to think that Kate Winslet is a phoney hypocrite?

[southeastdweller]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42824594

As far as I know she worked with child rapist Polanski willingly. I don't think Woody Allen pulled a gun to her head to do her latest film.

And the same for Hayley Atwell, Colin Firth etc. Why speak up NOW? They all knew of the Allen allegations when they worked for him.

I hate how it is always women who are criticised for working with these terrible men. What about all the male actors, producers, directors, crew etc still working with these men?

Likewise, crunchy. Women get disproportionately punished when they speak out, and disproportionately punished when they don't. An amazing (not-so-amazing) number of men who do exactly the same, or worse, get away with it entirely.

I wonder why this is?

It's sickening. I remember reading interviews with Mia Farrow years ago and even to me as a young, pre child self her words rang true. Yes she was angry but that's an expected reaction to your partner abusing your child!
I used to love Woody Allen's films but haven't watched one since. I don't see why people like KW continued to work with him. Surely they could be unavailable, they didn't have to make a hoohah about it? Just swerve it. I find the whole film industry just abhorrent at the moment.

Iwannasee - I read my message back and realise that it's really unclear! I was talking about Kate Winslet, not Allen/Polanski.

Here's the thing that I think these types of thread tend not to face: for a long time, in the very recent past, it was more or less necessary for women to put up with sexism and with degrees of harassment and assault in the workplace. What is more, in certain jobs, it was necessary to be willing to turn a blind eye to one's own victimisation, and that of other women, in order to get on. Making a complaint, demanding change, meant a real fight for recognition and demanded a degree of bravery. It's only because many women have gone through this that things have changed.

This situation was NEVER OK morally. But it was socially and culturally acceptable and normal for a long time. Mores have changed.

I think it's particularly unfair to criticise women in relation to this. Many of them have been in the invidious position of having to put up with all kinds of shit from men in order to get on, knowing that if they spoke out or made a fuss they would be thrown under the bus, and another more willing face would be put in their place. This is how the power flowed for a long time; you either played ball, or your career took a hit. The same was true of children, too - advances by adult men on young girls were common in the 1990s when I was growing up, no latter that the girl in question was underage. Any woman was "fair game".

I hate seeing threads like this that basically blame women for not having responded in a way that is appropriate today 15 years ago, in a completely different context and a different set of power relations. They refuse to acknowledge that the norms have changed - for the better - in that time. The people we should be criticising are the men who benefitted for years from this system, the serial abusers, the creeps, those who demanded sexual favours in return for work. It's not the women who have had to dance through those relations to succeed, not those who just didn't have it in them to complain and take a stand. Because while we should all take our hats off to the women who DID protest, who DID stand up courageously, not everyone can do that. And those women who couldn't are still victims too.

I think that not holding women accountable for their personal choices, as if we cannot possibly be to blame for our own actions, infantilises us. The fact is that some women made selfish choices which contributed to the social acceptability of men like RP. For those same women to join the Me Too campaign, having previously actively supported these men, demonstrates massive lack of awareness and sensitivity to the victims of assault.
The reason some women have been criticised here is because of the utter hypocrisy of their behaviour.
If you were someone who chose to work with the likes of RP, the best thing you couls do right now would be to stfu and not make other women's sexual assualts all about you and a platform to salvage your own reputation/career.

Criticism of these women takes nothing away from the criticism due to the men who are guilty of assault or those men who also colluded to cover it up and normalise it.

It isn't an either/or situation. There's enough blame for everyone, sadly.

Well said Iwanna.

Gender has nothing to do with it and I only 'picked on' KW because her speech made headlines yesterday and got me thinking about why she made that speech NOW when up until very recently she was praising WA, and also about the Polanski film in 2011. She made the choice to star in both films post-Oscar when she was an established star and therefore deserves to be a target for criticism.

I mentioned Colin Firth in my first post and could have mentioned Timothee Chalamet and David Krumholtz, who've also expressed regrets about working with WA.

It's not about 'individual choices' though. It's about an entire system of power relations where the odds have been stacked against women for years. Making it about choice assumes that individual agency could play some role in producing change, when actually an entire system of morals and mores had to shift (and still is shifting, let's not kid ourselves this is over). It's a viewpoint that social scientists criticise for individualism and for being inattentive to the structural (and structuring) nature of power.

Making it all about choice also fails to recognise the pervasiveness of the problem, and is really minimising of the seriousness and extent of this behaviour. It seems very much as though it was, for some time, literally impossible to get on at all as a young film actress without coming to some kind of accommodation with some of these producers, writers and directors who used their gatekeeper status to demand sexual returns for job opportunities.

I cross posted with you whisky. I fully accept what you say about women having to put up with the whole 'casting couch' environment in order to get on. And I have a lot of sympathy with those who felt unable to speak up for fear of consequence.
But to actively choose to work with child rapists (and we have always known just how very wrong that is, even 15 years ago!) and to applaud and praise them, makes you a nasty piece of shit, whoever you are and whatever your sex.

Iwanna - I'm not attacking you, but I think your post expresses exactly what I want to say!

"But to actively choose to work with child rapists (and we have always known just how very wrong that is, even 15 years ago!)"

I disagree with this. I think people now like to think that they always knew this was wrong. But the hideous truth is that sexual assault of young girls was normal in the 1980s and 1990s, still more so in the 60s and 70s. It was simply not seen as having the same degree of seriousness as it is now - there were even campaign groups for paedophiles, FFS!!

No-one wants to confront this fact now, because it is deeply uncomfortable. It's much easier to say "We always knew preying on young girls was wrong". But the fact is, our society and culture has been through some very dark days with regard to the way young women are treated, and many of those involved are still alive.

The reason that people like Savile got away with it was partly the fact that he was powerful, and partly the fact that girls were seen as 'fair game', with the response being "He's been a bit of a naughty boy" rather than "We have a serious sex offender in our midst". For years, sexual assault and rape of teenage girls wasn't regarded in as bad a light as it should have been.

MS and KW weren't young actresses. Neither were the high profile male actors. These are people who do have a voice and control over their own careers and they chose to use them in ways I personally find abhorrent. Their choice but imo they have no business aligning themselves with the women whose careers took the hit because they made active choices not to work with these men and the victims of assault.

The fact remains, however, that the SYSTEM of power relations is what was wrong. And the focus should be on the men who created and perpetuated it.

Whisky, I really disagree. We (as a society) have always known.
It comes down to the rich and powerful who wanted to continue exploiting the poor and weak and women/children have not been valued enough for society to defend us.

Kate's always been annoying. She had that phase where she wasn't going to lose weight and was always banging on about eating whatever he liked and then she suddenly turned up massively thinner

Also with the benefit of hindsight, there was also a phase where every single Kate Winslet film involved her getting her kit off. There would be an interview in which she explained it was absolutely crucial to the artistic nature of the film and then she would probably win an award. However they were always arty-ish films produced by Harvey Weinstein - so who knows what was going on for her to keep getting cast now?

I agree that primary focus should be on the men who created and perpetuated this system. It doesn't mean I absolve the women with power and freedom of choice, who colluded, from all responsibility.

Iwanna - There is a difference between moral right and wrong, and social acceptability, though, because humans are hypocritical creatures. If you asked my PE teached in the 1990s "Is sex with children OK?" he would have said no. But it didn't stop him perving over every teenage girl, making us run around in gym knickers unnecessarily, inviting some of us back for "special coaching" and eventually raping some girls. It took 2 decades for him to go to prison, not because girls didn't complain, but because those complaints weren't taken seriously because his crimes weren't taken seriously. And he was by no means the only systemic abuser I encountered before I was 16.

Men might have recognised the morality of it in an abstract sense, but they didn't damn well act that way.

Really, no sympathy for Winslet. She's a day late and a dollar short.

My point though, is that when women with power, who are not young and vulnerable, choose to work with men like RP, they are helping to make him and his behaviour socially acceptable. Winslet was in her 30's when she chose to endorse him, with a successful career behind her. She didn't have to work with him - she did it because it benefitted her and she thought it wouldn't one day bite her on the arse. She didn't care about that 13 year old child then so why would we believe she does now?

Not all men are like that and not all women give a shit.

It comes down to what you mean by 'power'. The thing that a lot of people seem to find hard to grasp about this is that it is very multi-faceted. One can be really quite famous and really quite rich and still be relatively personally powerless in a system because the continuance of that wealth and power depends on acquiescence. Did you read that incredibly powerful piece by Salma Hayek on Weinstein? It expresses perfectly what I'm trying to say - here we have a woman who is apparently rich and powerful, but who is creatively completely subservient to a male producer who is demanding sexual favours in return for green-lighting her movie. In order to function as a director and as an actress, she had to endure an absolutely horrible ordeal. Yes, she could have walked away - but she wouldn't have got the film made if she had, and she really cared about making that film. It is incredibly hard to get a finance deal in place for a film - it's not as simple as being able to switch from one set of eager investors to another! The ability to keep working, to make one's own film, depended on keeping these awful, predatory men happy. It's not as simple as personal benefit versus morality, because of the way that films are managed, financed, and distributed.

I do get that, but we are talking about a child rapist here. I can honestly say, I would rather forego the film and the money and the awards, than endorse him.

Salma Hayek could and should have walked away imo. I'm not reducing the awfulness of her being in that position but as an adult woman she made a choice. The child that RP raped, had no choice and for adults to treat that as if it were of no consequence is disgusting.

Kate Winslet will do what's best for Kate Winslet
Isn't that always the advice on MN though. Do what's best for yourself.

Iwanna - Only a short while ago, I promise you, no-one really gave a shit. People minimised it. Young kids were off limits, but young wome in their teens were fair game. If they did complain or make a fuss, the whole thing was swept under the carpet. Or they were told that they were wearing the wrong clothes, or that it was in some way their fault. It's nice for us to think now that it's always been wrong, but in practical terms there really wasn't much in the way of a social sanction against men behaving this way until VERY recently.

It's not just Hollywood, either. Look at Rotherham! (And before someone goes off on a racist rant about this, class was clearly a huge determinant in the judgements police made about the victims).

The point about working in a system with male power is that you can either choose not to work in that system at all, which is basically ceding ALL power to those men and walking away and fail, or you can try to work as best you can within the power relations that do exist and try to do things around the edges as a success, which may come at the price of putting up with a lot of very uncomfortable situations. In either case, it is still the fucking bastard men who are actually committing the crimes who are to blame for the fact that women are being assaulted and harassed, and that power structures as set up to prevent complaints against this state of affairs.

It's not about 'individual choices' though. It's about an entire system of power relations where the odds have been stacked against women for years. Making it about choice assumes that individual agency could play some role in producing change, when actually an entire system of morals and mores had to shift (and still is shifting, let's not kid ourselves this is over). It's a viewpoint that social scientists criticise for individualism and for being inattentive to the structural (and structuring) nature of power.

I love this, and it perfectly explains why the 'well women are to blame because we can't pretend to be helpless flowers when powerful men assault us and anyway to suit my purposes I'm going to ignore all the MEN who turned a blind eye to this shit" argument, which makes me so fucking angry, is such a load of hooey.

I agree with you that there wasn't much sanction against men who abused, but I disagree that people didn't think it was wrong - they knew but those in power just didn't care enough to rock the boat and put a stop to it.
Same with Rotherham really. The police etc knew what was happening was abuse, but dealing with it was deemed more hassle than it was worth, so those kids were thrown under the bus. But people still knew it was abuse.

When you choose to work with a known child rapist, you are not claiming a bit of power back, you are contributing to throwing that child under the bus.

And I do believe that individual agency can bring about change. Not always, but sometimes. Change is kickstarted by one voice. Yes, there are established power structures, but even if your voice isn't heard, you ought to do the right thing simply because it is right. Or at least, cause no more harm. Endorsing men who behave badly, contributes to the harm caused.

I love Winslet - and no, she is not responsible for the crimes they committed. Put the blame where it belongs.

Here here!