To think loads of people in Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein and dont want to admit it?

[ssd]

all the shock and horror is getting on my nerves, are they really telling us this guy hit on loads of the woman there and was abusive towards them and no one talked about it?

sheesh

I'm not surprised about it, or that it would be glossed over for the sake of not rocking the boat.
Everyone still gushes about Woody Allen and wants to be in his films. Vanity Fair's reporting on the allegations against him, including involved judge's comments, case notes, heavily researched books into the allegations specifically, convinced me that he's not the kind of person whose art is greater than their moral shortcomings. Yuck.

Woody Allen implied he felt sorry for harvey rapist in the wake of all this. I feel like their in a sex abuse club and sorry is code for 'shit we got caught out.' The recordings of mel gibson phoning his ex wife - after he attacked her - were him screaming indignantly that she should blow him and smile with her dysfunctional pussy. That's the level of entitlement in hollywood.

I agreee Hamburglar it’s not the films

Agree that of course lots of people knew.

Its sickening that it has taken so long for women to gain enough power to have these claims taken seriously and to be able to overcome the culture of fear, enabling and that most insidious habit of choosing to look the other way.

I recognise that it is not easy to speak out (having been ostracised myself once for having done so) and there is all that nasty complicated dynamic with shame and power and gaslighting etc that goes on with victims but also involving some of those who turn a blind eye, but we have to try to encourage people to speak out. I only did so because something happened to someone else as well. I would not have reported my own experience necessarily, although I did tell people so it was another of those 'open secrets', but felt more motivated to be more official on behalf of someone else though.

In hindsight I wish had taken it further but the silent victim blaming and the way people turned away from me just sort of rolled towards me like a sudden cold fog. Its crap. I was not however, a famous person with money and a platform for my views, so I am a bit less forgiving of people continuing to say nothing even once they had become wealthy and secure and with some power in their own right.

And all that collusion and minimising with Polanski and Woody Allen that has gone on for years is disgusting. We have so much further to go with this.

That video with Affleck made me feel sick. I think he has his act carefully judged so that he aims to pitch it as 'oh, he is being fun and cuddly' and isn't really doing anything wrong exactly (and of course she should be flattered that he is being flirty and complimentary/teasing her) but then you hear the words as well and see how at one point she actually really tried to pull away at something he said, and actually he had her held really strongly... it just made my skin crawl. And he is so knowing about the whole thing and playing to the camera - I couldn't watch it all.

I don't know what she thought of the whole thing, but my view is that her reaction is that classic mix of being socialised to not upset men and to accept some sexual contact and teasing as part of life but also to sort of 'play dead' or go along with it once you realise it is not going to stop and aren't equally in control of the situation like you thought you might be in the beginning. And how or why she got on his lap in the first place is another matter but perhaps it speaks to the culture of women needing to appear to be sexually available to men in order to work/ get interviews etc. Just yuck.

At least it has all come out now and hopefully this will be a real turning point. More to do but is a start. (Sorry long post but its helped me to type out how I feel so thank you for reading if anyone has!!)

@quercus i read something today about new plastic surgery regulations coming in to the states. The amount of doctors - MALE doctors who have lied to, harmed and killed their female patients through negligence and fraud and have gotten away with a slap on the wrist is mind boggling. It's a huge problem across the board. Sick.

And often there's no point in speaking out because nothing happens. Shameful. I hope things will start to change now.

Also agree that the perpetrators are very knowing e.g. Ben affleck. They know the system and they play it and make it work for them leaving victims in their path.

I wish I could do links - I can't, sorry. But Google Scott Rosenberg 'Everybody Knew'
Or perhaps somebody could do the link on here.
It's on the other HW thread on Mumsnet.
Powerful, thought provoking piece.

I still can't get my head around Georgina Chapman marrying HW and having two children with him.
I remember reading either Tatler or Vanity Fair and seeing photographs of them together being gobsmacked at the them being married. I felt he was 'punching way above....'

She was launching a fashion label (marchesa), and he could get a-listers to promote the brand so there was probably more to it than just love!

What's worrying me is the blatant attempt by the media and many of the acting community to make it appear as though HW was a lone wolf and pretend the problem isn't endemic. I was reading the Metro (over someone's shoulder as I hate it) and saw a big headline declaring how HW had a 'powerful hold over Hollywood' as if he controlled everyone and everyone was scared of him. Can you imagine the likes of Steven Spielbeg, David Geffen etc being afraid of some loudmouth producer? There are people with as much or more power than HW.

He's an animal but he isn't the only one and I don't think they should be able to throw him and maybe a couple of actors to the wolves and claim that 'it's all fine now, we've cleaned house, nothing to see here anymore'. It's complete BS. When are thee pedo's going to be named?

i care zero about celebrities and gossip etc but i had heard of him years ago and I had heard the rumours. it must have been the biggest open secret in hollywood.

the men havent commented because it didnt happen to them
the women havent commented because they dont want to admit to sleeping their way to roles

look at british pop music- for every talented female artist like adele who makes it because of ability and not appearance, there are 20 young, pretty girls with extremely limited talent- cheryl cole for example, who are pop stars yet couldnt sing their way out of paperbag without autotune and lip synching.

How and why do all these young pretty girls keep getting picked ??

I think people are annoyed because they think of it as sleeping with the enemy type thing. But i guess everyone thought 'if i dont take the job someone else will'. I suppose no one was going to risk it, sacrifice their career when they didnt know if anyone would back them up.

Weinstein had zero to do with the Kingsman films?

I'm extremely sceptical about Gwyneth Paltrow saying she was 'petrified' etc. Only now, when Weinstein's behaviour became public? She didn't need him after she won the Oscar. She, and others, could have spoken out and helped other women.

It doesn't diminish his bad behaviour, but really? The famous women with a platform who kept silent became part of the problem.

I think that it's a similar story to the type of women we all know who always like to be friends with the boys at all costs. I'd put Meryl Streep into this category too. You see it everywhere.

When I was training in my professional career, 20 years ago, a group of men in the same cohort were really rude and unpleasant to me once, in front of two girls I was friendly with (I had committed the sins of being top of the class and being unimpressed with their banter). Really nasty stuff, and unprovoked: "you're probably frigid and you've got no tits", for example, and one of them groped me. The two girls just watched and didn't say anything. I was upset about it and they comforted me but afterwards they didn't change their behaviour towards those men at all. They still tittered at their sexist banter and chatted to them. What better way to show them that their behaviour was acceptable? Well, the same goes for the women who continued to be friendly with Weinstein and who are now coming out with "I'm so horrified" quotes.

I've never had much time for Courtney Love, but kudos to her for telling the truth.

@hamburgler sorry i had absolutely no idea what you were talking about i thought they were films hw produced and colin firth acted in just googled. Havent read full thread so dont know what the kingsman films in particular have to do with anything. I was just giving my opinion on harvey weinstein - re the title of the thread

Everyone knew about Trump.

Re: Meryl Streep she gave Roman Polanski a standing ovation...she went down In my estimation a long time ago. There all luvvies!

My brother is more to the right and I’m hating how he keeps texting me stuff. He never did like the Clinton’s now he’s really going to town. Even the new Season of Southpark is about this.

It's cool Bluerosethorns. Another poster commented that the approbation should be widened to include any actor who acted in a film that didn't show female characters well, and gave the Kingsman films as an example of films she considered sexist. I was just pointing out this was unwise because unlike abuse/harassment, whether a film is sexist is a matter of opinion, and imo it muddies the water of the existing abuse debate.

Tbh I wasn't surprised at all when I heard about Harvey Weinstein. I just assumed that that's what happens in Hollywood. I imagine a lot of powerful producers try to trade movie roles for sexual favours from ambitious young actresses. Sometimes the women go along with it because they think, perhaps correctly, that it's the only way to get what they want, and sometimes they don't. It shouldn't happen but it does. Anyone who says they were unaware of it is either lying or hopelessly naive. It's not that different in any workplace. I don't know any woman who hasn't experienced unwanted sexual attention at some point. Sadly it just seems part and parcel of being a woman.

I think that films like Kingsman – even if they are better than the Bond films - perpetuate a culture where a woman’s purpose in a film is to look pretty and service a man – literally as in the case of the first Kingsman film. The film ends with the female character rewarding Eggsy with anal sex for saving her. Matthew Vaughan’s response to criticism of this ending: “Some bloody feminists are accusing me of being a misogynist.” In the second film there is a female character whose main purpose in the film seems to be that a spying device is inserted into her vagina – and the audience sees this happen in great detail. We are meant to feel it’s okay because Eggsy calls his girlfriend to check if she is in agreement with him doing this.

I'm not a fan of Allison Pearson but she wrote a very good article on this subject, namely the way that the media influences the attitudes of young men and women to the extent that both genders expect the males to get pleasure from the sexual act but the females expected to have to put up with a certain amount of pain.

Of course Colin Firth is not the main villain here. But he and others (including women) who appear in these films are allowing the culture to persist, indeed aiding and abetting it. The culture where these films are considered fun and acceptable breeds an environment where of course it’s fine to treat women in the way HW and others have treated them because if you complain, well you're just a humourless feminist aren't you?

he film ends with the female character rewarding Eggsy with anal sex for saving her. Matthew Vaughan’s response to criticism of this ending: “Some bloody feminists are accusing me of being a misogynist.”

by Joe Biden is very powerful - Silence is Complicity.

the film ends with the female character rewarding Eggsy with anal sex for saving her. Matthew Vaughan’s response to criticism of this ending: “Some bloody feminists are accusing me of being a misogynist.”

Neither I nor anyone that knows me would ever think to describe me as a feminist and I thought that ending was absolutely despicable. The fact that it involved anal was just the rotten cherry on top (especially considering the 15 cert) but it also perpetuates the bullshit at the root of so much that is wrong that sex is a transaction from women to men. If something can be "given" (be that as a gift, reward or whatever) then logically in some warped minds it can also be taken if needs be - by persuasion, coercion, deceit, extortion or even force.

I only watched Kingsman relatively recently and was quite amused by it right up until that last scene which made me so fucking angry. It was so unnecessary as well.

Brilliant post American. I wanted to say something re Kingsman but I couldn't quite articulate what, but you nailed it.

Well I think the Kingsman films are very feminist in their portrayals of women.

Which is fine, because it's a matter of opinion.

Do you not understand how damaging it is to derail a discussion about sexual assault into "let's debate what movies we personally like or dislike"?

Thanks Baden.

hamburgler Do you not understand that such films create a climate which leads to sexual assault "not being a big deal"? Can you explain how both examples I gave in each Kingsman film can be seen in a feminist light?