We must take harassment seriously – even if we dislike a victim’s views

Nobody knows this better than Megyn Kelly, whose role in the 2016 demise of former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes has been depicted on-screen by Charlize Theron in Bombshell (released January 24 in the UK). The film tells the story of how former Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson (played by Nicole Kidman) sued Ailes for sexual harassment, leading to allegations by over 20 other women and to his eventual forced resignation.

Kelly, who began her career with Fox News in 2004 and became the face of her own prime-time show, The Kelly File, in 2013, was one of those women. Within six months, she had left the network and was commended, along with Carlson, by many unlikely bedfellows who either recognised the importance of dismantling a toxic working culture for women, or who were simply happy to see the right-wing media getting bad press.

The fact that Kelly had been engaged in a “feud” (or, as some people might describe it, journalism) with presidential candidate Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election also won her a lot of points from liberals, for whom any sign of remotely reasonable behaviour among the American right was treated as cause for celebration.

In late 2015, Kelly questioned Trump about the derogatory language he used towards women, and in the weeks before election day, she asked Trump supporter and former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, if the candidate was a “sexual predator”. When Gingrich accused her of being “obsessed with sex”, she retorted that she was “obsessed with the protection of women”. At that point, she might as well have become the Democratic nominee, because most Clinton supporters would probably have voted for her.

NBC’s decision to give Kelly her own daytime show in 2017 was, one can cynically assume, the network’s attempt to cash-in on the wave of popularity that the lawyer and pundit had been gifted in return for helping to make the “other side” look bad. The problem with this, as NBC soon found, was that Megyn Kelly was a real, whole person with a lot of opinions. There is, it turns out, a reason why somebody chooses to work for Fox News for 13 years – and it isn’t just the money.

Kelly’s stint at NBC ended after 18 months when she became embroiled in controversy for defending blackface Halloween costumes on air, as well as facing criticism for expressing a number of other views which should have come as a revelation to exactly no one who had ever seen her on Fox News.

So, it came as no surprise when the last week saw Kelly throw herself into yet another race-related fallout with black American footballer Colin Kaepernick, much to the consternation of anyone who was still willing her to be deserving of the kind of uncomplicated redemption only found in Hollywood films.

Responding to Kaepernick’s Tweet about the air-strikes against Iran, in which he stated “there is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people for the expansion of American imperialism,” Kelly said: “Because everything is racist. Everything. Even fighting back against terrorists who kill Americans. Nike [which sponsors Kaepernick], feeling proud?”

This, quite rightly, led to an outcry against Kelly, including more than a few jibes about how this serves to prove why she (and her colleagues from Fox News) aren’t worth the sympathy and certainly not worth the praise for the events portrayed in Bombshell. Egyptian-American feminist writer Mona Eltahawy tweeted: “And this is a reminder of why I will not be watching Bombshell and why I don’t give a flying f--- about Megyn Kelly and her fellow white women Bootlickers of Patriarchy.”

FAR be it from me to be the person who expends energy defending somebody like Megyn Kelly, but it strikes me that her experience – from being harassed by a powerful man, to being mythologised as a hero for speaking out, to having her cape revoked anytime someone remembers who she actually is – speaks to a much deeper failing in our collective understanding of an issue which has affected so many women.

Before Me Too was even on the public radar, Carlson and Kelly became symbols of the movement against the domination of misogynistic men in some of the most influential industries in America and beyond. As women who were very much in the public eye and chose to stand against a man – and an organisation – with a huge amount of financial and political power, their significance in that culture-shift cannot be ignored.

What many people find hard to acknowledge or accept is neither being victimised nor helping to bring down an abuser makes somebody a perfect or even a good person – and it shouldn’t have to. Caring about and taking seriously someone’s experience of harassment or abuse should never be conditional on their likeability, political or otherwise, just as the weight given to allegations should never be determined by the politics or popularity of the person accused.

Too often this has been forgotten in the wider discussions over the past several years about the prevalence of workplace harassment. It might be easy (and politically expedient) to cheer for the downfall of a man whose views you find repugnant or to support a woman whose ideology matches your own, but if we are really serious about making a society-wide change to patriarchal structures we will all have to push ourselves well beyond this comfort zone. The question is, do we actually care about cultural change, or do we just want to use it as a guise for furthering our own political agendas?

Perhaps the greatest failing in the execution of Bombshell is that it only reinforces the cognitive dissonance around this point by striving too hard to make Kelly and Carlson palatable to viewers, while shying away from the more complex reality. Starting from a place of desperation to make survivors into unproblematic saints is just another side of the coin that says someone is only worthy of empathy or protection from abuse if they’re the “right” sort of victim.

Neither Kelly nor Carlson were involved in Bombshell – Carlson signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of her $20 million settlement, while Kelly has stated she did not “have anything to do with the film” – so this portrayal was not at their behest. In fact, Kelly spoke out about the dramatisation for the first time this week, complaining of a scene which sees a fictional character effectively “blame her harassment on” Kelly for not speaking out sooner.

“I saw that scene and I was like, ‘That was written by a man’,” she said in a video published on her YouTube channel (and it was), while adding: “I do wish I would have done more.” Meanwhile, Carlson launched a new campaign at the end of last year, Lift Our Voices, aimed at ending “forced arbitrations and NDAs that silence women in the workplace”.

Looked at in isolation, there is much to admire in how Kelly and Carlson have responded to their experiences at Fox. To allow that to whitewash their role in perpetuating injustices through their own right-wing commentary would be unfair to the people affected, and quite apart from that, it would prevent us from having the honest, non-partisan conversation we need to have about gender and harassment.

Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly aren’t heroes, they’re women – and that should be enough reason to treat them like human beings. That might not be the point Bombshell is trying to make, but it’s the one people need to hear.