I don’t normally wade into the Culture Wars, and especially not the sort of rank sewage that currently overflows from every media outlet about the scandals surrounding Harvey Weinstein. However, there is an aspect to the whole putrid business that has been neglected by most media writers, and I mean to rectify that.
For readers who have been isolated at a remote Antarctic base for the past few months and may have missed the story, this New York Times article provides a representative sample of the type and tone of “journalism” surrounding the sordid actions of Mr. Weinstein and his courtesans.
And I use the word “courtesans” advisedly. The numerous young women whom Harvey Weinstein allegedly bedded are generally painted as unfortunate and unwilling victims of a sexual predator, but this is hardly the case. These women were over the age of consent. They were not mentally incapacitated. The man they decided to sleep with was not their a professor in their college course, nor a priest in their parish church, nor a judge before whom they appeared in court. They were free agents, and he was a man who was in a position to provide something that they earnestly desired.
Mr. Weinstein was a powerful gatekeeper, and was willing to open that gate to certain comely young women who wanted in. But there was an entrance fee. He made it clear to them what the price was, and they decided they were willing to pay it. No rape or coercion was involved; it was a commercial transaction.
A woman who provides sexual services for a fee is known as a prostitute. Or a harlot. The most polite word is courtesan, which is what such women used to be called when they gratified the urges of dukes, princes, kings, and emperors. Harvey Weinstein wielded as much financial clout as a minor Eastern satrap, so we may as well assign his ladies the fancy role of “courtesan” instead of calling them whores.
But whores they were. They weren’t forced into the loathsome creature’s bed. They climbed in of their own free will. They could have said, “No, thanks. I don’t want it that much,” and gone back to bussing tables, or doing data entry, or whatever it was they were doing before they made the pilgrimage to Hollywood.
But they didn’t. They wanted to be movie stars really, really badly. And this disgusting old man was capable of granting their wishes, at a price. They paid that price. He got what he wanted, and they got what they wanted.
It was a business transaction.
As far as moral character is concerned — and this is the hard part — Harvey Weinstein and his “victims” were roughly at parity with one another. He had immense power, and his courtesans had very little, which is why he seems so much more vile. But, really, they were approximately equal in moral standing. He could have refrained from demanding access to their intimate charms. And they could have turned him down, and gone back home.
But neither of them took the moral high road. So one of them was a john, and the other was a whore.
Heterosexual men who lack moral and ethical fiber and wield enormous power tend to do exactly what Harvey Weinstein did. They take advantage of women who are in powerless, subordinate positions, and have their way with them. And, since men who lack moral and ethical fiber also tend to gravitate towards nodes of power and then fight their way to the center of them, ruthless sexual predators may well be the norm among powerful men.
Women are neither more nor less moral, on average, than men, so we may assume that they also abuse their positions of power in equal proportions when they achieve them. However, a woman’s proclivities are different from a man’s, so sexual predation is unlikely to be the major expression of corrupt female power. Since I’m not a woman, I don’t understand the most basic female urges very well; perhaps some of our female readers can weigh in on the means by which corrupt women tend to abuse their positions of power.
One final note: The abuse of minors by Hollywood power brokers is a completely different matter. A 13-year-old girl or boy cannot legally consent to sex with an adult. Roman Polanski’s crime was categorically different from the antics of Harvey Weinstein.
Concerning a man who rapes children: it would better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
Of course EVERYONE in Hollywood knew about Weinstein 20 years ago and more. It was only when his power and influence waned that everyone got on the victim wagon. It says more about them than him.
That’s just silly.
It’s a shared guilt.
Maybe the “victims” are coming around to the salutary effects of a guilty conscience, knowing that they’d been used and are now at last looking into the mirror of their own sinful ugliness and seeing it for what it is — one can hope. No doubt the public censure of their secret sins (HW included) will produce among them at least a few who truly repent.
In the same way EVERYONE in Trump’s inner circle knew about his knack for grabbing p—-. So, if we are going to be consistent here, and state how Hollywood is indeed hypocritical for “covering up for one of their own” at the expense of “exposing those they do not support politically”, look in the mirror, take ownership, and express the SAME disgust and disdain for ANYONE who is engaging in this immorality.
Trump isn’t in the same category as Weinstein. If he were, Hillary’s peeps would have been all over it. Is he a serial monogamist? Sure. But his licentiousness doesn’t exist in the same moral universe as Winestain’s. Or even in Bill Clinton’sordid world.
http://dailym.ai/2hSfCom
That’s a Daily Mail link to an ugly story.
Baron, you are so evil!
Victim shaming – sooo Nazi!
Mayim Bialik said that not hot-looking made sure she never suffered this.
I dont know if I should trust her.
While a lot of men have a taste for hot-looking babes like Jennifer Lawrence there are also men who lust after not so perfect women.
And there are also men who just want one thing: …..
(no, I will not say it, but remember Cheech Marins speech in “From Dusk till Dawn”, in this word you find the short form for one of the 3. Reich organisations and its the same letter…)
Nah… not so simple, Baron. Men in superior position have always sexually preyed on women… women in similar position tend to be bullies, but rarely sexual predators. I think some of these women were willing, and some were not, and were overpowered or trapped in a private situation, which is indeed forced groping or rape.
I would agree that the Hollywood culture in particular has always encouraged self prostituting for career on the part of pretty young women. And I am glad the culture at large is finally shining a light on that cesspool. Better late than never.
If a man takes advantage of being behind closed doors to use force to obtain sex from a woman, I agree that’s rape. But none of the descriptions I’ve read went that far. Mind you, I find the whole topic so distasteful that I haven’t read everything closely.
I saw three celebrities on a clip from prime-time TV last night, and none of them said she was raped. It was all standard casting-couch stuff. And yet they are being portrayed as victims, when they’re not — they’re courtesans.
Me too, but I saw one woman saying that he raped her in some basement.
Look, Baron, if you want to assign blame, then some blame does go to the ambitious women who sometimes considered it a price to pay for a career (and not just in Hollywood), but also to the culture at large. I was once groped by my gynecologist when very young but of the age of consent, after the exam, while I was alone with him in his office, the disgusting pig. Did I fight back? Did I yell at his secretary about what happened? Did I report him? No. I felt shame that somehow I “allowed it.” That is what the culture taught me, and I think that applied to a lot of young women once.
Only later did women begin to fight back. I think it was once pretty common in the corporate world. Men who had the power to hire or fire you used it. Did that make you a whore? Suppose your husband left you, you had kids to support, and he had the power to make you an executive seccy or to get rid of you, even to malign you to other employers. Hm? I don’t think it’s black and white. And I once personally knew a woman who was raped by her date in her living room, while her kids slept in the next room. She struggled but he was a lot stronger. Did she yell, did she fight? No. She was terrified her kids would wake and see it. She emerged out of it full of shame and self-recrimination, as well as fury at him. Even today, some would blame her and say she should have fought back harder.
Are men statistically less moral than women? Yes. 75 % of psychopaths are men, only 25 % are women. Apply that to the less character disordered in equal measure. Personally, I think genes play a significant role here.
I’ll answer some of these points.
I’m not interested in blame, just in whether these top-level celebrity women were in any way victims of Harvey Weinstein. If he actually raped them — forced them into sexual activity against their will — then they were victims. If they were under the age of consent, then they were victims. If they were mentally incapacitated, then they were victims. Otherwise, they consented to sex with him in order to advance their careers, in which case they acted as prostitutes — they were paid for performing sex acts.
The above description does not apply to a woman (or girl) who is molested by her gynecologist. That is an abuse of professional position, and is a felony that carries severe penalties.
Nor does it apply to women who are at risk of eviction, starvation, and destitution. None of Weinstein’s courtesans was in such a position, as far as I know. They had other life-choices they could make that would be less lucrative and prestigious, but which would leave them undefiled and allow them to make a living. They chose to act as they did in order to gain access to their dream world, where they would become glitzy celebrities and be fabulously rich.
And, once again as far as I know, none of these women had children nearby that they had to keep from seeing what was happening.
You are conflating several different types of sexual misconduct, molestation, and rape with what happens on the casting couch. That’s apples-and-oranges.
Well, not quite. I want you to look at the cultural picture too. Consent can sometimes be a slippery thing.
Otherwise, I agree with much of what you say. Still, it gladdens my heart to see that disgusting pig W. being publicly “flogged”.
I shed no tears for that loathsome creature Weinstein. But I don’t like those narcissistic wealthy celebrities being turned into poor, poor innocent victims, which is what is happening now. What a load of codswallop!
Well, halloo there Baron, good morning to you too!
I guess you wanted to know what a woman thinks about the subject and you got a very intelligent and put together answer.
Initially I agreed somewhat with your hypothesis about the whores and such, but Miss Vera there brings some points home.Very close to my home actually, cause I am a woman also…
As a woman I can tell you Vera speaks the truth in that angle;
I guess the testosterone is definitely harder to please than estrogen, male of the species tend to spread their sperm (it is a given from nature);
Miss Vera , I concur and thank you.
Even today, some would blame her and say she should have fought back harder.
That happened to my daughter when she was 17. The police had a signed confession, photos of the bruises around her neck, and the jury found the creep “not guilty” bec. they claimed she hadn’t fought back *enough*
Later her case was used to get the law changed in Richmond, but it caused her irreparable damage…me, too.
Whores.
…’women in similar position tend to be bullies, but rarely sexual predators’. I disagree – there is an increasing number of women in the education industry who use their positions of power as teachers to ‘seduce’ students both male and female, age of consent and under. Such reports can be seen at least weekly in the US and UK online media.
That’s a good point. The female teacher-predator has become a commonplace by now. Remarkable.
But on the flipside of that coin, teenage boys do fantasize about attractive older women.
Heck, in the 80s the band Van Halen had a hit song, “Hot for Teacher” on this very subject.
Corrupt female power is when not a single “progressive” liberal feminist has opened her mouth about the politcal persuasion of the man.
I hate to think what social media, from Clinton downwards, would be saying if he had backed Trump and donated to his campaign.
I don’t see it that way and I know I might be quite wrong. Women who sell themselves are either desperately poor or desperately needy for some kind of attention or adulation (or maybe what “feels” like affection?). I am sorry for them more than anything else. I don’t condemn them so much as pity them.
If there were a way to wake them up to the reality of life, which is so much more than sex and/or power, they would be better off. Were I them, I would rather work as a waitress or kitchen dishwasher than do what they are doing.
But you can’t fix stupid and you can’t insert morals into someone unless they want it. Sad. I wish I had something intelligent or insightful to say but I just don’t. No experience in that world, just what I have read. I wouldn’t touch it with the classic 10-foot pole, either. There is some dirt you really don’t want to get on your hands.
But I do pity them. I have always done so.
One more thought: with all the welfare we have in the US, why does this have to happen?
“One more thought: with all the welfare we have in the US, why does this have to happen?”
Because, I would suggest, Mairiadee, such things also reward them with a form of power expressed through wealth, adulation, to be able to peddle the weak outpourings of their limited intellects and be listened to and approved by equally weak minds and, most of all, to use their bodies and sexuality to influence and control weak, equally morally destitute men.
Rgds, S III.
‘desperately poor or desperately needy’? Some certainly, though I suspect you would find the poor and desperate more commonly among street prostitutes. Many of those who worked from apartments or brothels (in Australia during the 1980s at least) viewed it as a way to get houses, holidays and cars quicker than being a checkout chick at the local supermarket. And, before you ask, I was a court reporter back then and met a fair few working girls. Some of them were damaged but the majority were shockingly pragmatic.
Mick-
You’re not following the narrative – EVERY woman working in the sex industry is forced into it against her will.
Mariadee-
To answer your final question, situations like this occur because the allure of fame is an extremely powerful drug to some.
Interesting point(s), Baron. To me and from a broader perspective: obviously that’s how Hollywood works, nourished by our thirst for entertainment – movies. I, for one, have not been to a movie theater about 5 years, and have no plans to do so; I do not watch sport on TV, no Superbowl etc. etc.
I am simply a person who is – together with millions of our fellow Americans – indirectly slowly killing the Weinsteins of Holwood and Kapernicks of NFL. I just could not care less what those morons are doing, playing, pretending, lying …
High five! Me too! 🙂
I hear more and more patriots are unplugging from the TV cesspool. I did 15 years ago and never regretted it.
We’ve not had a boob tube since 1978. Haven’t missed it.
Well — I raise my glass in a spirited toast to you all. You beat me by 33 years, I’m ashamed to say.
No TV programming in my house now for 6 years, while my daughters both have eschewed the mass mind that is TV ever since they set up homes of their own (with husbands, that is).
About the only thing I watch is One America News and Alton Brown’s cooking show. Both are educational, even with Alton’s tongue in his cheek.
Four years for me – I refused to pay the BBC tythe. Almost £600 in the bank discounting the money I have spent on books. (Plus a small amount on stamps advising their threatening Capita thugs in writing that they would be well advised to depart fornicating rather than coming round to die on my doorstep).
It has always amazed me that Brits are forced to pay to watch television. More central govt record-keeping.
I have noticed of late that people who don’t have a taste for watching TV flaunt the fact as a form of virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is a liberal trait, […].
I’ve never been one for that. I have three flatscreens in the house and one in the garage so I can watch football at the workbench. And if you want to count it as a fifth TV, I have a USB tuner on my ‘Puter that has a 27″ monitor so I can work done while I watch games.
I have premium cable channels and a Netflix subscription, both dvd’s by mail and streaming.
I’ve been watching much less NFL and recently began boycotting late night talk shows but last night I used my Netflix to watch To Kill A Mockingbird. That was a really fine movie.
Do whatever makes you happy, but virtue signaling is [something I deprecate].
I have noticed of late that people who don’t have a taste for watching TV flaunt the fact as a form of virtue signaling.
No, it’s relief-signaling. If you read the other commenters who admitted to not owning a television, what you see a sense of relief that they don’t have to be bombarded with others’ choices for “entertainment”.
I like Netflix, too, and have – at the urging of our son – watched several TV series he has on DVD. The first was the “Firefly” series.
The second, “Justified” is equally good. Based on a character from Elmore Leonard’s work, it is strong and multi-layered.
He’s recommended a third, about cops in Balti, but I’m not able to get into it…too dark.
But I will reiterate, saying that one doesn’t own a television, and wouldn’t own one is not virtue signaling; the underlying motif is vast relief. You are inferring something that simply isn’t there.
I just find it odd that people who decry TV and film as worthless filth generally do so while posting on the internet.
There’s no deeper sewer than the internet.
Bertolt Brecht: “Food comes first, morals second.” (“Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral.”)
Baron – you’re undoubtedly right about some of them, but it seems that others were coerced or made to feel for their safety.
I look at it this way: sex under threat to one’s physical safety is rape. Sex under threat to one’s future career advancement is consensual, though very disgusting.
I’m not sure that Weinstein’s “victims” were only of the second sort.
It’s obviously difficult to determine where the criminal line goes, and Weinstein may not have provably crossed it, but he has certainly crossed into the huge grey non-criminal zone between “mutually desired sexual activity” and “rape” – the zone where no decent man/person should go willingly.
“…the zone where no decent man/person should go willingly.”
I thought you were talking about Hollywood.
For some reason, reading this posting and reviewing the little information I care to read from “news”, I get a feeling as if I know a little more about the serpent and Eve. Surely none of these women will die, except,,,
And I agree, Harvey did nothing like Polanski, Cosby, Clinton, the list is endless. I wonder where we should file Charlie Sheen, Tom Cruise, and all the others who may soon be exposed.
I’m not sure he doesn’t head the list. But the pedophiles aren’t being pursued as relentlessly as Weinstein. What is curious about his case is why it’s being exposed now.
His power declined while his enemies grew in number.
I wonder if this cynical quote from blacklistednews.com might provide a clue?
“Some more on the Las Vegas false flag and subsequent cover up – both so shabbily executed that Hollywood had to sacrifice a pervert.”
A bit of a stretch specifically I suspect, but on the nail generally perhaps.
Perhaps he was sacrificed to draw attention away from the paedophilia, which it seems may involve some very big names not just in Hollywood; and certainly cannot be brushed under the carpet as “consensual”.
Exactly! Who chose this particular shark as a ritual sacrifice, when there are so many other sharks, barracudas, moray eels and other dangerous life forms that could have been hooked? And why precisely now?
he must have come up short in a recent test of his loyalty to the elite and their narrative.
Dymphna, the reason pedophiles are not being pursued is because pedophilia is equally prevalent on both sides of the aisle so it becomes a silent standoff and somewhat similar to mutually assured destruction. And this continues no matter how morally reprehensible it is to rob a child of their innocence.
“Harvey did nothing like ….”
Of course, we’re still learning about the extent of Harvey’s depredations. And there are at least three accusations of rape against him (whether these meet the Whoopie-Goldbergian standard of “Rape-Rape” has not yet been determined).
“But you can’t fix stupid and you can’t insert morals into someone unless they want it”
Mariadee, these women may be many things, but they definitely aren´t stupid.
Morals ?.
I have been “screwed” many times by people whose ethics and so called morals were apparently unimpeachable. And sex never came into it.
Those people who put one over on you then promptly turned around and said, “It’s only business, nothing personal.”
Indeed.
Hurrah. Someone finally said it. Incidentally the replies are quite valid for the most part.
“Sleeping your way to the top” was a well-understood expression even back in the hazy days of my long-gone youth.
The notion that all these women were “sexually assaulted” is clearly nonsense by any reasonable assessment. I cannot believe that anyone as self-centred and ambitious as a young aspiring actress could ever be so naive as to not understand the rules of that game.
Reading some of the accusations is, in truth, quite laughable: “Harvey appeared in a bathrobe and I was frightened and alarmed, and various other words in the dictionary, so I left.” I certainly don’t condone his attitudes and behaviour, but “sexually assaulted”?
Happens all over the corporate world as well, these little tarts show up dressed for the nightclub with nary a peep about the dress code from their sisters in HR.
BTW, how about Mahomet and Aisha? What did she stand to gain from marrying a dirty old man?
She probably did quite well.
Weinstein’s behavior was so well-known that it was specified in his contract:
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/10/13/harvey-weinsteins-contract-reportedly-allowed-for-abuse-as-long-as-paid-damages.print.html
He headed the company, in case you’re wondering how he got that. [He doesn’t head it anymore, but I think it’s a beached whale by now, with lots of sand buzzards lining up to take a bite]
It’s shocking that there are lawyers who would have truck with such questionable dealings. Don’t they take an oath, or something?
None of these women should have had to endure this filthy creep just in order to remain in their chosen employment. If mayhap the career of not one of these actresses would ever have allowed them to aspire to Shakespearean or Ibsenite pinnacles of intellectual grandeur, nonetheless even the shaky pedestals of empty glamour deserve more respect than to be casually subjected to the physical horrors Weinstein habitually subjected them to – were such horrors no more than the lubricious, leering obscenity of his toad-like aspect. And it is very likely that the festering sewer of his soul would not infrequently pollute anything in its vicinity. This creature was very evidently so physically and morally repellent as to make his mere proximity tantamount to a physically offensive act – a seepage of slug-like mucilage left as the trail of his sweating lust. That he imposed his clammily suggestive physicality on young women who were willing to offer this charmless oaf the gift of their glamorous presence, in exchange for their small chance to shine for a season, reveals him as the destroyer, not the promoter and protector of that glamour! He needed wretched slaves to abuse and degrade – hardly would any woman in his power be showered with rich ornaments to her beauty, as a garden of rare flowers is kept in the rich dark earth of a warmer nature. The Beast that Beauty walks with in the magical old tale would tear a Pest like Weinstein to pieces did he ever trespass in this garden of romance! As trespass he did, and, were rape never proved against him in statute law, his very presence amidst such fragrant youth and beauty is an OUTRAGE! I will not hear of any ungallant equivalence of folly in this story! Would you have smeared even the shining memory of Marilyn Monroe, to somehow make such monsters of predatory sex seem just a normal part of what you see as that contemptible dream which film actresses readily sell themselves cheap to achieve? Is it necessary to condemn hopeful Beauty when the Beast they encounter turns into a destroyer, instead of the devoted friend they dared to dream of? You belittle the outcry of offended womanhood – as if only impossible Saints in their stuffy seclusion were troubled with real sensitivities! Even foolishness can be innocent, especially when cynical worldliness reeks of such brutal wisdom. I cannot wag a ponderous head, and dismiss these encounters as only the squalid transactions of equally base participants: There was invariably a party left acutely conscious of personal injury. Or would you really continue to deny that your acting ‘whores’ had even vestigial virtue to be taken from them, by intimidation and brute-force? And could you even, with such bad principles, defend a brutalised yet faithful wife from her chosen yet sadistic husband? For surely her mistake is still his crime? It appears you think that weakness deserves your contempt as much as evil and perverted potency. I do not understand this view, and nor can I approve of it.
Exactly.I do not believe that all actresses are shameless prostitutes willing to sleep with anyone who can advance their careers .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=6T0KfCrcR98
Here’s a clip of Steyn and Justice Jeanine Piro discussing Weinstein’s predatory behaviour. And they certainly don’t think his victims were asking for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqCMsu4fa0s
I do agree that, collectively, the Left are complete hypocrites: They habitually devalue individual experience whenever this would produce a negative reflection on their immaculate ideological image. Weinstein was a ‘great philanthropic benefactor of Democrat causes’ so a little ‘collateral damage’ by way of his horrible behaviour in private was accepted as a price worth paying to bolster the unquestionable rectitude of their political stance, and insulate the collective from all criticism.
This isn’t unique to the Left: Right-wing institutions, from the Nazi Party to the Catholic Church have historically ‘closed ranks’ to suppress or twist the truth of their own members’ evildoing. That Marxist apotheosis the killer Stalin also did most energetically crush all honest dissent. Even a lesser bureaucracy like the BBC for years sheltered the likes of the molesting creep Saville. And regrettably the Editor responsible for this normally excellent conduit of fresh air is also capable of ventilating a somewhat ripe generic libel against ambitious actresses (as you appear to recognise).
Simple decency and basic morality are the responsibility of each individual: Political morality – as ‘Political correctness,’ or whatever pharisaical moral lip-service is made to pass for the real thing – is paradoxically a moral compromise, and actually hostile to personal integrity! How else to account for the woeful tolerance by arch-feminists of such barbaric abominations against woman as FGM?
The hostility of one of the world’s ‘greatest’ religions towards women is an abiding offence to our sense of what is right: Their institutionalised cruelty despises and dismisses one half of our imperfect humanity, as if this vindicates the superiority of the other half – though actually merely flattering the unreal self-image of these deluded sadists.
Increasingly, we are realising that a politicised, collectivist, corporatist, totalitarian world is not a real world – it is a perversion of the Real. And it is populated by bullies – those who shamefully extort unwilling acquiescence, and violate the unwise trust of those who put their faith in such false idolatry as Wealth or Power or Fame.
In that sense, of weakness feeding the insatiate lusts of the Bully, the Baron is right to condemn such relations. This is how Satan can prey upon the ordinary unprotected sinners of this fallen world: But the sin is Satan’s own, and beyond Redemption, whilst his victims can be saved from the danger their uncertain steps expose them to, when straying into the vicinity of pure Evil. Should we abandon such women? Surely in many cases they are more sinned against than sinning? And most will in any case be comparative innocents in the presence of such shameless depravity.
I think Marilyn Monroe might be thought of now as the secular Saint of all the women stumbling away from their disturbing encounter with some Beast in the guise of a man. The Magdalen illustrates Blake’s forgiving intuition that ‘The road to moderation leads through excess.’ Unless. of course, the stern lessons of experience are wasted upon irredeemably vicious natures.
I think that, in this context, any strictures on the behaviour of the women affected are misplaced, and uncharacteristically ungenerous when emanating from the justly well-respected guardian of these Gates.
Yes the tone of the article is certainly worrying.
Weinstein did not come out in the open and baldly state ,”have sex with me and get a job or leave now quite unmolested”.
Had he done so ,women would have been able to decide whether they wished to trade virtue and self- respect ,for a Hollywood career.And then yes it would have been clear-cut.
Only those who were morally challenged would take him up on his offer..
But that is not what happened.
Weinstein’s modus operandi was to get his female assistant to phone fresh young 17 year old aspiting actreses and ask for a meeting.The girls would then be told that both the assistant and Weistein would be present.
Confident that there would be a chaperone in the form of the assistant the girls would agree .
When they turned up the assistant would (as prearranged by Weinstein) wait for about 10 minutes and then make some excuse and leave the room.
At that stage Wienstein would launch himself without preamble at his victim.
There was a fair amount of deceit involved.Now a man who is prepared to only have sex with a willing participant does not habitually conspire with an employee to lure and trap an unwitting victim.
This is the classic mark of a rapist .Make some pretext for talking to the target, gain their trust, lower their guard and then attack..
Further Weinstein on more than one occasion was seen by witnesses in a public place masturbating into a plant pot in front of a clearly distressed and embarrassed woman eager to escape,who he had waylaid in a corner on some harmless pretext.
So being the hapless victim of his scheming makes you complicit in your own abuse and a hopeless slut.
Of course they didn’t “ask for it”.
The point is that when they were “asked”, many went along with a horrid, demeaning experience with the ugly troll who was the gatekeeper to working in Hollywood film. He could make your name disappear.
I like Carrie Fisher’s response in a similar situation: she threatened to castrate the man.
“I like Carrie Fisher’s response in a similar situation: she threatened to castrate the man.”
Ooh, light saber, cool!
Bet she didn’t get the job.
The danger in this discussion is to suggest that it’s all one way or the other. I imagine that among all the aspiring “starlets” (and young men as well, see Corey Feldman and Corey Haim) who show up on the bus in Hollywood (as it used to be described) you’ll find young innocents, calculating ambitious operators, and everything in between. (Although it’s hard to imagine that anyone could be wholly ignorant of the moral climate of Hollywood.) With predators like HW, it’s a question of volume. There’s always another target coming down the pike.
Ironically, there’s a great movie waiting to be made about all this.
Indeed a more nuanced approach is certainly desirable.
Thank-you, Shelagh, for a fuller account of the actual state of affairs than any I have seen elsewhere in print, or indeed on broadcast news. (At least here in the UK.) You are so well-informed I wonder if you are a Hollywood insider, or at least have access to your own reliable sources. It wouldn’t surprise me, as there is a sense of authenticity in the details you give.
What you describe in shockingly unpleasant but necessary detail fully justifies the outrage now being expressed.
Let us hope that an example can be made of this creature, when he appears before a Court of Law, which will send a stern message to all degenerate offenders of this type.
And thanks for your enlightening contribution to the discussion!
An excellent article, realising the situation for what it is. No winners no losers, no victims. Just adults doing ‘business’
You may be surprised how many high-level women business executives have slept their way to the top, and they continue that behavior while they are there. They wield this weapon the same way men executives do–using it to give promotions to their boy-toys, and deny those same promotions to those who men who do not co-operate. My husband has encountered this behavior in women executives many dozens of times in his 25 year career in business. It is one of the primary reasons so many business executives are incompetent–they didn’t get to their high levels through intelligence, hard work, or experience, but because they slept with the right people.
Patricia-
It’s not just execs. There is plenty of ‘action’ happening among middle management, technical professionals, and other white/grey collar workers.
I expect that the necessity to sleep one’s way to the top if common to all industries where there are a lot of aspirants and few positions, leading to the final selection being made on bases other than talent.
There are surely 1000 actresses available for each Hollywood actress position. Assume that 900 have some fatal flaw such as a lack of acting talent. How to choose between the other 100? Some will be the kids of someone to whom a favour is owed. That takes care of a few. But the others? That’s where the sleeping bit comes in, I suppose.
I expect that it’s the same in many other industries.
A friend of mine told me about a photocopier saleswoman who attended at his office and slept with someone to sell a photocopier. That’s quite extreme, I’d say. But I’ve very often seen sales pitches that are essentially based on (fake) socialisation. Given that most high-end prostitution isn’t even that much about the sex but about the illusion of socialisation, one does wonder why such a distinction is made between the variant with and without clothes.
Oh there, another one of my random thoughts!
“A friend of mine”
Hmm.
(Kidding!)
Baron, you need to read the accounts by the victims before writing about it. You seem ignorant of what sexual harassment or sexual assault is. The ones who have come forward were in a situation where Weinstein exposed himself, groped them, asked for a massage or forced himself upon them. The women then escaped from him or didn’t get away until after the assault. Three have said they were raped. You may need to look up the definition of rape as well. Of course, there were apparently plenty of women who consented to his advances in exchange for a job, but none of those women are the ones who have come forward to tell their story.
Yes, those latter women are the ones I was talking about, and I saw three of them on a TV talking-head YT clip.
I would assume that the SOB did some raping and molesting, too, but that’s different — I hope he does time for such acts.
Sexual harassment aside, and Harvey Weinstein was brazen and extreme in that department, economic survival for both men and women often entails submission to some abusive narcissistic jerk. The humane intelligent boss is a rarity.
Give me economic failure any day of the week to the sleazy life lived among those who sell their virtue for filthy lucre — with “economic survival” as their rallying defense.
No sale, Roland.
I lived in Hollywood as a junior high school and high school young person. I experienced first hand the slimy residue of the milieu I inhabited, not YET as a participant, but by God’s grace, as one who escaped on the cusp.
Yet — your observation that “the humane intelligent boss is a rarity” is most certainly borne out in my own history of employment.
I’ve had such a guy as a boss, in an industry generally considered to be full of digusting people, no less.
They do exist. In the most unlikely places.
But they’re not the norm!
Dear Baron,
Weinstein is certainly a sexual predator. But some women said no, and he did not force himself on them. They could all have said no, and he would have had no power, the mills of Hollywood would grind on, the need to make money, and cast attractive women, no less diminished. But they said “Yes”. for one reason only, and it wasn’t because he was irrisistable, but because he could further their career. Now, the bandwagon calls, and they jump on crying “Victim” and beating their comely breasts. Not women I would have any respect for.
Baron, you are a brave man ! 😉
Dymphna, you ask: “What is curious about his case is why it’s being exposed now.”
I think he may have said something nice about President Trump 😉
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2017/10/hollywood.html
PS: From behind the protective shield of my laptop I confess that I actually feel sorry for Weinstein, much in the way I often feel sorry for the Beast, in good presentations of “The Beauty and the Beast”.
The Beast was a gentleman, milady, by comparison with this Pest. In Jean Cocteau’s film version he comes across as having a heart, beneath his savage exterior – which you simply cannot say of Weinstein.
The very cult of ‘stars’ is toxic and dehumanising. It inevitably produces sordid results.
This may be “hardly the case” but when they have been clubbing you half to death and they finally lay down the club you would be wise to pick up that club yourself.
I really can’t see the issue with that guy’s sleazy conduct. People in power have always used their power to gratify their personal desires. It’s an ugly part of human nature.
I think you have rather missed the point. None of these women should have been put in the position of having to put out for a slime ball or risk their careers for not doing it. There are laws against sexual harassment for a reason, and this is it.
Precisely.
I find The Baron’s thought interesting. Should any of this end up in a trial, The Baron’s comments would make an interesting defense. I can just hear Perry Mason challenging the witnesses (the accusing women) now!
Harvey’s real crime is his low market value.
If he looked like Errol Flynn or Brad Pitt all we’d hear about these shenanigans would be a few whispers from beyond the grave.
Wrong premise: women and men have the same morality.
I think women have to be more sexually moral than men otherwise they and their children would not be protected by the males in their tribe. Their survival and their offspring would not survive as well. The guy has to believe that kid is his.
It is asymmetrical because males are asymmetrically stronger and have to hang around that mother for quite a few years….until the kid is well into adolescence. [paleo times…before welfare]
Okay — straight Alpha males… GUILTY AS CHARGED
NOW LETS GET ON TO THE REAL MONSTERS…. gay pedophiles, pederasts
And even predatory Lesbians forcing straight young girls to do lesbian scenes.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE BEYOND ALPHA MALES?????
Please don’t yell in the comment section.
If you find a credible account of these situations, we’ll certainly cover it. In my own experience predatory lesbians do indeed exist. IIRC, Janet Napolitano ran a den of intrigue which punished/bullied male employees.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186507/Janet-Napolitano-favoured-woman-long-relationship-job.html
Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano is facing a mega lawsuit from an official who claims she gave a less-qualified woman with whom she has a ‘long-standing relationship’ a job over him.
The suit also accuses Napolitano of turning the department into a female-run ‘frat house’ where male staffers were routinely humiliated and on the receiving end of ‘sexually charged games’.
Napolitano’s chief of staff Suzanne Barr repeatedly targeted men because of their gender and once called a male employee’s hotel room to use sexually explicit language, the suit claims.
I believe we had at least one post on her poor administration of the Department of Homeland Security.
BTW, he won the suit in the usual political fashion, i.e., DHS didn’t have to admit any wrong-doing but he got the monetary satisfaction of a “settlement”. I’ll bet it was a whopper:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/settlement-n-y-ice-big-discrimination-suit-article-1.1202797
What do women of immense power do? Have their enemies’ lives destroyed, or even have them murdered. HRC and the Clinton Death List makes that crystal clear.
Trump’s “pussy” comment was precisely and specifically about the sexual domination of powerful men over willing women. He all but named HW in his comments.
There’s a huge difference between having willing women offer you sex in the hope of becoming your next wife and forcing yourself on an unwilling unwitting victim.
An article in the Weekly Standard that makes good points about the current media environment that allowed the Weinstein story to come out now:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-human-stain-why-the-harvey-weinstein-story-is-worse-than-you-think/article/2009995
That’s an excellent fisking of Hollywood culture, which is now imploding. The author says:
But journalists always had the actual story of how a Hollywood producer humiliated and sexually assaulted women. How? Because he victimized journalists.
Fox News reporter Lauren Sivan told Huffington Post that a decade ago, Weinstein masturbated in front of her. She says she didn’t say anything at the time, when she was an anchor on a local cable show, because she was “fearful of the power that Weinstein wielded in the media.” She was right and her fear was understandable.
Writing in New York Magazine, Rebecca Traister remembers the time when she asked Weinstein an interview question at a book party, he screamed at her, spit in her face, called her a “c—t,” and then put her boyfriend in a headlock and dragged him to the street. Traister said nothing at the time because she figured she had little chance against “that kind of force.”
I don’t blame her or Sivan for not saying anything, never mind reporting the story. Weinstein is violent, vindictive, and litigious—as well as sexually abusive—facts that the entertainment and political media knew for years. No one wanted to publish that story. But that’s not the same thing as “not being able to nail it down.” “Nailing it down” would have amounted to nothing more than printing a collection of facts under a byline.
The real issue, as Traister notes, was that “there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.” Traister is referring to Talk, the magazine Weinstein started at Miramax with Tina Brown. The catchword was “synergy”—magazine articles, turned into books, turned into movies, a supply chain…
Miramax. I didn’t know that was Weinstein’s company…live and learn.
What’s really scary are the number of Oscar nominations Weinstein’s films received.
It’s terrifying to realize how much cultural influence he had during the past 30 years. It is why we live in a sick society that truly believes people like Tarantino are genius auteurs.
We’re all taking advantage of each other in many ways and yet we show much love and selfless behavior in many ways too.
The longer you live, the more you realize that people are mosaics, like poorly arranged jigsaw pieces, some parts good, some parts not so good.
And this makes sense too, as our assembly instructions put us together with 23,000 different genes and these have thousands of alleles (variants of genes.)
The evolutionary mystery is why we are not always selfish. See Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Apparently we try to protect and cause the survival of genes that are like our own. That’s why we might jump into shark-infested water to try to rescue our uncle, but we might not do so to rescue someone from out of state.
But only someone who WAS totally selfish would have shamed his OWN FAMILY like this. If HW is allowing his genes to dictate his behaviour, he must be ignoring most of the higher mental functions. He was not obliged to just ‘go with the flow’ of the hormonal secretions: Dawkins’ ‘selfish gene’ is not a prescription for human behaviour, but a metaphor for blind natural processes. By descending to the level of his glands, HW made himself a dysfunctional sociopath. The idea that such a powerful industry figure had control over the vast estates and processes of Hollywood, and yet was incapable of controlling himself, is patently absurd. One wonders just how much serious work he found either time or inclination to do for himself.
Why would anyone want to offer excuses for such an evolutionary dead-end?
Exactly. Weinstein simply has no redeeming features. Some people are just plain evil, through and through, rotten to the core.
This moral relativity is tripe. A rapist is bad. A murderer is bad. A mission station doctor who works his butt off under primitive conditions at risk of attack by the very population he serves is good. There is no comparison.
End of.
Yes. This worm isn’t turning at all:
https://pagesix.com/2017/10/19/harvey-weinstein-doesnt-seem-to-be-taking-sex-rehab-seriously/
What a sweetie he is.
Related, albeit a few days late:
Actress Flees Italy as ‘Sophisticated’ Europeans Side With Harvey Weinstein
Posted on | October 21, 2017
Our “allies” are so thoughtful and enlightened:
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Every American woman I’ve known who has traveled in Europe has talked about how different attitudes are there. Especially in France and Italy, women report that the cat-calling is horrific. In fact, if you pay attention to complaints about cat-calling in America, you’ll notice that the problem has an ethnic aspect. When a video of a woman being harassed on the streets of New York went viral in 2014, nearly all the harassers were black or Latino. This resulted in a discussion among feminists of whether complaining about cat-calling is racist. This is how “intersectionality” works: Only white men are to blame for sexism — and only American white men, because every American liberal believes Europe is better than America.