Sexual Impropriety

Katie Sikora’s photography explores gender-based discrimination

- Jennifer Odell

“Open secret.” That phrase lingered in headlines, on social media platforms and over dinner tables after producer Harvey Weinstein was fired from his own company last month amid allegations he’d sexually harassed and assaulted dozens of women in his industry over a period of decades. It turned out plenty of people in Hollywood knew about Weinstein’s alleged sexual impropriety, they just failed to discuss it publicly.

The fact is, sexism in its most elemental form is in many ways an “open secret” that can be hard to define and is often shameful to identify. In a country where the symptoms of systemic sexism range from a severe gender wage gap to a backlog of untested rape kits, it can feel useless to speak out. Yet there is power in finding a finding a voice to talk about secrets like these. Thousands recently attested to that fact by sharing stories of sexual harassment and assault in solidarity with the #MeToo movement on social media. This month, a group of women in the New Orleans music industry are poised to go a step further.