Aaron Sorkin's 17-year-old daughter blasts HIMYM for 'romanticizing assault'

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• Roxy Sorkin penned an op-ed reflecting on how pop culture can normalize abusive sexual behavior to teens and pre-teens
  
  Her father is the screenwriter behind The West Wing and The Newsroom, as well as The Social Network and Steve Jobs
  
  She recounted how in sixth grade, boys at her school published three lists ranking girls' 'hotness', and girls didn't dare speaking out against them
  
  'So much of this harassment, misconduct, and creepy behavior has been baked into the movies and TV shows we watch,' Roxy added
  
  The teenager singled out How I Met Your Mother and its womanizing Barney Stinson as a particularly harmful example
  
  Barney was often seen in the show tricking women into sleeping with him

Aaron Sorkin's teenage daughter has blamed pop culture for blurring the lines about consent and 'romanticizing' sexual assault on the screen - calling out popular show How I Met Your Mother specifically over its depiction of abuse and harassment.

Roxy Sorkin, 17, penned an op-ed in Seventeen Magazine detailing the role TV shows and movies can play in teaching young minds about consent, and how they sometimes normalize abusive sexual behavior.

Her father is the screenwriter behind shows such as The West Wing and The Newsroom while his movie credits include The Social Network, Steve Jobs, and Molly's Game — but Roxy hasn't let her family ties blind her when it comes to critiquing popular works and the messages they carry.



The teenager began by recounting how, in sixth grade, she and other girls found out that the boys in their school had posted a 'Hot or Not' list ranking the physical appearances of the girls in their school online.

'My girl friends and I had been aware of the concept of relative prettiness for a while, but this was the first time we'd actually been graded on our looks,' she wrote.

'And it was pass/fail. And it was public.'

That first list led to a second one, then a third and a fourth. None of the girls, Roxy said, dared speak up.

'Instead, in the privacy of our homes, we looked in our mirrors and had our first taste of self-hatred,' she added.

Roxy believes she and her friend had been conditioned to expect such behavior from movies and series they had previously watched, which had created a lasting impression on them.

'So much of this harassment, misconduct, and creepy behavior has been baked into the movies and TV shows we watch, and there needs to be some recognition of that,' she added.

The teen singled out Barney Stinson, the character played by Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother, as a particularly detrimental example.

'How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite shows, and I was 13 when I realized it romanticized sexual assault,' she wrote.

Barney was depicted in the hit series as a serial womanizer who had become an expert with coming up with various strategies to trick women into sleeping with him.

His tricks included lowering a woman's self-esteem on purpose with a backhanded compliment and pretending that a genie would come out of his penis if someone rubbed it 'hard enough'.

The character came to embody a 'bro' culture that was often played for laughs on the show and even turned into a New York Times bestselling book titled The Bro Code, in which Barney supposedly shares his seduction tips, and another volume in the same vein called The Playbook.

'In almost every episode, the character Barney Stinson, who is supposed to be lovable, can be found at a bar, getting girls drunk, lying about his identity, and bringing them back to his place,' Roxy surmised.

'Afterward, he brags about his exploits to his friends. If a girl is intoxicated and can't give consent, that means we may have been yukking it up at, well, rape.'

That depiction of Barney's behavior might have taught boys and men that it's fine, and even funny, to mirror it, while teaching girls that they should take it in stride, Roxy argued.

'The reason my friends and I didn't call out the boys in sixth grade is because if a girl speaks up, the impression isn't that she's strong or charismatic or a leader—it's that she's a b***h,' she wrote.

But while the teenager believes she would have been called a 'weirdo' if she had spoken out against the boys rating her and her friends' appearances, she wishes she had done so anyway.

After Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016 Roxy's father penned a letter to his daughter and her mother Julia, addressed to the 'Sorkin Girls'.

In the missive, which was published by Vanity Fair, Aaron blasted Trump's supporters, describing them as 'white nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons'.

He also bashed the 'men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic ****heads everywhere'.

Aaron has in the past being criticized for writing problematic female characters, especially in The Newsroom, which has faced accusations of sexism.

Aaron has defended his approach by claiming he doesn't much pay attention to the gender of his characters when he is writing.

In 2014, leaked emails revealed a conversation in which the screenwriter claimed the 'degree of difficulty' in female roles didn't come close to that of male roles.

'That's why year in and year out, the guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins Best Actress,' he wrote in an email revealed by The Daily Beast.

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