got lots of chocolate off of him. Maya stayed close with Israel after the production. He made her feel special. Well, he's just always really kind. He always responded to emails extremely quickly. Yeah, it was just this general sense of feeling that I wasn't just anybody else, that I was valued and respected.

He wrote me recommendations for things. He gave me monologues for auditions. He was great. He came to, at my request, was the speaker at graduation from my middle school at PPA-S, the professional performing arts school. Fast forward a decade. In 2016, when Maya was 21, she was going through a rough time and feeling lost. My cousin had died. My cat had died. I was going through a relationship problems.

It was this world of things that were just getting very difficult to know how to deal with. One day Maya ran into Israel at a reading of one of his plays. She told him what was going on in her life. And he said to me, don't worry, I'm going to give you as many of my short plays as you want and you're going to produce them and that's going to be your project. That's what's going to focus you. And it was really incredible. I thought that it was a beautiful offer, a very cool offer. I'd never produced anything before. He was willing to help me, so it was really meaningful.

Maya considered it carefully. She had to conquer her own doubts about whether she was up to it, whether she could direct others, not just be directed. She decided she could. So I emailed him and I said that it would be great. And with a minute I got a response with the attachments to a ton of his plays and so I began sifting through them to see which ones I wanted to do. Maya eventually chose five plays to work on. She recruited an actor who was also interested in producing and they got to work. They changed language that felt dated. They started working on casting. Maya wanted to get as much done as possible so that when she met with Israel,

I could show him that I was actually invested in this and that I was putting the time in and I wasn't just waiting for him to tell me what to do. Finally, Maya was ready. She wanted to talk production with Israel. At the time, he was overseeing rehearsals at a theater in downtown Manhattan. He lives just a few blocks away from that theater and I live further uptown.

So I was saying I could go downtown to meet him. It's not a problem. And he insisted on coming up to my house. He showed up a half hour earlier than they'd arranged. That threw me off a little bit. But when she met him in the lobby, everything seemed fine. Very friendly, it was very nice. They went in to her apartment. And then the second the door closed behind him. He's just, it was like a switch had flipped. He came and tried to kiss me and then he put his hands on my breasts. And he pulled me to the couch in the living room and had me sit on his lap.

And then I got up and then he pulled me down again back onto his lap. And he stuck his tongue in my mouth and I jerked away. Then he did it again, he held my head in place. And then I tried to get up again. And it was just sort of going around in circles like that. Maya grew up in New York and she thought of herself as tough. But in that moment, she didn't respond the way she would have expected. I felt very self-conscious and nervous of offending him,

which is something to this day, I can't believe that that's how I felt in the moment. But then I kept sort of trying to veer the conversation back to the play, back to the work, back to the production. And he interrupted me and he said, before we get started, I just have to say, I've known you since you were so young and your breasts have just become so big and beautiful. And it was just impossible to process what was happening that he was talking to me that way. And it was very strange that he acknowledged in the moment how long he's known me.

Part of me was almost hoping he's approaching 80, senile maybe doesn't quite understand who I am, but in that sentence, in that line, that clearly wasn't the case. Maya tried again to explain her ideas for the plays. He had no interest in what I had to say about them, he sort of had his game plan for how they should be done. And then she says he tried to kiss her again. And I said I have a boyfriend and he said so I have a wife. And then he said, I'm doing this for you Maya. You know I'm doing this for you because I love you.

I love you. Do you know how much I love you? Do you love me? And you need it to hear me say that I loved him back. And then he told me no great woman ever became great by being a good girl. Maya says she kept resisting. Eventually Israel left. When the door closed behind him and he left, what was going through your head? I punched the kitchen wall and I sat down on the floor and I was just shaking with rage.

The rage that wasn't there when he was in the apartment. It was all very, I almost felt like my 11 year old self dealing with him when we were face to face. And the second I didn't see him anymore, the second I got him out of the apartment, I just couldn't believe I had just let him leave and hadn't hit him. It was a very, very strange sad moment. For more than 25 years,

Israel Horowitz was protected by silence. Women who tried to speak up were shut down. The Whisper Network had turned thready and faint. Maya did not know about the accusations in Israel's past. But after the incident, she called her friends. She told her mother, who quickly tracked down the articles from the Boston Phoenix. And reading those articles changed something in me.

The description of what he did to them was exactly what he did to me. Maya wanted people to know what had happened. She called a prominent theater where Israel often worked. She says the director didn't call back. It was radio silence for three months. And then one day I saw on Instagram actually a post of Israel in rehearsal on stage for the play they were working on. And it was captioned, the man at work with a bunch of hashtags like genius, love, the

theater. Maya burned with a white heart fury. I got so live it. I got so livid. I couldn't believe it. So she sat at her kitchen table and slammed out a post on Facebook. I asked her to read it for us. In the beginning of June, I had a meeting with the playwright in my home. He is my senior by several decades.

I've known him since I was 11. I regarded him as an honorary grandfather. Maya described in detail what Israel had done to her, but did not mention his name. She finished up the post this way. And it hurts me that even though some people do know what he's done, it doesn't seem to matter. And there will be more women.

And some of them may be a lot tougher than me, but some of them will surely be a lot less tough. We've got to protect each other, especially when it would be so easy for a woman to feel this was her fault. That might have been where the story ended, but then, news broke. A tape surfaced in which then presidential candidate Donald Trump bragged about assaulting women. I'm going to use some text just in case I start kissing her. You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. It was the infamous Axis Hollywood tape.

And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the ****. I can do anything. Just the casual nature of it is They have they they Yeah, it's he just you know he can grab women's Bodies Israel grabbed my body. It wasn't mine

They didn't see he didn't see it as mine Trump doesn't see it as the woman's body like it's theirs they have some ownership over it. And that really, really upset me. It still upsets me. Maya watched in disbelief as Donald Trump was elected president. I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She can graduated us. It's about us on our victory.

At that moment, something snapped. The day after Trump's election, Maya reopened her Facebook post. I reposted the original thing at the original piece that I wrote, and I just put something at the top saying that in the late of the election, I'm ready to say the name. It was the playwright, Israel Horowitz. Maya also felt compelled to find other women who'd been through what she had been through. She had powerful tools at her disposal. Facebook, Twitter, Google. It was a whisper network, but on high octane.

One of the first people she connected with was Yana Mastecchi, who had states silent about what happened after she met Israel and Paris in 1994. When she heard Maya's story, Yana knew she had to speak up too. It made me mad that it was still happening and that maybe if I had said something, maybe it would make a difference. I don't know that it would have made a difference then, but I'm raising two girls and, you know, I couldn't look at myself if I didn't. Maya also did something else.

She contacted the New York Times. All over the country, powerful men were being toppled on charges of sexual harassment. In late November 2017, the Times published an article detailing the stories of nine women who publicly accused Israel Horowitz of harassment and abuse. In that article, the playwright apologized, but said he had a different memory of some of these events. The reaction to this article was completely different than in 1993. The Gloucester Stage Company quickly severed ties with Israel, other companies cancelled productions of his

plays. His own son, Adam Horowitz, said he believed the accusations. Not long ago, I was talking to my wife over dinner about this story. I was trying to understand why now? Why are women being heard in a way they were not heard before? My wife, Ashwini Thambe, researchers gender issues and recently wrote about this topic. I'm an associate professor of women studies at the University of Maryland College Park. What she told me about was a theory of horizontal violence. Horizontal violence is when people turn on other people

in their own lives when they are not able to actually effect change against more powerful targets. It's a term used by the 20th century psychiatrist and philosopher, Franz Fanon. He wrote about how people living on the brutal colonial rule dealt with oppression. Because it's so difficult to attack or target colonial rulers, what Fanon found was that people were lashing against people in their own lives. Think about pressure building up in a container. The energy needs a way to escape. If it can't blow the top off, it might explode sideways.

I think that the election of Donald Trump has served as a trigger and it has provoked a great deal of fury and impatience because he represents for many people the ultimate unpunished predator. Fanor used the term horizontal violence to describe rage that was misdirected or misplaced. Ashwini says horizontal action is a better term to describe how many women have channeled their rage over Trump's election to call out the men

in their own lives who sexually harass them. It feels very, very important in this moment to topple those perpetrators who are within reach because at this moment Trump remains unreachable even though Trump shapes the context in which enormous anger against misogyny and sexual harassment has risen. Maya has the same take as Ashwin. I think it's Trump. I think that's what it is. Clearly, there's been something building for a long time, but it's such a huge deal for

your leader, the leader of the free world, to not care about women, that it's so unbelievable. Laura Croque was one of the women who came forward to speak to the press in 1993. She did so again in 2017. She's grateful that her allegations were taken seriously this time around. But when she thinks about what happened to Maya, she can't get over the terrible cost of the delay. I just wish I wish I could have stopped it in 93. It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. But so many women had to go through this when it's...

was... stoppable. It was absolutely stoppable. Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, experts on both sides of the Atlantic was certain that the Soviet Union would endure for many decades. Preference falsification blinded regimes to their citizens growing dissatisfaction. The pressure reached a breaking point in 1989. It took authorities by surprise. As protests at the Berlin Wall gained momentum, the regime that once looked invincible suddenly looked fragile. Preference falsification now started to work in the other direction.

Very quickly, defending the old regime became dangerous. In exactly the same way, many powerful, many accused of sexual assault have found themselves without defenders, even amongst their own families. The social proof has changed. In Israel's play, the widow's blind date, Margi goes back home 20 years after she was gang raped. She wants to confront her assailants, to hear them say they did something wrong. Twenty years after what she describes as the worst summer of her life, Jocelyn Minehart, the playwriting fellow who worked on that play in 1989, made an appointment to meet with

Israel. He was just like, oh, it's so great to see you. We should have gotten together a lot. It's been too long. But then when we sat down for coffee, I just said, you know, the reason I have a reason for seeing you and I just want to talk about what happened. And I didn't say rape. I think I, you know, I said, I talked about the trauma. I was like, that was deeply traumatic. It affected my whole life, and it's affected my romantic relationships, my relationships, you know, just everything.

And he was like, what? You know, just sort of taking it back. Jocelyn says Israel apologized. But in that non-apologetic way, when, you know, it's not, it wasn't anything that landed and that he took really took responsibility for it. She says he suggested that what happened between them was not abusive. At one point he was just like do you remember us like as if it was a romantic thing that I was just remembering wrong which was

in raging and and the thing that really really sticks with me and really also was angering. I was just that You know you weren't underaged like because it wasn't because I was 19 That made it okay Not long after Maya named Israel in her Facebook post she received a voicemail Maya, this is Israel calling. I'm so upset. I don't know what to say. I had no idea.

It's a terrible, terrible misunderstanding. It was a terrible, mixed signal. And I didn't know you were upset. And I love you, Maya Maya and I never, never would hurt you that way. Never, never, never. Please, you've got to believe me. Oh my God, I'm just shaking. Somebody just wrote to me and told me about it. I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry and I love you and I would never, never, never hurt you that way. That was such a missing on such a... oh my god.

It is not to us. Israel said the widow's blind date quote states clearly my feeling about sexual violence against women which I find to be be a boring and intolerable. We asked actors to read some lines from the end of Israel's play. In the scene, one of the men who raped Margi tries to explain why he did it. Nobody planned it, Margi. It just happened.

Honest to God. I mean, well, boys are always talking about wanting to do it with this one or that one and Everybody was always saying they'd love to do it with you because you were well Beautiful But nobody really mented Jumping yeah, it's just when George here. Well started everybody wanted to It's just when George here, well, started. Everybody wanted to, to everybody liked you.

You liked me, Arch? I did, a lot. And that's how you showed me you liked me. I was tricked out of first I was. Otherwise, Marky, the first word you would have heard whispered in your ear would have been, I love you. Because I did. And I do.

I do still mock something wicked. I love you would not have helped. Since this episode first aired, several more women have publicly come forward to accuse Israel Horowitz of sexual misconduct. We reached out to him, but he declined to speak with us. This week's show was produced by Jenny Schmidt, Maggie Penman and Path Shah and edited by Tara Boyle and Raina Cohen. Our team includes Thomas Liu and Laura Quarral. Our intern is Camilla Varga's Restrepo. We had original music today from Ramteen Arableui.

Laura C. Harris and Ericner, performed the scenes from the Widows blind date. Special thanks to Patrice Howard, Ashley Messinger, Greg Lewis, Chris Turpin, Neil Karuth, Mark Mammoth and Anja Grunman. This week's unsung hero is Tarana Burke. In 1997, 20 years before the Me Too hashtag led up social media, Toronto Berks started a movement to help victims of sexual harassment and assault. She called it Me Too. While millions of people now know about this hashtag, far fewer know about the woman who created the term. I'm Shankar Vedantum. See you next week.