Harvey Weinstein: Why is it about so much more than Harvey Weinstein?

[Dr. Pepper]

4 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Which is fair enough, and probably a good idea. But I'm talking more about ethics than procedure. Unless I'm mistaken, because there are other allegations, your previous point was that we should consider Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky as morally wrong on some level, even if it was initiated, or even if she initiated it. Say your friend was the head of a company, and they told you they were looking forward to taking out a young employee who had just started and had shown an interest in them, would you tell them that was immoral? I can't say I would.

I would need a lot more information about this company and friend.  But in general, yes, on a surface level this relationship would likely be ethically wrong if steps weren't taken to ensure that there is meaningful consent, no special privileges awarded, etc.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

It seems to me that it was with Clinton - Lewinsky (impeachment) and Clarence Thomas (1991) (for which Anita Hill suffered enormously in the media, in public and private) that  universities and work places started getting serious (as serious as they ever got, anyway) about dating and power / age differentials, sexual harassment, etc.  I do know there was never anything anybody thought about this at university at all while I was there, until I returned with a Research Project Fellowship to Tulane after 9/11 -- and professors wouldn't even be in the same room with a female student unless the door was wide open, etc.  Other things had changed enormously too, including standards for how women were addressed, language for discussing all sorts of things from race, etc.

Back when I was a grad student the joke among the faculty was that they looked over the new crop of female grad students wondering who would score with this one, that one, etc.  Nobody thought anything of it. In fact, it was considered a coup for the female students to have an affair with any of the star faculty (male)  members, as it would help her career in grad school and later.  I think that started to change somewhat soon after I finished my grad program.  The older faculty though, from what I heard through the grapevines and then e-mail, just never quite 'got it' though -- that women had changed their minds about being honored as serial concubines.

Nevertheless, despite changes, rules and codes, sexual abuse of both males and females continued non-stop at universities and in the work place, as we see.

And that's another good reason why these relationships are incredibly problematic.  Sex for grades, so to speak, is not a good thing.  

[Kalbear]

I honestly wonder whether or not the US would have been better off if Clinton had been found guilty of the impeachment articles and forced to resign. It would have guaranteed Bush coming into office, but I'm not sure it would have changed things particularly much outside of that, and may have caused us to be a bit more bipartisan about lawbreaking POTUS and the like. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 10/21/2017 at 10:16 PM, Dr. Pepper said:

I was familiar with the Weinstein name just because, as @Darth Richard II says, his name is slathered all over every single movie.  

This will change society the same way rich mostly white movie stars demand pay equity has changed society.  Meaning, it won't.  Gretchen Wilson opened up the way for taking down powerful men who harass women when she took on Roger Ailes and that trend has continued.  But again, it's for rich, mostly white, women.  It's great that these powerful men are being revealed for their crimes, and I'm glad their victims will get some measure of justice or relief.  I just wonder about the rest of the women, the average woman.  People like Angelina Jolie aren't harmed by speaking up now.  They are powerful enough that they can do this.  What about Jane the Plumber or Financial Broker?  She can't, she'd probably be fired or ostracized.  It happens everyday.  When Jane the Accountant can out a sexual harasser without fear of reprisal, I'd say that's when we can congratulate a fundamental change in society.  Better yet if the sexual harassment never happens to begin with.

Also, can we just talk about the male response for a second?  Like, there was a lot of silence, and those who weren't silence typically had plenty of video evidence that they've been nasty fucks in the past, too.  So much condemnation from men who needed to also be condemning themselves or else complete silence from others.  Not to mention the #mentoo, which was an offshoot of #metoo.  It's as bad as #notallmen.  I'm definitely all for discussing harassment or assault men have faced, but this was a moment in which women were trying to show how prevalent this shit is and how we're harmed by it everyday, and instead of something like #holdmeaccountable or #illdobetter, they had to insert themselves into the stories.  Ugh.  Nothing changes.

I don't know--anecdotal, of course, but last year, some tenured faculty at a school in our area, notorious for such behavior as harassing young female students, finally went down. That seemed a big deal, but I'm an optimist maybe.

[ants]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I honestly wonder whether or not the US would have been better off if Clinton had been found guilty of the impeachment articles and forced to resign. It would have guaranteed Bush coming into office, but I'm not sure it would have changed things particularly much outside of that, and may have caused us to be a bit more bipartisan about lawbreaking POTUS and the like. 

Would it have guaranteed Bush? If Gore has time running the country before the election, he might actually have done better in 2000. 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, ants said:

Would it have guaranteed Bush? If Gore has time running the country before the election, he might actually have done better in 2000. 

Nah. The disgrace of a fallen Democrat would have tarnished him as well. He might have been able to run things okay, but not enough to turn around the perception of failure. 

[Zorral]

10 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I would need a lot more information about this company and friend.  But in general, yes, on a surface level this relationship would likely be ethically wrong if steps weren't taken to ensure that there is meaningful consent, no special privileges awarded, etc.

And that's another good reason why these relationships are incredibly problematic.  Sex for grades, so to speak, is not a good thing.  

No, it wasn't sex for grades at all!  Because, a huge reason this was a coup for the female students, is that only the best and brightest of them were chosen.  They had no need to exchange sex for grades.   So it was a distinction for them, with both peers and faculty, a recognition of their superiority.  It also gave them, via invitations and companionship, entre to parties and social gatherings, a personal relationship with others who could write recs and so on to other influential faculty at other institutions.  There is no denying that this sort of thing did help with job search -- and this became ever more important as the jobs dried up, until now, when even the best and brightest are unlikely to get any position, other than adjunct . . . .

Which is a huge reason that in university, political, and other >!< entertainment situations, women have been so unlikely to protest and come forward with complaints.  Women of certain sorts, particularly those who have the resources and maybe even the support to protest, for centuries have been fairly brainwashed that it is their all around attractiveness and superiority that marks them out as special, and thus worthy subjects of this kind of male attention.  We have bought into that deeply, and which has kept us from complaining  Priests and men of the church are particularly good at this.

It may be that only now, when there are actually ways for women to make it in the professions and support themselves, even when still paid at least 2 - 3 fifths less than men, and not considered generally for the highest positions, that some women have felt insulted instead of flattered, and aren't about to put up with it any longer.

Perspectives on this have changed among women.  The ones -- and there are many -- I knew from the previous era, did not feel insulted or violated.  They used this as an opportunity to the best of their political ability.  But things are different now, because women have more options than they used to, to get entry into all these closed boys' clubs.  There was no entry previously except through the sponsorship of a powerful male.

[Dr. Pepper]

Sorry, Zorral, but you're still describing a situation where it was sex in exchange for something.  Maybe it wasn't grades, but it was recommendations, jobs, references, etc.  Whether the women you personally knew felt wronged by this system, it's still a wrong system where they have to work their way into a sexual relationship in order to gain a benefit to their academic or professional lives.  It's disgusting and horrifying.  It's quite easy to have a personal relationship with someone who can also provide these benefits.  It's called mentoring or advising.  

[GAROVORKIN]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Nah. The disgrace of a fallen Democrat would have tarnished him as well. He might have been able to run things okay, but not enough to turn around the perception of failure. 

 

 Al Gore is a very smart man and would have been a very capable President .

[Zorral]

51 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Sorry, Zorral, but you're still describing a situation where it was sex in exchange for something.  Maybe it wasn't grades, but it was recommendations, jobs, references, etc.  Whether the women you personally knew felt wronged by this system, it's still a wrong system where they have to work their way into a sexual relationship in order to gain a benefit to their academic or professional lives.  It's disgusting and horrifying.  It's quite easy to have a personal relationship with someone who can also provide these benefits.  It's called mentoring or advising.  

I don't disagree with you, of course.  But that's pretty much how one got a mentor in that university if one was female, particularly within the humanities programs, back in those days.

That's how it was then, and if people could play the game, they played.  Nor am I saying it always turned out well, by any means.  Every few years the campus blew up with a huge juicy scandal as a marriage went to hell and the prof married his grad assistant, and families were shredded, etc.  But pretending none of this happened and that the women didn't actually have skin in the game, isn't accurate either.

But neither will I maintain that no other harms happened and that never ever did a prof pursue someone who didn't want it.  Because I'm sure they did.  How it was handled -- well as quietly as possible by admin at all levels -- and most of all by just ignoring it, assisted by the age-old, "Well, she must have asked for it."

And that's the worst part of women feeling good about or feeling it necessary to put consensual skin in the game -- is that it enforces that "She must have asked for it."

Also I don't want to ignore that it was very easy for young women who deeply admired the work of their profs to fall in in love with them -- or certainly believe they were in love.

A great deal is very different than it was even 20 years ago.  But as any college prof -- or any teacher will tell you -- it's really hard to get the students to even understand there is such a condition as the past, and that things were not the same then.

[Xray the Enforcer]

I did not think this story could get crazier and more fucked up, and then it got crazier and more fucked up.

 

Quote

 

He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies. Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives “highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,” according to its literature.

Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details.

 

^^ Is fucking insane. So is the fact that these operatives tried (unsuccessfully) to subvert the reporting of Kantor, Twohey, and Farrow (among others) while they were reporting on what would eventually be the NYT and New Yorker bombshells. 

[all swedes are racist]

4 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I did not think this story could get crazier and more fucked up, and then it got crazier and more fucked up.

 

^^ Is fucking insane. So is the fact that these operatives tried (unsuccessfully) to subvert the reporting of Kantor, Twohey, and Farrow (among others) while they were reporting on what would eventually be the NYT and New Yorker bombshells. 

 i am literally sputtering right now as my already broken brain struggles to process....

[Eggegg]

This seems to fit quite easily into everything else I’ve heard about him. It seems his immediate reaction to being rejected or caught has been to attempt to destroy the other person. There are so many stories of him following or threatening his victims. This seems like the logical next step for someone like him

what a disgusting individual 

[mankytoes]

7 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

I did not think this story could get crazier and more fucked up, and then it got crazier and more fucked up.

 

^^ Is fucking insane. So is the fact that these operatives tried (unsuccessfully) to subvert the reporting of Kantor, Twohey, and Farrow (among others) while they were reporting on what would eventually be the NYT and New Yorker bombshells. 

Christ. That certainly swings the interpretation away from "pathetic old pervert" and towards "highly methodical predator". Is there anything there that could be a criminal offense in itself?

[Theda Baratheon]

18 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Christ. That certainly swings the interpretation away from "pathetic old pervert" and towards "highly methodical predator". Is there anything there that could be a criminal offense in itself?

To be honest with you the original artitles exposing him already firmly put him into the "highly methodical predator" camp and certainly not just some old pervert. 

This is horrifying but I can't say it surprises me now knowing what we know about him and his power and influence and wealth. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

2 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Is there anything there that could be a criminal offense in itself?

Somewhat beyond my area of expertise, but yes, I noticed that at least a couple of times that people broke California state law by secretly taping conversations. (CA is one of 11 states that require all parties to consent to having a conversation recorded.)

[Zorral]

This may explain how #2 ranked Hollywood successful guy fell to #500.

His little predation hobby entirely consumed his life -- pursuing and committing crimes and trying to cover them up left him no time to actually, you know, work.  Which loss of power rank, ironically then, brought him all the way down.  How many convictable crimes has he knowingly committed?  How much jail time is that?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

OMG that article.  OMG OMG OMG.

[mankytoes]

5 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

To be honest with you the original artitles exposing him already firmly put him into the "highly methodical predator" camp and certainly not just some old pervert. 

This is horrifying but I can't say it surprises me now knowing what we know about him and his power and influence and wealth. 

I remember one woman saying he was crying in his bathrobe, saying he was unattractive? So I think there was a question to be looked at there, I know no one wants to argue for any sort of mitigation in these things, but I don't want to get caught up in some kind of mob mentality. It's like the way the law distinguishes opportunistic crime with pre planning.

At the very least, it has to give you a bigger sentence if, after raping someone, you hire ex Mossad security to track them down undercover.

I don't know how much it has been reported across The Pond, but we're in the midst of a huge scandal, with loads of senior politicians being accused of sexual offenses. Just had the first (apparantly) related suicide- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-41904161

[Theda Baratheon]

1 hour ago, mankytoes said:

I remember one woman saying he was crying in his bathrobe, saying he was unattractive? So I think there was a question to be looked at there, I know no one wants to argue for any sort of mitigation in these things, but I don't want to get caught up in some kind of mob mentality. It's like the way the law distinguishes opportunistic crime with pre planning.

At the very least, it has to give you a bigger sentence if, after raping someone, you hire ex Mossad security to track them down undercover.

I don't know how much it has been reported across The Pond, but we're in the midst of a huge scandal, with loads of senior politicians being accused of sexual offenses. Just had the first (apparantly) related suicide- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-41904161

I'm British as well so am well aware of it all on this end. Don't think it's truly comparable though. 

I mean Im not saying that article doesn't make him seem even worse just that the original articles clearly proved he was an insidious and frightening predator. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

8 hours ago, mankytoes said:

but I don't want to get caught up in some kind of mob mentality. It's like the way the law distinguishes opportunistic crime with pre planning.

With Weinstein, it was all pre-planning. It's right there in the articles, backed up by multiple sources, with a paper trail also corroborating the same. So to fuckery with this other noise.