thinking about terri runnels a lot. specifically, her segments from the plane ride from hell episode of DSOTR.
she talked about how, backstage at a ppv in 2002, brock lesnar exposed himself to her. her ex-husband, dustin, told her to 'no-sell' it. so that's what she did. she no-sold it.
and i was thinking about that. bc a friend asked, reasonably, "but that's his wife? how is that your advice? how is it not 'i am going to report this and do my best to get brock fired for sexual harassment??'"
that's reasonable, of course. in a perfect world, this advice would be disgusting. and it is. but it's disgusting bc it was probably the right advice to give.
who do they report it to? who will do anything but say their hands are tied? and anyway, boys can be boys - if you want to succeed in this business, you're gonna have to get used to it.
no woman should have to do this in order to keep her job. and she said later: she Was afraid to speak about it for fear of professional reprisal. she was not a colleague, or even a person to them. she was treated as an invitation. for existing. for having a body. and if that invitation was 'rescinded,' one that she never gave in the first place, she was punished.
idk how many ppl watching now were watching in the attitude era. but terri's character on the show wasn't treated like a person, either. bikini contests, bra & panties matches. a storyline about her having a miscarriage, not knowing who the father was, and the angle culminating in the reveal that she hadn't been pregnant at all.
in 1997, dustin feuded with brian pillman over... her. when pillman 'won' her in a match, it was heavily implied during the next month of shows that he was raping her daily. the angle was intended to end with terri leaving dustin for brian bc she fell in love with him. brian pillman's death cut this short.
after she left wwe, she dated new jack for a while in the late 2000s. when they broke up, he started selling explicit photos of her. she had to file a libel suit to get him to stop. to keep a man she had dated from maliciously spreading revenge porn of her.
she doesn't talk about this in that episode. the brock allegation takes up maybe 2-3min of the show. the rest is about the sexual harassment and assault of several other people.
curt hennig and scott hall were released from their contracts after the flight - explicitly, though, not for harassment (even though, after [hall claims] michael hayes roofied him, hall physically assaulted and threatened a flight attendant in an incident he later couldn't recall.)
hayes allegedly indiscriminately drugged ppl on the flight, got into at least 1 physical fight, and (says x-pac) nearly urinated on linda mcmahon. he remains employed by wwe as a senior producer.
ric flair allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted a flight attendant, causing her lifelong trauma. he remained employed by wwe. in DSOTR, JR claims says bc ric was a "made man," he "got a pass." flair is treated as a legend within wrestling, and is currently employed by aew.
lesnar, named by terri in the ep as having flashed her, received no repercussions for the incident with terri or his behavior on the flight. upon his return in 2012, he was treated as a megastar, & is still regularly utilized by wwe.
women shouldn't need to endure hell in order to achieve the same dream that rapists get to achieve effortlessly.
companies can vomit how they uplift & support women til they're blue in the fcking face, & the men in charge will keep treating women as subhuman when they think nobody's looking. or worse, loudly, bc they know the most they'll get is a slap on the wrist & a reddit comments section they can point to in order to say they're the victim of a smear campaign.
the only way to stay safe as a woman in wrestling is to pretend you're in on the joke. to pretend it's just another promo, another spot, another part of the show.
but it's real. and it's heartbreaking. it's honestly just... heartbreaking.
