An upcoming documentary will attempt to overturn traditional attitudes in Taiwan concerning sexual harassment and encourage the victims of sexual assault to speak out against any unwelcome sexual advances.
The War of Roses (玫瑰的戰爭), to be released at Eslite Bookstores in Taipei on Jan. 12, documents four cases of sexual harassment in Taiwan, three of which have taken place in the workplace and the other on a school campus.
"The War of Roses is about to begin. We want to encourage women to become a prickly rose, to fight against a culture of sexual harassment and to resist any unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances," said director of the documentary Mickey Chen (
In an interview with the Taipei Times yesterday, Chen said he hesitated on whether to take up shooting of the film when the women's rights groups, which have campaigned for social awareness of the issue of sexual harassment, proposed the idea to him.
"Being a man, I felt it would be difficult to have the victims speak to me about their ordeals. But the more I talked to them, the more sympathy I had with them, Chen said. "As a long-time gay rights activist, I have subjected myself to endless struggle for rights. And when I found these victims were also going through similar experiences as I did, I felt obligated to do it."
The first part of the film is a story of a female manager of a detergent company in Taiwan, who was sexually harassed by a senior official of another detergent company during an official trip to South Korea.
She brought her case to the Detergent Association after her return to Taiwan, but was very much frustrated by the attitudes of the male-dominated association and the perpetrator's company.
The company then gave the man an undisclosed sum of money and asked him to leave. Nevertheless, the victim felt it was far from a real punishment as the man was about to retire at the time.
Also included in the film is the story of a nurse at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (
Chen said a positive side of the case is that the nurse has collected solid evidence against the doctor and that she's had strong support from other nurses at the hospital, some of whom have also been a victim of the doctor's harassment.
"In cases of sexual harassment, the most difficult part is obtaining evidence. A case such as that nurse's is rare and thus we feel it's necessary for the legal system to have an alternative procedure in handing such cases," Chen said.
The other story in the documentary is that of a female worker in a Taoyuan factory, who complained to the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會) -- a women's rights advocacy group -- about her experiences of being peeped at in the toilet in her factory by a male colleague.
"This case in particular has triggered my concern because of the peculiar situation of the victim in question. She has such a strict idea about chastity that she has been in extreme distress ever since the incident," Chen said.
"Ever since, she has constantly imagined killing the male worker -- the peeping tom -- whenever she sees him in the factory. But sadly, she could do little about it because she cannot afford to lose her job," Chen said.
The fourth part of the film concerns the story of a female college student who was sexually assaulted by a professor at National Taipei University of Technology (
The documentary highlights how the school resisted taking action and failed to sack the professor until the Control Yuan intervened.
Chen said that these cases illustrate that there is indeed resistance in the male-dominated society to punish perpetrators of sexual harassment, which he said not only discourages the victims to speak up but sometimes encourages a culture of sexual harassment as well.
"It's a culture that has to be fought against. We're hoping the film can at least show a clear definition of sexual harassment, for the purpose of preventing and fighting against the offense, " Chen said.
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