I grew up with stories of sexual harassment from my mother: She was a young, attractive lawyer, working in the emerging field of family law in California, and there weren’t a lot of them at the time. But while working at different firms before she established her own, she was subjected to sexual harassment and a lot of discrimination, chauvinism and sexism — by judges, other lawyers, even clients. I grew up with those stories, and so did my sister.
Years later, I heard from my sister and pretty much every woman I know that they had all experienced some form of sexual harassment, and many are victims of sexual assault. And so I’ve been an advocate for child and adult victims of sexual violence with the The Rape Foundation for 20 years; I’ve been on the board of directors for the last 15 years.
But I think there was something about the run-up to the election: I really noticed that women were being more openly demeaned and discredited and then, with a presidential candidate boasting of committing sexual assault on audio tape, I thought, This is a real. This is unacceptable. I’m the father of a six-and-a-half year-old daughter; if I’m going to do something about this for the future generations, now is the time.
It was then that Sigal Avin, a good friend and the writer and director of the Israeli anti-harassment film campaign, Zematrid, approached me. She was looking for a producing partner last January to help her recreate them in the United States. For me, it was a no brainer: Given the current climate, in which women and their advocates are fighting to maintain basic human rights, I thought, Yeah. Let’s do this.
Eight weeks later, we wrapped the six short films of That’s Harassment: The Politician, the Coworker, The Actor, The Photographer and The Boss (which I’m in). We partnered with her publications and released them online in April 2017 — months before the Weinstein scandal broke in October. And when those revelations and all the others began to surface, and the personal and societal repercussions of sexual harassment and assault became more of a part of the national consciousness, I thought, Darn, we released these videos too soon. I gotta launch them again.
The second time, though, I partnered with The Ad Council, and I wanted to make sure that we included a call to action. In every single public service announcement and every short film, we now have an end card with RAINN’s national help hotline, and I also worked with the National Women’s Law Center to create a digital toolkit of 10 steps that employers can take to help prevent harassment in the workplace.
