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

Ronan Farrow on the Rachel Maddow show said that he has been working on the story for a while but it was very hard to get it published due to treat of being sued. Clearly Harvey Weinstein was able to intimidate many people. But the New Yorker's final willingness to publish has resulted in all this confirmation information coming out, so congratulations to them.

Weinstein and Tarantino go way back (wasn't the latter and Rose's ex Robert Rodriguez execs when HW first began Weinstein company?).
So it is a little disingenuous to say you were dealing with Quentin personally knowing who would end up distributing and promoting you. That said, Rosanna Arquette got her part on Pulp Fiction because of QT and in spite of HW's alleged blackballing. Tarantino has said nothing on the issue. Rodriguez said he was disgusted by the behaviour and how he covered up his tracks (yet he continued to work with the guy because there is no way on hell he didn't know back then).

At the moment the whole thing is a butt-covering exercise because it would probably be quicker to ask who didn't know. People with vested interests in future distribution of their work are playing it safe with not commenting (Michael Moore), others are minimal commenting (Di Caprio) or they admit they were warned and get slated for not speaking out sooner (Chastain) or they say they did not know at all (Streep) and face not unjustified scepticism.

PAs will have been in overdrive drafting statements this week. Some writing half-arsed statements along the lines of we heard but we didn't know how bad or very careful shock about recent allegations (they knew the older ones). Many won't want to have have their past raked up (both the wankstains and the object of blinds). Jimmy Kimmell's Oscars monologue next year will be interesting in how it confronts or ignores the topic (certainly no joke now is it?)

Didn't the Oscars give the thumbs up to Seth Macfarlanes "we can see your boobs song"? And now they're trying to arse cover themselves and distance themselves from HW. Another bunch of hypocrites.

caringdenise009

Probably because names are being named and it's an ongoing case. I'm sure there'll be another thread up soon with initials and nicknames in place of using people's names.

The Oscar's committee is holding a meeting to decide what to do Thank god BAFTA have shown some backbone and suspended him immediately.

I agree CaveMum given that he's admitted to unacceptable behaviour (although not specifically rape or sexual assault) you'd expect suspension to be a mere formality. Spineless bastards.

God, that boobs song was appalling.

The Pitt story is strange. He was a young guy at the start of his career when the Paltrow incident happened yet was willing to confront him. Apparently Paltrow also got a threatening phonecall after the incident telling her not to tell anyone else. Yet when he had more fame and power, he seemed to have forgotten all about it, or decided to let it go. I wonder how much sooner Weinstein would have been stopped if high profile actors had refused to work with the Weinstein company and made the reasons clear?

Why on earth isn't Roman Polanski completely persona no grata?
Meryl Streep and others gave him a standing ovation at the Oscars some years ago.
He raped a child ffs.

Apologies - I've just seen there's a separate thread about Polanski.

Hmm. I just went on Digital Spy, they had two threads running in different sections on HW. They've deleted them both! DS are very cautious legally, I wonder if his team are already starting the fight back.

Or maybe Digital Spy aren't as daft as some commenters and realise that there is such a thing as prejudicial comment in relation to ongoing legal matters.

I guess Brad Pitt was just sticking up for his gf and didn't care about other women.

There was something on Twitter that 'as the father of daughters' has become the new 'our thoughts and prayers' as it was being trotted out so much. Men seem incapable of caring about sexual harassment unless it affects a female relative.

I think one of the things that is getting ignored here is how culturally accepted this behaviour was, for a very, very long time. It's not just that there were a few bad apples running around the showbiz world taking advantage of their power; we really, really mustn't allow that to become the narrative. These celebrity cases - whether it's this or Operation Yewtree - have a worrying tendency to get personalised, as if it's just the individual failings of one or two people that are to blame, and not an entire culture that turned a blind eye to the sufferings of women and girls.

Our entire culture was set up in a way that excused men behaving in these ways - and it was a HELL of a lot of men. Every time there is a thread on here about sexual harassment in the 70s-90s, there are hair-raising stories of the extent of abuse and the entitlement of the men perpetuating it. Not celebrity men in Hollywood - ordinary men, in ordinary workplaces. I bet if you started an AIBU now "Have you ever been sexually harassed or assaulted" there would be very few women in their 30s and older who hadn't experienced it. (I don't know about women in their 20s, I would like to think their experience had been better because of the change in norms, but I fear this is naive).

Of course, it was never morally acceptable, but feminists taking a stand against sexual harassment were for years caricatured as bra-burning lesbians. Campaigns to recognise the damage caused by sexual harassment and assault were ridiculed, or marginalised. Women were told they were "asking for it" by wearing the wrong clothes, or acting the wrong way, or simply by being pretty. What was done to them was minimized, as if they didn't possess dignity or the right to choose who touched their body and when. Predatory male behaviour was normalised as the inevitable outworkings of a red-blooded masculinity that just loved women. Ugh.

We need to face the fact that cultural norms around sexual harassment have changed over time - and to acknowledge what that means in terms of the everyday experiences of so very many women. Weinstein is the highly visible tip of a very, very large iceberg.

BBC Article - Harvey Weinstein: Did everyone really know?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41593384

There was something on Twitter that 'as the father of daughters' has become the new 'our thoughts and prayers' as it was being trotted out so much. Men seem incapable of caring about sexual harassment unless it affects a female relative

this bugs me too
given the propensity of men to see female relatives as their property the 'imagine it was your daughter' line is analogous to saying imagine if someone scratched your car.

He doesn't identify with his daughter and imagine how she would feel if she was sexually assaulted, rather he imagines how insulted and angry he would feel if another man disrespected and demeaned him by violating his property

What's absolving clear is that his behaviour was prolific and there will be hundreds more women we will never know about.
His wife said they, went out twice a nights and week and spent rest of time at home. Where did the man get the time to fit it all in?? He must have hardly been at home.
Incredible he is Sat on bed crying..
You don't want me because I'm fat and yet he got that gorgeous wife.
His problems cannot be sorted by a short stint in rehab, he is already talking of his comeback!

I should imagine the tears whilst he sat on the bed were, in his sick mind, a form of foreplay.

He also probably got off on the idea that he had a gorgeous wife and yet still sexually harassed and assaulted young, vulnerable women.

crying..You don't want me because I'm fat
seems to me that for him being fat was a feature not a bug, he took pleasure in stripping off and forcing himself on young women who found him repellent, getting off on their fear and revulsion

it's all about adulation of the ego. People in those circles are vain, self-absorbed, usually arrogant and are used to people fawning over them and giving them anything they want, telling them anything they want to hear. Nobody says no.

Yes to this. It's why I can never stand to watch the Oscars or any tv or film awards (although I will watch the red carpet walkup for the gowns) they are such hedonistic, ego-stroking events. The way they go on acting all luvvie to each other, back stroking, accolading; frequent dropping of exultative nouns and verbs: genius, special, wonderful, glorious. Then when you feel you can't take anymore, you get the overly emotional sycophantic speeches. You'd think they were doing jobs that involved saving people's lives. Watching the Oscars is like watching one big show in being narcisstic. With all that, no wonder many of them go around with a god complex.

I could never understand what the beautiful Georgina Chapman was doing with the fat and ( I hate saying it) rather ugly older man.
She's had two children with him.

I bet if you started an AIBU now "Have you ever been sexually harassed or assaulted" there would be very few women in their 30s and older who hadn't experienced it.

There have been a few of these threads that I’ve seen since being on MN. And yes, it is rife. For me I could list dozens of examples, from age 6 onwards, from a cat call to rape.

For my friends, I have several who were abused by family members, and all of us have had experience of assault/rape.

It is everywhere. We need to scream and shout about this. This cannot be the world our daughters are going into

I bet if you started an AIBU now "Have you ever been sexually harassed or assaulted" there would be very few women in their 30s and older who hadn't experienced it.

I'm over 30 and have never experienced it, so not everyone has. Horrifying how many people have though.

There’s a thread about this right now!

And yes it is pretty common...

Appalled by clip of him today in which he said something along the lines of: "Everybody makes mistakes, and I believe in second chances"... an incredibly arrogant and unremorseful thing to say which basically translates as "I've not done anything out of the ordinary, so let's forget all about it and move on". Awful man.