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 not surprising that former New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, publicly threw himself into the arms of the #MeToo movement while sexually harassing female subordinates, a rather common posture among wily, unscrupulous men seeking a cheap ego boost and a means to conceal their sordid act.

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 encounter 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.

The show, which was heavily fashioned after The Daily Show, hired one other woman besides myself in the otherwise testosterone-filled writers' room. 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 before the season ended, although the gender gap remained. 

Case took great pride in this achievement, presenting it as evidence of his feminist credentials seconds before propositioning me for sex. Considering his previous dismissal of my impersonal critique of the show's host’s performance as a case of repressed passions, his gross behaviour, the crude flippancy of his demand, his willful lack of self-awareness should not have left me dumbfounded but it did. 

To be sure, 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 while the movement barely took off in Nigeria, I detailed some of the sexism I witnessed and experienced while working 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 paper 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 native America, and three years after sexually harassing me, here was a man boorishly unwilling to contend with his own predatory nature and how such behaviours 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. (To date, I have not received any apology from him.) 

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 his production company might have instituted in light of #MeToo.

In the end, they ignored my concerns, a decision the senior director later attempted to blame on their interviewee, claiming Case had failed to raise the topic as though the curated questions allowed such opening, as though CIMA it wasn’t 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 that proclaim 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 11 women who blew the whistle on the ex-governor's lewd behaviour. And in another hideous instance, leaders of TimesUp, an organisation that provides legal support to victims of sexual abuse and had previously worked with Cuomo, provided his team with feedback 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 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.

Since 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 the moral obligation to take seriously the often lone voices speaking out against the depraved duplicity of these despicable men.

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