In one of my past lives, I was bullied a lot at work. It was just the way it was. It was the theater business (Jujamcyn Theaters) and I never, ever, knew what type of mood my boss would be in. I had to work crazy hours, was expected to come in earlier than my boss (I don’t need to name any names here, because it is pretty easy to figure out who these people were. I worked there in the early ‘90s) and work 12-hour days (cause we worked late, it was the theater), and just had to suck it up because that was what people did. The office was run by the white male patriarchy. One woman was in a senior position but had relatively little power compared to the six or seven men. I was very good at my job. They even created a job for me to get me to work there. But I was not valued. I took the abuse until one day when I learned from my boss that a male colleague they were bringing in was getting a new job that I had wanted (and was not even allowed to apply for) because he was a guy who was going to need to provide for his family and I was going to meet someone who was going to provide for me. What a fucking load of shit.

That broke me. I had watched some of the Anita Hill hearings in the office of one of the men who worked at the company who was kind. (I told him many years later when I saw him somewhere that he was the only one in that office who was not abusive.) Anita changed me. And I went on strike. I stopped answering the phones and stopped speaking to my boss. I did not have the tools to handle this well at all, but many of us in NY were going to WAC (Women’s Action Coalition) meetings and I just had the fire reignited in my belly that had been doused. So I fought back in the only way I knew how. I stopped working. They finally had enough of me and fired me. I was so naïve that I didn’t even negotiate a settlement. But I stood my ground. I saw the head honcho of the company at an event a couple of years afterwards and he confronted me and said that he had heard I was badmouthing the company. That fucking shook me so hard. A powerful person who has gone on to run a federal agency thought I had the power to do something to him. That was so far from the truth. Years later I saw that boss (who had “retired” by that time) and told him how much he hurt me. My heart was in my throat every time I spoke.

I ran from the theater into a women’s organization but we all learned that they are not always the feminist bastions we wish they could be. I definitely benefited from white privilege and I know I inflicted some of my own privilege on others. I was so not clued into anything. There was also a bully in that office who had power and I fought with all my might. It was not pretty. Then the next women’s organization that I helped start was a massive clusterfuck of personality problems and power struggles and it took a massive toll on me trying to mediate a lot of the issues.

I burned out. I failed. But leaving saved me.

Then I ran into Scott Rudin. I wound up working on the film “The Hours,” serving as something of a “women’s expert.” This was the early days of the internet when you couldn’t change things easily and we put together many beautiful pieces from authorities on Virginia Woolf and the feminist angle of the film. It was such a great project. I enjoyed the work so much. But Scott was tough. He did throw things. He demanded excellence and perfection. He was a mean bastard. Harvey Weinstein was also producing the film, but Scott had cut him out and didn’t let him have any role. The stories of those two fighting is legendary. Two bullies who can’t out-bully each other. I was a fly on the wall in strategy meetings for that awards season. It was amazing. But it was also awful and scary. Anytime Scott would call me for that project or for things after I would get so nervous. His assistants made his calls, so there were always seconds or minutes before he came on the line where you had to think about what he was going to say or do and that feeling of dread was not pleasant, to say the least.

I am a different person than I was when I worked for all those guys back then. Through my work at Women and Hollywood I serve the women in the industry who feel what I felt two decades ago. I say the shit they can’t say and I try not to be afraid doing so. But there are times that I get scared. I got scared when The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor called me to talk about Harvey. I didn’t really know much of anything, but I am embarrassed at how afraid I was. He had no power over me (I did a couple of consulting gigs for Miramax and Weinstein, working with the best women whom I still work with today) but I was scared.

Reading the story about Scott Rudin was really triggering for me. Bullies are everywhere in this industry. Sometimes bullying and power seem to be synonymous. And let’s not forget the enablers who have allowed the bullies to thrive. There’s a shit ton of them.

Over the last almost 15 years that I have had the privilege to do the work of Women and Hollywood and the Athena Film Festival, I have learned and grown so much. Now when I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach that made me run away when I was younger, it makes me move forward. I try to confront the things that are scary and that removes some of the power from them. I don’t have the strength to do it all the time, but I know that I now forge forward more than I run away. Bullies and serial sexual harassers are all across this industry. It’s actually how a lot of the work gets done. It’s long been time to stop and break the cycle. The pandemic and the racial reckoning have challenged all of us (or at least many of us) to try and figure out how to work and act differently. As we create new structures, it is important to remember that harassment comes in many forms. We need to uplift people and empower them — not demean and diminish them. It’s pretty simple: work should be a place where you feel safe and valued.