Opinion: A violent attack with dog feces raises questions all women confront

Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. View more opinion on CNN.

Even within a cycle of shocking and disgusting news, a ballet director’s attack on a German newspaper critic stands out as particularly shocking and disgusting. Marco Goecke was reportedly livid at reporter Wiebke Hüster after she reviewed one of his shows at the Hannover ballet unfavorably. He tried to get her banned from the ballet; then, when she attended a premier at the Hannover Opera House, he walked up to her and smeared animal feces on her face.

Apologies if you’re eating while reading this.

The opera house suspended Goecke, and released a statement decrying the attack on Hüster’s “personal integrity.” Goecke, it said, “caused massive damage to the Hannover State Opera and State Ballet,” and was suspended from his job and banned from the opera house.

The statement also characterized Goecke’s attack as an “impulsive reaction” – but one has to wonder who happens to have a bag of dog feces with them at an opera house.

Hüster has, rightly, filed a criminal complaint. A Hannover police spokeswoman confirmed to CNN that they are investigating insult and bodily harm against Hüster. No charges have been filed.

Hüster, 57, is the dance critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily newspaper. Goecke, 50, has been the ballet director at the Hannover State Opera since 2019. The piece that prompted the poor review was “In the Dutch Mountains,” his first full-length program at the Hannover Opera House. Hüster called it “disjointed;” audiences, she wrote, may “go insane and be killed by boredom while watching.”

Forget about audiences going insane; she should have worried about the choreographer.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Hüster described the terror of Goecke’s fist flying at her face.

“He didn’t just throw it at me. He pulled out the bag with the open side of the bag and rubbed it in my face brutally, so the dog poop would stick in my face,” she said. “One moment we were still talking and the next moment his fist was in my face. When I realized what he had done, I screamed. I was so shocked, so panicked. You can’t imagine.”

This is an ugly story of unhinged rage and violence (yes, smearing dog feces in a person’s face is a violent assault). Goecke apologized to Hüster and all affected for his “absolutely unacceptable action,” in a statement sent to CNN Tuesday. Though he didn’t mention gender in his apology, this may also be a story of a man flying off the handle because he was challenged by a woman – in other words, a story of sexism and male entitlement.

The fear that Hüster describes is one many women are familiar with, or are familiar with anticipating. From getting your car keys ready the moment you walk into a parking garage to biting your tongue when a man cat-calls you on the street to trying to make a polite exit from the creep at the bar, women organize a great many aspects of our lives around male violence – avoiding it, or at least decreasing the probability that it will happen to us. But there are a few places we may let our guard down, including at work and in crowded public spaces (especially stuffy, traditionalist ones – opera houses aren’t exactly known to be dens of violent crime).

Hüster was physically violated, but I imagine her sense of general safety was shattered, too.

Women remain underrepresented in both the arts and art criticism. In the US, more than two-thirds of film critics are men, and these male critics are more likely than female ones to give bad reviews to films with women in leading roles, according to a 2018 study.

In the visual arts, women dominate undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in creative arts and design, but men make up the overwhelming majority of artists who are represented by commercial galleries, whose work is sold at auction and whose work is featured at exhibitions; the Met and the British Museum have never had female directors, and the Louvre just hired its first female director in 2021 (the man who held the position before her is being charged with antiquities trafficking).

And in ballet specifically, men still dominate, making up two-thirds of artistic directors at major ballet companies around the world and nearly 70% of choreographers in the largest American ballets programmed in the 2020-2021 season.

Feminists and some ballerinas have long questioned ballet’s rigid gender roles, with male and female dancers using their bodies in markedly different ways and traditional performances focused on male strength and female pliability and delicateness.

Female dancers have also complained (and at times sued) over what they say is sexist and degrading treatment. Dancers all over the world have accused directors and male dancers of harassment and abuse. Efforts to combat both mistreatment of dancers and the sexism of ballet itself have been met with the same push-pull as broader efforts to combat sexist abuse and sexism in society: some are eager for change; many are resistant.

Perhaps this male dominance over an artform that values male strength and female vulnerability leads to a certain level of male entitlement and aggression that was on stark display in Hannover. The Great Man who is also a raging narcissist is a familiar trope for a reason (and the great artist who is also a raging narcissist has a little support from science). And while we can probably all relate to having our feelings hurt by a harsh critique of something we worked hard on, most people do not physically (or fecally) lash out in response.

None of us know for sure what Goecke’s attitudes toward women are. But in an art world more broadly and a ballet world specifically dominated by men and male power, it seems relevant that the criticism Goecke met with violence came from a woman. This is, after all, why so many men commit acts of violence against women: because they want to control what those women say and do; because they don’t feel they are getting sufficient feminine deference and respect.

It’s hard to imagine what kind of apology is sufficient for attacking a woman with feces simply because she did her job – and didn’t defer to the narcissism of the self-styled male creative genius. Goecke, after all, didn’t just snap; he tried to have a professional critic banned for criticism he didn’t like, and when that didn’t work, he physically assaulted her.

Now, the matter is in the hands of the police, while Goecke’s professional future is in the hands of the opera house. Hopefully, he will learn that he isn’t above the law – just like his work isn’t above criticism.