Moral of the Cuomo Saga? Beware of "Feminist" Men

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment.

Photo: AP/Seth Wenig

It’s a rather common pose among wily, unscrupulous men looking to conceal their sordid deeds to claim support for women’s rights, so seeing that former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, publicly threw himself into the arms of the #MeToo movement while sexually harassing female subordinates, was simply par for the course.

Case in point, Park Won-soon, the erstwhile mayor of Seoul known for his women's rights advocacy and support of South Korea's MeToo movement, sexually harassed a former secretary over a four year period. He took his own life in 2020, shortly after she came forward with her allegations.

Similarly, claims of sexual abuse resulted in the resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who gregariously supported women's rights and even went as far bringing charges against disgraced Hollywood mogul and serial sexual harasser, Harvey Weinstein. Unbeknownst to the public, Schneiderman was physically and emotionally abusing intimate partners at the same time.

Then, there's my own aggravating experience with Dillon Case, a self-described feminist and humanitarian who had hired me as a writer for a political satire show he executive produced in Nigeria.

In Case's rendering, he had petitioned the Nigerian TV executives to actively seek out women for the show, an effort that ostensibly resulted in the recruitment of two more women besides me and the producer before the season ended, although the gender gap remained. 

Case took great pride in this so-called achievement, presenting it as evidence of his feminist credentials seconds before propositioning me for sex.

To be sure, I took none of his pretensions to feminism seriously given his previous dismissal of my impersonal critique of the show’s host’s performance as a case of repressed passions. But even then, this daring display of anti-social behaviour, the flippant crudeness of his demand, spoke of a glaring lack of self-awareness that left me dumbfounded. It left me feeling ambushed. Cornered.

The harrowing incident occurred a few months before stories of sexual abuse in Hollywood and beyond broke out on social media under the MeToo hashtag. And although the movement barely took off in Nigeria, I detailed some of the sexism I witnessed and experienced while writing for the TV show in a piece for the Women's Media Centre. However, I left out the fact that the executive producer had sexually harassed me, something I suspect imbued him with the audacity to pen a piece that glibly referenced the low participation of women in satire, three years after the fact.

The report, published by the Centre for International Media Assistance (CIMA) in 2020, stated efforts were underway to fix the issue without citing any examples or listing the reasons for the dearth of women in satire, which I found not only laughably disingenuous but deeply troubling. 

Three years after #MeToo opened the festering sore of sexual abuse in his home country of America, and three years after sexually harassing me, here was a man boorishly unwilling to contend with his own predatory nature and how sexist attitudes force women to leave or avoid the male-dominated field.

Given the deliberate attempt to overlook his own contribution to the problem, I contacted CIMA over the matter days before they were scheduled to interview Case on the report. At first, they pretended to care but in a preceding phone call, the firm's senior director repeatedly reminded me that Case had expressed remorse for his actions when they confronted him with my claim. (Meanwhile, I never received any apology from him given his supposed contrition.) 

Another bizarre aspect of the phone conversation was the senior director's resistance to my assertion that their interviewee address his history of sexual abuse and discuss preventive measures that his production company might have instituted in light of the MeToo saga.

In the end, they ignored my concerns, a decision the senior director later attempted to blame on their interviewee, claiming Case failed to raise the topic as though their curated questions allowed for such opening, as though it wasn’t CIMA's responsibility to raise the issue.

Ironically, not long afterwards, CIMA hosted an event on gender equality in the media space, continuing the charade of aid and development organisations claiming to promote human rights in public while actively undermining it in private via their continued support of sexual deviants like Case.

Time and again, high-ranking officials and institutions, including those working to eradicate the scourge of sexual abuse and gender inequality, have shown a reprehensible tendency to shield predators from accountability. For instance, Cuomo's top lieutenants actively sought to discredit Lindsey Boylan, one of the 11 women who blew the whistle on the ex-governor's lewd behaviour. And in another hideous instance, leaders of TimesUp, an organisation that offers legal support to victims of sexual abuse and had previously worked with Cuomo, provided feedback to his team on an unpublished smear piece targeted at Boylan.

All the while, Cuomo proclaimed his innocence, hoping to leverage his record as a supporter of women's rights against his accusers. However, such a play leaves one shuddering at the dangerous narcissism of men who scream “I'm a feminist” in the morning to attract women to their corner, wait until nighttime to demean them under the cover of darkness, then use their power and overt advocacy for women's rights to disprove or cover up allegations of sexual abuse. It also shows how perpetrators benefit from the silence and silencing of their targets.

For my part, I've now emailed the International Organisation for Migration, the Open Society, USAID and other development and aid organisations that have either employed or partnered with Case, warning them about his behaviour and the potential danger he poses in an industry that caters to various vulnerable groups, an industry rife with lurid tales of sexual abuse as evinced by the AidToo hashtag.

Given sexual predators like Case and Cuomo revel in feasting on their own meal of deceit and denial, and won't stop until the bullet of consequence strikes them in the jugular, organisations have a moral obligation to take seriously the often lone voices speaking out against the depraved duplicity of these despicable men.

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