On October 10, 2017, Terry Crews did something no one knew he was going to do, not even his wife: he opened up about allegedly being groped by a powerful Hollywood exec. The actor had been reading women’s stories about their experiences with sexual abuse in Hollywood—which began spilling out after the New York Times’s first report about Harvey Weinstein—and found himself incensed by the way men were responding to their tales with skepticism, suggesting, among other things, that the women coming forward were speaking up just because they wanted to be famous.
“I literally was like, ‘That’s not what this is about at all! This is not how it works!’” he recalled in an interview. And so, he tweeted: “This whole thing with Harvey Weinstein is giving me PTSD. Why? Because this kind of thing happened to ME.”
Crews recounted a Hollywood party where an unnamed, powerful agency executive—later revealed to be William Morris Endeavor’s Adam Venit—groped him, laughing when he protested. Although Crews instantly drew gratitude and support, he also found himself on the receiving end of skepticism—particularly from other men, who said a guy like him couldn’t be sexually abused, due to his size and physique. (As one comedian put it, “God gave you muscles, so you can say no.”)
“The way I like to describe this whole issue is: you are now behind enemy lines once you come forward,” the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star said. “Instead of a person who needs help, you are a problem that needs to be eradicated. That’s immediate . . . Because there’s a whole system in place, and you’re about to upset the whole thing.”
Though the sordid tales of Hollywood sexual abuse that have proliferated in the #MeToo era cover a wide range of experiences, most of them have one thing in common: they’re told by women. The men who have come forward—including Crews, Anthony Rapp, James Van Der Beek, Brendan Fraser, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure star Alex Winter, The Man in the High Castle’s Michael Gaston, and several male models who spoke out about the powerful photographers Bruce Weber and Mario Testino—have faced a unique set of challenges, from naysayers who believe men groping other men is just horseplay to a heightened stigma that makes male accusers less likely than female ones to identify themselves as survivors—and makes it more difficult for them to process emotions born of trauma.
One year after the movement went viral, though, male survivors are beginning to feel a sense of community, protection, and acceptance—perhaps best exemplified by Crews’s experience. After learning last November that Venit would return to work after roughly a month’s suspension, Crews brought a civil case against Venit and WME, which the parties settled last month. The case was dismissed on the condition that Venit resign, without the possibility of returning to the company in any capacity, and that WME alters its employee-conduct policy to adequately address sexual assault and battery by WME employees against clients. (An outside attorney will be responsible for approving the policy, as well as its implementation.) Employees will also be required to receive training regarding those policies annually.
“I told everyone, and I continue to say it,” Crews said. “I was ready to spend a million dollars to win one dollar . . . This is not about money at all. But the fact is that I wanted [Venit] to be gone.”
“The higher up you are, the more accountable you are,” the actor added. “It doesn’t work the other way.”
Crews noted that male accusers can both benefit and be hurt by pre-existing notions about masculinity and sexual politics. People seemed quicker to believe his claims against Venit, he said, because he is a man—but some skeptics also shrugged off Venit’s actions or blamed Crews for misconstruing Venit’s intentions (a charge that can be lobbed at any accuser, male or female). Others asked why Crews didn’t simply punch the guy—ignoring the consequences Crews could have faced for that.
For many men who have faced sexual abuse, the problem is still more elemental: “I don’t really recall hearing about male survivors,” said Gaston, when asked if he believes #MeToo has shifted the conversation surrounding male accusers. A day after Crews’s tweets, Gaston told his own story, tweeting that just as Crews was groped at an industry function, Gaston was also assaulted in a professional setting. Gaston was in his late twenties, he said, when a director groped his groin during rehearsal for a new play. Both a stage manager and a young assistant director were present for the incident, Gaston said. At the time, he responded by swatting the director’s hand away and making a joke. “But I never complained to management,” he wrote on Twitter last October. “I was terrified. And I was humiliated. I had violent fantasies about the man for years.”
It was 25 years before Gaston felt ready to speak about the incident publicly; at the time, the actor said he only confided in one close male friend. “We weren't particularly emotionally sophisticated. . . At the time, it was just, like, put your head down, get to work, get out of New Haven when this thing is over, and get on with our lives, which we did,” he said. Years later, he learned that two other actors he knew had been harassed by the same director: “It was a perfect three out of three.”
Although the memory of being groped gradually receded in Gaston’s mind, he still felt dark emotions he couldn’t fully understand or process; the two others told him about similar experiences. There they were, three usually nice guys, all boiling with rage. “It really, really affected us in lots of different ways, I think,” Gaston said. And as the actor typed out his story on Twitter last fall, it all came rushing back.
“I might have just stopped and not done it, if I’d thought about it more—but in the moment, my heart was pounding,” Gaston said. “It really was weird. At one time in my life, I’ve had what could be described as a panic attack, and this was about half of that. Just as I was writing, you know, I really felt hot and short of breath. And it was 25 years later.”
But for all the anxiety and emotion that goes into speaking out, the process can be healing for male and female survivors alike. In an interview, Alex Winter compared speaking publicly to the feeling of shackles coming off. “I never thought, ‘God forbid I’d ever go public with it,’ until this #MeToo thing happened,” Winter said. Buoyed by stories told by other actors, he came forward in late October of 2017 with his own tale of being sexually abused as a child actor; he did not name his perpetrator, whom he said is now dead.
Winter spent years selectively sharing portions of what happened to him—sometimes through jokes, and sometimes in earnest. “It wasn’t like I was lying about it, but I wasn’t getting into full detail,” Winter said. “So it was kind of a patchwork. I think you sort of off-load stress in a way for yourself that makes you feel safe, but still gives you some sense of getting some of it out there. Then you realize, as you go on, that that’s not really doing very much.”
In his thirties, Winter said, he began to speak openly about the abuse in therapy—but only there. The #MeToo movement—particularly the stories told by female survivors—is what empowered him to overcome the sense of isolation that makes survivors feel as though they should keep their stories to themselves, rather than disrupt the lives of those around them, a notion he called “bonkers, in retrospect.”
When asked if he thought the #MeToo movement overall felt inclusive of men, Winter was unequivocally positive. “By the time I came out with my story, I was not feeling like, ‘Oh my God, I’m jumping off a high dive,’” Winter said. “I felt like I’m just stepping into a pool that there’s a bunch of people in already.” And the reactions he received afterward only bore that feeling out. The other men agreed, as well, that the movement has made them feel supported as they’ve come forward. As more alleged victims come forward and the movement matures, some of the conversation surrounding it has required more nuance—like actor Jimmy Bennett’s recent accusations against Asia Argento, who was herself one of the first women to accuse Weinstein of rape. (Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.) Bennett alleged statutory rape, while Argento later alleged that Bennett was the aggressor.
Winter—who noted he does not know either party—said that the messy way those allegations have unfolded proves that victims of abuse are not necessarily unimpeachable themselves. “The thing that the public is really going to have a hard time with—that [original #MeToo founder,] Tarana Burke, I think, wrote about [it] really early on—is that if we’re really going to accept the degree to which this happens, it’s a game changer,” Winter said. “People are going to have to understand how systemic it is . . . So it’s going to happen to people you don’t like. It’s going to happen to people that are doing it themselves.” And, as the public will continue to learn, abuse has and will continue to affect both men and women.
Overall, Winter thinks the movement represents real progress; if he were an adolescent being abused now, he said, he’d feel more comfortable speaking out sooner. There is still a stigma around speaking up about sexual misconduct, he pointed out, and we have yet to grasp just how pervasive sexual abuse is—especially in Hollywood. Still, he’s encouraged to see people—all sorts—finally talking about these issues openly.
“I think it’s really hard for people to understand that for those of us who have been living with these secrets for so long, it’s really shocking in a positive way,” said Winter. “It’s just happened overnight. Suddenly, these things that you just could not say, you can say. . . I just don’t think you can ever take that away. I think it’s part of a broad public conversation. Hopefully, it’ll just get bigger.”
