I'd like to expand on a thought I posted here last night, writing about sexual predators. I wrote, "Some abusers cannot be made to understand the wrongness of what they are doing to others. At best, you might be able to get them to understand what they're doing to themselves." I should have added that you also might be able to get them to understand what they're doing to their friends and loved ones.
Back before we were all living 24/7 on the Internet, some of us communicated via dial-in (by phone) computer bulletin boards. I ran one for a time for the Writers Guild. Writers would phone in by modem and post public and private messages to one another.
There was a writer I knew well. Many of my friends will know exactly who I'm talking about. I liked the guy…at times. He did some wonderful things for others, including me. He did some rotten things to others, including me. He is gone now and I suppose I look back on him with a gram of fondness because I have the kind of mind that over time, minimizes the rotten things and gravitates to the wonderful ones.
He was a ferocious salesman for his writing, never taking "no" for an answer. He sold, sold, sold like no one else I've ever encountered. There were studios that hired him merely because it was easier to do that than to fend off his constant onslaught…and sometimes, they were happy they did. He was not a terrible writer. I envied him some of the jobs he got but not how he got them. I kind of like the idea that people hire me because they like my work and maybe even me. He didn't care if every producer he harangued thought he was an asshole of limited ability — an understandable assumption, given his approach — just as long as one of them gave him an assignment.
He took a not-dissimilar approach towards women, propositioning them relentlessly wherever he went. At one point, he decided it would be a good idea to send a private message to half the women who used the Writers Guild Bulletin Board System. It was a simple, straightforward invitation to come over to his office sometime soon and perform oral sex on him. He didn't even offer to go to them. They were to come to him, though he was magnanimously willing to be available at any hour as long as no one else was outside waiting her turn.
These were not women who had ever indicated the slightest interest in doing this. Most were total strangers to him and a few were not even women. He just picked his recipients at random — anyone he thought was female — and a couple were male writers with androgynous first names like Pat and Chris. Why did he send this message to only half of the BBS roster? Because he thought the response might be so overwhelming that he wouldn't be able to accommodate all the eager volunteers. Eventually, he'd get around to e-mailing the rest, he figured.
You may be surprised to hear that there were no takers…and oddly enough, he really wasn't. He was used to rejection. He considered it just a part of a campaign that would eventually at some point succeed…and if it succeeded, then who cared how many times he got rejected or how much discomfort he caused to others? Maybe he could send the same offer over and over again to some of these women and a couple would finally come over and service him just to stop him from asking. After all, producers had hired him on pretty much that basis.
Strangely, women did not rush to accept. I think one guy named Casey might have been vaguely interested but no one of the targeted gender was. A few, to be fair, were amused and sent back fairly witty rejoinders. A number of them suggested he try self-service. A lot of them complained to the management of the Bulletin Board System.
And who was the management of the Bulletin Board System? Why, that was me, of course. I'd signed onto the job to set up computers and modems and software. You can imagine how thrilled I was to have to deal with this.
I'm not sure how any of today's social media outlets handle a situation like this even if they even handle it at all. Back then, there were no policies or precedents and when I inquired of a WGA lawyer as to what I should do, he said, "I have no idea. You'd have to figure it out." I decided to phone the writer and have it out with him.
It did no good to tell him how mad some women were. He didn't take their outrage seriously and so what? If even one of them came across, it was a winning strategy. He actually said to me, "If you buy a hundred lottery tickets and one wins, you don't regret buying the 99 that didn't."
It also did no good to point out to him that so far, not a single woman had called to ask him for directions and say, "I'll be right over." Just because a strategy hadn't succeeded yet didn't mean it wouldn't. There was still half the membership of the B.B.S. who hadn't received his generous offer. And even if it never succeeded, in his mind nothing was lost. "It didn't cost me anything to try," he told me. The shameless cannot be shamed.
What did work on him was when I said, "Think about all the trouble you're causing me. This has already taken hours of my time…and while you might not care if they're furious at you, I'm not thrilled that they're so mad at me for not doing something about what you did." A couple had talked about taking legal action, I pointed out, and that would surely cost me grief and time, along with endangering the future of the B.B.S.
It also worked to tell him that if this matter got any bigger, it was likely the whole town would hear about it. I said, "It's sure not going to help you get work…and by the way, some of the women who now think you're a creepy pervert have hiring power or will in the future."
That really got to him, though I think just understanding the position he'd put me in might have been enough. He didn't send the message out again. He phoned some of the women who were most upset and sent e-mailed apologies to others. I'm not sure how much of that repair work he did but I did hear from several ladies that they were satisfied and everyone seemed to think we should just drop it…and dropped, it was. I don't think anyone ever mentioned it to me again.
Obviously, as sexual misdeeds go, that was not a major offense. He never laid a finger on anyone or cost them a job but it was still wrong. Obviously too, a lot of people who do bad things will stop doing them when they realize how they're harming themselves…or could. We will never know how many predators stop preying because they see what's happening to the Harvey Weinsteins of the world and think, "If they can nail them, they can nail me," but I'm sure some of them will be less inclined to harass.
What I think needs to be said to some of them is this: If you're not going to stop because you're hurting the woman…and you're oblivious or uncaring about how you hurt yourself…
Stop because you're putting your friends and family in a very bad, very awkward position. Predators may think of women as interchangeable and disposable but they probably don't feel that way about everyone in their world. Even psychopaths with no sense of the harm they do to their victims usually care about somebody, someplace. It's not as valid as getting them to understand what they're doing to their victims but it's a good start and hey, whatever works.