Harvey Weinstein

[caperberries]

Rumours have been circulating about this disgusting man and his sleazy casting couch for years... He has offered a half-hearted apology, but seems rather smug about the fact that his family are supporting him.

AIBU to think his wife is misguided? What sort of example is she setting to her daughter? After all, this isn't a one-off - it is a pattern of serious abuse of women over decades.

www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

I don't believe that the obamas or clintons were unaware. Their association with him went back years and I don't believe that the president of the United States would be in the home of someone that the security services had not investigated to some degree.

So much gossip, so little thought.

user - you are so brave. And you make the crucially important point that these powerful men, who are known to be abusive, are everywhere. For years, we just accepted this as part of our culture - boys will be boys. That's how Savile and Harris got away with what they did here. Yet we continue to have threads on here where women make those same old, same old excuses for men "Oh, he's just being laddish, it was a stag night, just a lapdancing club, just a stripper, just a prostitute". It's the same fucking behaviour.

Sorry, haven't RTFT, but I don't understand why Paltrow and Jolie are portrayed as victims ( I realise they are not the only women involved, and there are other allegations).
I was reading an article on this and it said that what actually happened was that he made an "unwanted advance".

So if a man comes onto you and you're not interested its sexual harassment???

www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/us/gwyneth-paltrow-angelina-jolie-harvey-weinstein.html

It sounds a bit more than just being hit on. You don't refuse to work with someone because they hit on you and you turned it down and it was all hunky dory after that.

Have you heard the tape, book? It's more than just a pass - it's utterly hideous, coercive behaviour. It's basically "Sleep with me, and I will make your career, don't and you'll be nobody".

What SO many people are missing here is that there is POWER at work. This is a man who has the ability to make and to break a career, and he used that power to try to coerce sex from women. It's like your boss saying to you "If you don't sleep with me, you are fired".

Male power has for years acted as a shield of impunity. Even powerful women couldn't complain against the most outrageous abuse, because they wouldn't be believed or their careers would be at stake. If you've ever worked with a guy who is similar (and I have), they operate in a climate of fear, where anyone who goes out on a limb and challenges them is destroyed.

This has been our culture for years. It's not a few bad apples. It was everywhere - it was the warp and the weft of our gendered expectations in the workplace. And thank God it's now being challenged.

When a guy who is an alleged rapist, an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault, and someone who has clearly been caught on tape coercing a young actress into his hotel room, and you reduce that to the question "if a man comes onto you and you're not interested it's sexual harassment", you are part of the problem.

Here's Harvey Weinstein in operation:

video.newyorker.com/watch/harvey-weinstein-caught-on-tape

It is an unpleasant listen. If you have a listen Bookaboo it might answer your question about sexual harassment.

Why does a man have a right to make advances towards you just because he finds you attractive

If he can't read the signals or he doesn't care what signals you are giving off yes it's sexual harassment

AJ never worked with him again and GP told her then partner who had a word with him that suggests both felt intimidated by his actions why should they have felt intimidated becuase he thought it was his right to make a pass at them

That recording is very disturbing to hear

Everyone knew all this we didn't know is a slap in the face for the women that have been

They just turned a blind eye as he was so powerful at least admit that than claim oh I wasn't aware bollocks. I wonder how many would have kept their partners/daughters at a distance from him all I am quite sure

Paltrow's position is interesting: she had a bad experience with Weinstein as we now know, but continued to work with him and took the Shakespeare in Love role from the original choice, Winona Ryder in circumstances that have been the subject of much comment in the years since...

Maybe Paltrow will give back her undeserved oscar? Or there will be a statement on gloop from her? She can say what she wants now, but it's all too little, too late.

Hmmm. George Clooney made the point that he worried that allegations had previously been put about not to implicate Harvey Weinstein but to slander the actresses involved. Sounds from some of the comments above that he was not unreasonable in that thinking.

Or did people just assume that Malia would be immune

I think having a secret service detail does make you pretty much immune, yes.

While GP's parents are moderately famous, she didn't and still doesn't have the clout (or the grit) that Angelina Jolie has, and could just walk away. If she refused to work for Miramax or the Weinstein Company at her age she would have been labelled "difficult to work with" and blacklisted throughout Hollywood. I think people forget just how replaceable pretty young actresses are.

GP has always had far more clout than Jolie. She is a best actress winner, AJ only supporting actress. She has been in more successful films than Jolie and is much better regarded than AJ as an actress.

It's very clear from the Sony emails that AJ is regarded as a bit of a joke in Hollywood and a celebrity rather than an actress. She's been in a string of flops and regarded as hugely unpopular with the public and incapable of opening a movie unless in a heavily disguised costume.

Despite this neither she nor Brad has worked with him since the late 90s. GP however turned a blind eye. She's obviously not to blame for the attack on her. But I would say she is somewhat culpable for attacks on later women.

God user that is horrific I am so sorry.

To whom is the young unknown ish actress supposed to "report" the harrassment to?

As students we were all desperate for holiday work. My friend was liked by one of the temping agencies as had proved herself as a very good worker, personable, reliable so got lots of jobs, all good. In one job she was sexually harrassed by the boss. She tried dealing with it herself but was getting worse. So she told the agency. They made lots of sympathetic noises and "how awful" - she was only 18 - and she was taken off that job. And the agency NEVER placed her again. They totally cut her off. No more work for her.

Maybe the likes of Paltrow and Jolie were reluctant to come forward not only because of possible career damage but because of the mud slinging that would no doubt follow. I read somewhere that while Amrba Gutierrez's complaint was being investigated by the police there were suddenly lots of media articles making reference to her sex life and previous (retracted) complaints - seems Weinstein had used his pull with the media to discredit her before her story got anywhere near a courtroom.

Jolie in particular has a colourful romantic history (as is her right) and I can quite imagine that if she had come out earlier to condem him there would have been plenty of articles basically slut shaming her. Famous or not, who wants to go through that?

And lets be honest, neither Weinstein nor the media in general are adverse to inventing stuff to achieve their own ends - what's the betting that if there was no dirt on a particular complainant it would just be invented?

I would say she is somewhat culpable for attacks on later women.

Wow. Now that is victim blaming. So a victim who doesn't report what happens to them is responsible for all the victims after them? I'm sorry but we don't know exactly what happened to her or what was said or done afterwards.

Sorry, I know this is fairly obvious but had to pop back to the thread just to say Ugh.

Ugh ugh ugh.

Have listened to a bit of that tape of HW and it's just skin-crawlingly foul, isn't it?

Worse still when it sounds so horribly familiar :( I've been on the receieving end of a few 'persuasive' incidents like that (thankfully not many, and none that ended as badly as they did for most of HW's victims, and also thankfully not from men in a position of actual power over me) and it's just horrible. Insidious, soft-soaping crap, with a side-order of low-level threat, all the more so if the man in question is physically huge and also well-connected and extremely powerful.

Utterly skin-crawling. Can't shake off the ick factor this morning.

This has ot change. It is everywhere. It is disgusting.

Do the men who do this want the same thing to happen to their daughters? Because it will, unless something very drastic changes.

My DD is only 4 but I am praying that a) this never happens to her and b) something happens to stop this from happening to anyone else.

Don't think it will, though.

I know there are decent men everywhere (am married to one of them) but feeling very very very depressed about the state of the world this morning. It only takes a few slimeballs (and sadly there are more than a few out there) to cause devastation and misery.

Kerala: That sounds depressingly familiar.

"Despite this neither she nor Brad has worked with him since the late 90s. GP however turned a blind eye. She's obviously not to blame for the attack on her. But I would say she is somewhat culpable for attacks on later women"

No, just no.

What you are failing to recognise, and I'm tempted to see this as
a symptom of how celebrity-obsessed this discussion is, is that fame isn't the only kind of power. Weinstein had a power to make movies happen, to make careers happen, that meant that he held the threads of people's futures in his hands. Including apparently powerful people. It takes a lot of guts to piss off someone who has power over you. It's the right thing to do, but not that many people have that moral courage to risk their livelihood, their career, their reputation sticking their head above the parapet. We should be applauding those women who have, they've been brave.

But the person to blame is Weinstein himself, and the dick-waving male culture that says "boys will be boys" and excuses antics like this. Blaming the women themselves who suffered at his hands is tremendously misguided.

What I find depressing is that in our society it is these horrible abusive misogynist men who "succeed". Trump, Weinstein. The men I know are in the main decent and respect women yet they all have "normal" moderately successful jobs. Is it that this sort of personality is rewarded, or does getting the power corrupt them to behave like this? Either is depressing.

Like Jessi I am also sad today for my dds. I had hoped alot of the shit I put up with as a quite attractive young woman would be a thing of the past but shockingly if anything it seems worse now

The Peanut Gallery As a victim I have to say I agree with this to some degree. If the first woman who was assaulted by my rapist had gone to the police then there's a very strong chance that either (a) he wouldn't have done it to me or (b) there would have been a solid case against him when I came forwards (multiple victims).

I know exactly how hard it is to make the decision to speak up, the impact on your life and on your self (I now suffer from PTSD). The problem isn't only the speaking up, its also the soul crushing devastation when you're basically told you're a liar and the police don't believe you enough to do something about it (despite physical evidence). I still wonder that if my rapist's name was published how many other girls would come forwards? I don't think for a minute his behaviour was limited to me.

I don't blame any of the victims for not coming forwards, but I do feel that if they had I wouldn't have been through what I have.

*Out of interest, what would you expect people to do on hearing these rumours?

Privately offer support to the victims? Try and help them recover the careers he destroyed? Don't praise them to high heaven in public? Don't work for them?*

All things that could be done but it would not stop HW's behaviour.

User99999 I'm a victim as well and no, I don't agree. I cannot put in the other victim's shoes or understand their motivations. I can't blame them AT ALL.

And yet no one, at any point in the evening, warned me, took me aside or pulled me away from conversation with him. I fully believe that those people are complicit in my rape.

Yes, they are. I once physically pulled a drunk, young female colleague off the paws of a really sleazy man at our company's Christmas party. She protested, he protested, I didn't care. She thanked me the next day.

Here is the Seth Macfarlane 'joke' from 2013

link

Peanut I think it's great that you're in a place where you can feel that way. I'm not. I really can't feel that it doesn't matter the victims before me didn't report it. It does matter. I fully understand why they wouldn't but their not reporting it has had a massive impact on my life. The ONLY reason I agreed to go to the police in the end was because I wanted it on record for other women in the future, because I felt like I had a responsibility, as a victim, to any other women who might still come across him. if the whole police thing didn't scare the shit out of him to not do it again

I'm gobsmacked, there's a guy on Victoria Derbyshire right now who (having met HW twice) has declared he "might have been a bad boy" but that he hasn't done anything criminal just "used his power to his advantage" and that this is "par for the course in Hollywood".

He does say that the exposing of HW is politically motivated, and I can believe that to a certain extent because HW has been so vocal about Trump - it isn't a huge leap to assume that pro-Trump bots have aided the story and pushed the "he's a friend of Hillary/Obama" angle in order to deflect from their own issues. It's the classic "dead cat" strategy.

User I totally understand why you feel that way. I hope it gets easier for you, you did a very brave and good thing.