If you have ever read anything about feminism, you know that the world is structurally set up to benefit men, not women. To help men, help them succeed, help them thrive and help them get away with the behaviours, or crimes, they undertake to maintain that status quo. What most feminist texts don’t tell you is how often women willingly engage with upholding the same systems that were built against them and how often they will throw other women under the patriarchal bus to get close to what they perceive to be power.
Lisa Bloom is the daughter of Gloria Allred, famed women’s rights attorney, and her career trajectory has followed that of her mother: a self-proclaimed champion of women. She’s been a figure head on countless TV shows offering legal advice to women who are being victimized in some way or another. She defended Mischa Barton, one of the poster girls of the early 2000s, in a revenge porn case and won. She defended Blac Chyna, a stripper turned business woman turned Instagram influencer, turned reality star and Rob Kardashian ex-girlfriend – who she also shares a child with – in a revenge porn case against the latter, where she helped Chyna obtain a temporary restraining order against the only Kardashian man left standing. She was the face of press conference after press conference of victories to women, women who decided to fight back and stand up for themselves. She was their champion, and by being their champion, she became a champion for women ready to speak up and denounce a system that had made sexual harassment and impropriety the norm.
Then, Harvey Weinstein’s take down began. And Lisa Bloom got caught up in it – not as a champion for women, but as his advisor. She advised Weinstein and his team to leak photos of his victims posing in a ‘friendly way’ with him to the press. She called Ronan Farrow, one of the reporters whose work was most damning to Weinstein, and offered him information to discredit Rose McGowan – who has publicly claimed to have been raped by Weinstein in 1997. She worked on having Farrow’s investigation – published by The New Yorker – stopped and deleted from the ether. Lisa Bloom, the champion for women. It wasn’t until her involvement with Weinstein’s legal team became public that she decided to resign from her position as his advisor. How many women would she have prevented coming forward if she had continued to employ her ‘discrediting the victim’ tactics? Would we have ever known the true extent of Weinstein’s abuse?
Journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey – Pulitzer Prize Winners – have released a book called ‘She Said’ about their investigation into Harvey Weinstein and everything that followed after that. In their book, not only do they expose the disgusting enabling that allowed these predators to get away with their actions for decades, they released a memo written by Lisa Bloom while she was a part of Weinstein’s legal team.
If you’ve ever wondered how predators are able to keep attacking women without suffering any consequences, reading Bloom’s ‘plan of attack’ will make you understand how much the public perception of an accusation, and of the accuser, can and will keep abusive men in power.
The memo details how she planned to discredit one of Weinstein’s first accusers, Rose McGowan. Calling her a pathological liar, there’s one particular stomach-churning phrase the so-called feminist lawyer writes in her memo. ‘I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them.’ The ultimate betrayal. I will use the knowledge I have obtained defending women who have been sexually assaulted to help you get away with sexually assaulting women. I will create a smear campaign against this woman, knowing the difficulty that assault victims go through to be believed. I will help you prepare a pre-emptive strike against this woman, ‘making you the hero of your story, not the villain’ knowing how women are often blamed for their assault, how much work goes into exonerating guilty men.
We all know that the system exists to protect men, we just don’t expect women to be a part of that same system, but when they are, it stings in a particular way. It leaves behind the sour taste of not being able to trust your people; the only people who might understand you and relate to you and your pain. She took the pain of women who trusted her and decided to use it to help perpetuate the same system of abuse who gave her that knowledge in the first place. I hope the women she helped, or claimed to help, don’t feel betrayed by her. I know I certainly do.
