‘I blamed myself and I realised there was no senior woman that I could look up to or take advice from’. That’s what my friend Enid (not her real life name) said to me as we discussed the emotional abuse she encountered in a job she had recently left in the most difficult, confusing and complicated of circumstances.
We are sitting in a bar, drinking Campari spritzes (because they’re quite cheap and get you quite pissed) on a Friday night. We’re meeting because we started emailing furiously after we both watched a recent episode from the final series of GIRLS. The episode, titled American Bitch, sparked an emotional and flurried conversation back and forth about experiences we had both had in the workplace and allowed us both, for the first time, to articulate something we’d previously struggled to pin down and, perhaps, even been ashamed of.
GIRLS, for all its flaws (and there are many), has always been at its best when it shines a light on things that (privileged white) millennial women have in common but might not have a language for. It has been strongest when it explores the things that (privileged white) millennial women do and don’t always fully understand why they’re doing. It has been at its most powerful when it unpicks how (privileged white) millennial women interact with Western society and how baffled that society often is by them.
American Bitch did all of these things. In it, Lena Dunham tackles men in positions of power who sexually and emotionally and harass younger women whom they encounter through their work. It was a searing episode, full of the potent anger that anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of such scenarios feels hotly anytime this issue comes up. It was also timely, airing just as the sexual harassment allegations against Casey Affleck hit headlines (again) because of his Oscars win.
In the episode, Hannah visits an acclaimed author by the name of Chuck Palmer at his apartment in New York. He has invited her there for a meeting because she has written an article on a blog about him allegedly preying on and sleeping with his young college-age female fans.
She arrives, he asks her to take off her shoes, she sits down in his study and he reads the first sentence of her piece back to her: ‘If one more male writer I love reveals himself to be a heinous sleazebag, I’m going to do a bunch of murders, create a new Isle of Lesbos, and never look back.’ Palmer flatters Hannah, ‘you’re clearly very bright’ he tells her, ‘you’re funny’ he says, ‘that’s a funny sentence.’
What is so brilliantly portrayed here is the excruciatingly awkward, inappropriate and inconvenient truth that, despite the serious doubts about Palmer’s character, she is enjoying his attention and praise. He, in turn, is almost turned on by the attention she has given him not only in writing about him but in responding to his invitation and coming to speak with him.
Palmer’s flattery of Hannah continues. He calls her ‘a smart woman’ and says she has a ‘pretty face’. He goes out of his way to make her feel special, implying that she is the chosen one, picked above other writers who have attacked him because she ‘writes well’, ‘you write sharply’ he tells her.
As a viewer, you want to scream at the screen. You want to tell Hannah to snap out of it, to reject this creepy and obsequious middle-aged, power hungry, emotionally damaged man’s flattery which, you know, will inevitably end with a sexual advance. You can see yourself in her shoes, temporarily unaware of all that you know to be true and unable to take your own advice because someone you admire, someone more successful than you, is telling you that you are good.
To cut a long story short, Hannah eventually ends up lying down next to Palmer and he gets his penis out (more on this later). She then leaves, but not after having to sit through a flute recital by his teenage daughter who comes home just as she is trying to get away.
Back to Enid. American Bitch is an uncomfortable, extended replay of a conversation that she and I have had before. The question which shapes that conversation is this ‘what is and isn’t consensual when it comes to sexual harassment?’
You see, like Enid, I too once left a job because I felt uncomfortable with the behaviour of male boss. It never came to him unsheathing his penis and rubbing it on me (or anything physical for that matter), but there was a lot of emotionally abuse behaviour which resulted in my being included and excluded from important conversations depending on how much or little I was playing his game of flattering and titillation at any given time. At the beginning I felt as though I was being wooed, and it didn’t always feel bad, in the end, after rejecting physical advances, I was being publically shamed and humiliated in front of colleagues on a regular basis. Because, like Hannah, I had, at points, found the attention flattering, I blamed myself and carried a burden of shame with me for years afterwards. Had I encouraged his behaviour? Had I asked for it? Should I have dressed differently? Should I have rejected compliments and said ‘that’s inappropriate’ from day one? If I had, maybe I would never have had the job in the first place.
Enid and I both agree that we would describe what we experienced as emotional abuse with sexual overtones. Once I made it clear that I wasn’t going to play ball anymore I was taken off projects. I was relegated to the intern leagues again, asked to get coffees, sent for lunch, denied access to decisions and no longer asked for my opinion. I felt like I had been invited into a boys’ club and ejected so fast my head was still spinning as I crash landed.
Enid was also taken off of prestigious projects and threatened with being taken off work trips abroad when she indicated she no longer wanted to ‘play the game’, but overall experienced something which was even more complex. She was hired for a very competitive job by a man who was very successful and respected in his industry. Over a period of several years she and her male boss worked very closely together and, shortly after she began working with him they entered into what she describes as a ‘non-sexual relationship’ which, ultimately, turned into kissing and touching with clothes on but never sex. He would shower her with praise, be jealous if she went on dates, critique her work intensely and imply that in some nonspecific and indefinite future he would leave his wife for her. Yes, this man had a wife. And a child. Of course, as he span it to Enid, his wife was terrible and cruel, Enid was his true love, and he only stayed in the marriage because of his child. Whenever Enid tried to pull back, her work responsibilities changed and she found herself excluded from important meetings or denied the privileges she was used to getting.
Eventually, Enid realised that this relationship was holding her back personally and professionally. She quit with no job to go to and, currently, finds herself working out WTF happened and trying to make sense of it all.
‘I feel responsible and I feel sad’ she explains, ‘I do think my feelings for him were genuine…but I was younger when I started working there and, honestly, I don’t know what to think.’ I ask whether she thinks she was emotionally abused or whether her boss took advantage of his position? ‘Yeah’ she pauses, ‘I do think so but I don’t want to believe it because like…how the fuck did I left that happen?’ Is she angry? ‘I’m angry at myself’.
Did she ever think about reporting her boss? 'No - and I felt completely alone. Who would I report it to?’ she splutters, ‘and what would I have said?’. Having seen the toll this situation has taken on Enid in recent years, I do genuinely think the behaviour was abusive. He never said he would leave his wife, explicitly, but he would say what she describes as ‘shit like “this is the best relationship of my life” so of course, in my mind, I went there’. The half-existent non-promise of a future was dangled in front of her like a carrot so that he could keep her where he wanted her, using the stick if she strayed too far.
American Bitch is an episode of few characters and much dialogue. Its simplicity allows the narrative to weave in and out, navigating the quagmire that is consent and sexual or emotional abuse at work between an older, established man and a young, inexperienced, woman.
‘Maybe one day you’ll be famous’ Chuck charms Hannah, ‘and a lot of people will know some stuff about you – some stuff. I mean, they’ll think they know everything, but they won’t. Like what happened to me. You thought you knew everything, but you didn’t’. From the off he makes her his ally, putting her in his shoes.
Towards the end of the episode, they move into Chuck’s bedroom. Hannah is bowled over because Chuck has a signed copy of Philip Roth’s early novel, When She Was Good (1967). It is, poignantly, Roth’s only novel with a female protagonist. Her name is Lucy Nelson, her father was an alcoholic and she is depicted as a moraliser who had him put in prison while a teenager. Lucy is perennially trying to reform the men around her, despite the fact that she is destroying herself in the process. The symbolism of Roth’s book weighs heavy in American Bitch because this was not Roth’s successful novel. It was fundamentally flawed because - let’s face it - Roth is shit at writing women. It’s worth bearing in mind that Roth is a phenomenal writer, so his shit is most people’s brilliant, nonetheless as one contemporary review said ‘Mr. Roth has some trouble with his vision. Lucy Nelson's outside is, to put it temperately, much more probable than her inside. The author doesn't seem quite to know what makes her tick so dolorously.’
To Chuck, Hannah says ‘I know I’m not supposed to like him because he’s a misogynist and he demeans women but I can’t help it.’ Is she talking about Roth or Palmer here? Both and neither, she is referring to a particular type of man who could seamlessly slide out of this episode and into so many real life situations.
I've always had a soft spot for When She Was Good, not because it's a great novel, but because it touches on something very personal. My father is an alcoholic, like Lucy I have spent much of my life trying to reform the men I love and failing. Enid, too, has what I guess society would call 'daddy issues'. We've both made our peace with our past. The character of Lucy Nelson is symbolic because Roth fails to flesh her out properly, she is a hollow character because he, as a man who has, at points needed saving, cannot fathom the female impulse to redeem. He doesn't know why women try to save the people they love, but he knows how to exploit it for his own gain. That is a phenomenon that this episode of GIRLS explodes.
As Enid and I continued to mine our hearts and consciousnesses over our own experiences we realised something: neither of us had ever reported what happened because we were not raped, we were not touched without consent, with force or violence.
However, we did both agree that we felt violated and manipulated. Now, both 29, would we have entered into our respective situations? Put simply, no we would not. But when we found ourselves confronted with the men in question we were 24/25 and the world looked different then.
The shame we both feel now, I think, is partly due to hindsight. Our present selves projecting onto the failings or perceived weaknesses of our past selves when, in reality, like Hannah in this episode sometimes you don’t realise what you’re in until it’s over your head.
Earlier in the episode, Hannah recalls how her fifth grade English teacher praised her writing:
‘He liked me, he was impressed with me, I did like special creative writing, I wrote like a little novel or whatever. Sometimes, when he was talking to the class he would stand behind me and he’d rub my neck. Sometimes he’d rub my head, rustle my hair. And I didn’t mind. It made me feel special. It made me feel like someone saw me and they knew that I was going to grow up and be really, really particular. It also made kids hate me and put lasagna in my fucking backpack, but that’s a different story.
Anyway, last year I’m at a warehouse party in Bushwick, and this guy comes up to me and he’s like, “Horvath, we went to middle school together, East Lansing!” And I’m like, “Oh my god, remember how crazy Mr. Lasky’s class was? He was basically trying to molest me.”
You know what this kid said? He looks at me in the middle of this fucking party like he’s a judge, and he goes, “That’s a very serious accusation Hannah.” And he walked away. And there I am and I’m just 11 again, and I’m just getting my fucking neck rubbed. Because that stuff never goes away.’
The universal figure of the older, powerful and respected man praising a young woman’s intellect, talent or work as a foil for praising her physical form, appears once again. He’s not violent, he’s not angry; he’s sickeningly sensual.
What’s the point of Hannah recalling this story? By writing this into Hannah’s history Dunham is able to articulate a grand narrative, one which is unremarkable, one which is as ubiquitous as it is unspoken, whose arc has run in tandem with so many women’s lives: from a young age so many women’s intellectual value is judged, by men, to be directly linked to her physical value. If your stock rises physically, you may often find your perceived intellectual value surging and vice versa. It’s a confusing one to navigate and you often find yourself questioning yourself: did I get hits job on merit? Am I obligated to return that favour? Is this really a ‘work drink’?
What the multi-layered narrative in American Bitch also expresses is how we often feel complicit in what we know, particularly with hindsight, to be inappropriate situations despite having the sense that we had been cajoled, complimented and coerced into them. I say coerced because there is an element of non-violent force present, what’s implicit is that if the woman in such a situation does express her unhappiness or voice disquiet, she is often met with anger, hostility and likely to find herself and her experience undermined.
When Palmer invites Hannah to lie down next to him on his bed he is careful. He is at once predatory and paternal: ‘keep your clothes on to delineate any boundaries that feel right for you’ he tells her, and as soon as she lies alongside him, he unzips his pants, rolls towards her and, as he does, his putrid pink penis hits her leg. Hannah does not instantly jump up and flee, she touches it, before coming to her senses and attempting to leave. It is then that Palmer’s daughter (from a failed marriage) arrives.
Was it consensual? Sort of, not really, maybe. To that end, Palmer’s initial defence, shortly after Hannah’s arrival is a familiar one. ‘Ok, hold up, because that’s where this line is pretty fucking messy, when words like consensual are thrown around.’ Speak out and you run the risk of being told that you did consent to the attention, the brushing against you, the touching of lips. The man with the power holds all the cards because ‘we all know what young women are like around powerful men…’
Enid has long felt that her boss’s daughter was used as a bargaining chip, at once a barrier between them and a conduit through which he encouraged her to empathise with him, and with her. In a similar way, one of the things discussed by the man I worked for was how difficult his wife was. I was encouraged to feel for him and to see how his wife’s selfishness would affect their children. Briefly, I bought it and perhaps I never fully shook it off – why did I never report the situation? Because I worried about what that would do to this man’s family, particularly to his children.
Dunham’s inclusion of palmer’s daughter also speaks to a broader narrative. As Hannah watches Chuck’s daughter playing her flute, shortly after he whips out his penis, we, the viewer, connect the dots. Hannah was once that young girl, we all were. One day she may face a similar powerful man, perhaps she has already encountered one, as Hannah did. You get the sense that something is dawning on Hannah as you look on her, looking on at Palmer’s daughter: if she exposes him again, this is the person she will hurt.
I ask Enid how long she thinks it will take her to get over her situation? ‘A while, I can’t tell if I still have feelings for him…it’s a mixture of repulsion and a desire for it not to be a cheap cliché.’ Has she seen him since she quit? Yes, ‘I went to meet him with my wall up…you know…but he offered me contacts and help and I felt myself falling back into it again even though I know I don’t want it.’
How many women are familiar with this scenario? According to recent research from the TUC more than half of women say they have been sexually harassed at work, and most admit to not reporting it. This can range from unwelcome jokes to unwanted touching and according to the head of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, it leaves women feeling ‘ashamed and frightened’.
Enid and I finished our drinks. We’ve discussed everything and resolved nothing. All we know is that we probably wouldn’t have had this conversation if it wasn’t for American Bitch because there is no direct language for what we experienced. Call it sexual harassment, call it emotional abuse, call it exploitation of power, all we know is we aren’t comfortable with what we were involved in and, ultimately, it ended in both of us leaving jobs we worked hard to get.
As Hannah leaves Palmer’s apartment she is at once empowered, ashamed, angry and confused. A group of women walk towards her, she looks back and they all enter Palmer’s building. They are the women who have previously been in Hannah’s shoes, they are the women of the present who are currently in them and they are the future women who will be forced to endure similar feelings and experiences. Their stories will all be different but the characters will be the same: a young woman, starting out in her career and an older man, in a powerful and privileged position that he can’t help but take advantage of.
Enid and I both wanted to scream at Hannah Horvath on screen, we wanted to warn her. Perhaps if we could have been spectators in our own lives we would have had the same impulse, but hindsight really is a wonderful thing.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.