It’s been a sleepy buildup to the Oscars, but this week’s Time’s Up scandal has Hollywood aghast.
The CEO and president of the anti-sexual harassment group and legal defense fund has stepped down after her son was accused of sexual assault. Lisa Borders said she resigned Monday over “family concerns that require my singular focus.”
A source told the Wrap, however, that the decision may not have been her own. The website reports the source saying, “Lisa wanted to take action to defend her son and in doing so was in conflict with her role leading an organization deeply rooted in supporting survivors.”
According to an attorney for Borders’ son Garry “Dijon” Bowden Jr., who markets himself as a life coach, Bowden only gave the woman, Celia Gellert, a healing massage. She accuses him of inappropriately touching her during the session.
Per the Wrap, Bowden operates a “lifestyle and healing business where he offers services ranging from photography and inspirational podcasting to sessions where he pleasures women.” In a podcast, Bowden says he provides Shakti invocation sessions, a sort of discovering-the-goddess-within affair where he offers “an experience for women to feel safe and open.” As he put it: “I’m being guided by serving the opening of this woman. … Normally when I do it, I’m providing this experience for the woman; she’s having a good time.” He also said, “When I show up in those sessions, I’m not being guided by my own desire.” Bowden promised that he’d mastered his “own sexual energy.”
If Borders was okay with her son being a weird, sexual healing guru for a living, she probably should not have been named CEO of Time’s Up in the first place.
Hollywood needs to recognize the underlying assumptions driving its sexual assault problem, rather than simply creating a legal defense fund to throw more money at the issue. Sexual assault occurs, not in a moral vacuum, but in a culture that glorifies almost indiscriminate sex. It’s stupidly naive to think a guy who gets paid to pleasure women is doing so without any motives of his own.
