Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

Thought this was a really good essay:

https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/rebecca-traister-this-moment-isnt-just-about-sex.html

“What makes women vulnerable is not their carnal violability, but rather the way that their worth has been understood as fundamentally erotic, ornamental; that they have not been taken seriously as equals; that they have been treated as some ancillary reward that comes with the kinds of power men are taught to reach for and are valued for achieving. How to make clear that the trauma of the smaller trespasses — the boob grabs and unwanted kisses or come-ons from bosses — is not necessarily even about the sexualized act in question; so many of us learned to maneuver around hands-y men without sustaining lasting emotional damage when we were 14. Rather, it’s about the cruel reminder that these are still the terms on which we are valued, by our colleagues, our bosses, sometimes our competitors, the men we tricked ourselves into thinking might see us as smart, formidable colleagues or rivals, not as the kinds of objects they can just grab and grope and degrade without consequence. It’s not that we’re horrified like some Victorian damsel; it’s that we’re horrified like a woman in 2017 who briefly believed she was equal to her male peers but has just been reminded that she is not, who has suddenly had her comparative powerlessness revealed to her.”

Traister's writing has been solid throughout imo

xpost that is v otm

wonderfully put

these are still the terms on which we are valued, by our colleagues, our bosses, sometimes our competitors, the men we tricked ourselves into thinking might see us as smart, formidable colleagues or rivals, not as the kinds of objects they can just grab and grope and degrade without consequence.

I wanted to respond to this, because I read something related in this article, about grad students reporting rape by professors. One student in particular has recently accused a professor of raping her in the mid 80s. The professor remembers it as consensual sex. I don't want to adjudicate the facts, but to comment on her reflections concerning the episodes, which echo the quoted passage above:

“At first I thought he was interested in me because he thought I had an interesting mind,” she says. “But then to find out it was only sex — it really sapped me of my sense of myself as an intellectual. It took me a long time to gather myself together and feel like a competent scholar after that.”

I wonder if in these situation it could be both desire for her interesting mind and for her interesting sexuality. If what's happening is mere groping and degradation, then sure. But when these relations are cultivated, the impression these women get it that it startss as feeling valued for their minds, but then once the (male) prof puts the moves on, their intellectual value seems to dissolve. But the stories don't make clear to me why it goes from seeming like just the one thing, then just the other. I gather these profs have lots of people who would like their attention, some male, some female. All of these people have terrific minds, that's why they're in a position to ask for this prof's attention. What distinguishes one student from another? Intellectually, nothing: they're all good, none generally is that good, even the ones who eventually win (i.e. get a job) aren't that, the sort of good for which you'd be excoriated for missing. Even at the top, everyone is good but very few are great. So the prof swamped with courtiers chooses to give his attention a woman who is equal to the others with regard to her mind, but is sexually alluring as well. In the course of things they're still sharing intellectual talk, he is valuing her for her mind, but also for her sexuality. Why does the latter invalidate the former? If there's nothing to the attention besides sex then yes, but that's not clear from what's being said. At the end, the women can't say that they were valued just for their minds, but male courtiers didn't get that attention, because they were an undifferentiated group of good but not greats. The women by contrast, also good but not great, are differentiated.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/marshall-faulk-allegedly-sexually-harassed-nfl-network-employee-article-1.3692550

xp you realize of course that the situation you're imagining would not square with many women's experiences of the intellectual interaction (time balance in conversations and w.r.t. turn-taking, credit for ideas, etc etc), which would make it hard to read sexual interactions in terms of the assumptions you're making.

but obviously you are making them for the sake of the speculation.

I am just imagining and doing so from my male point of view, agreed.

but re. the intellectual interactions, I was supposing that the quality of those among male prof & male student would also be imbalanced. whether they'd be imbalanced in different ways is hard to determine. one thing that's at play is the finality of the end of a sexual relationship, maybe; whereas a merely played out non-sexual relationship may lack burning bridges. when a sexual relationship ends then an intimacy ends and there are often emotional betrayals at play; but when a non-sexual relationship ends there may not be such intimacy. but I'm not sure about these assumptions.

if you insist on comparing, you could compare this situation to another abusive professor-student situation, like in the movie Whiplash

I don't know the film but I was questioning that a prof choosing an admirer for her/his attention for in part sexual reasons was necessarily abusive.

you are trying to suggest they were offering a quid pro quo (rather than having it extracted)?

the prof is showered with attention seekers, male and female. how to choose which one? they're all equal intellectually. so sexuality differentiates. if the prof puts the moves on and fails, then, s/he can turn her/his attention to another of the attention seekers. Is that a quid pro quo? Sorta! But the prof's attention, if s/he's a biggish deal, is at a premium, and so only a few can be chosen to spend time with. This relationship can be abused by the prof, but using sexual reasons to choose what'll be in part an intellectual relationship doesn't imply that the attention seeker was valued only for sexual reasons.

the prof is showered with attention seekers, male and female. how to choose which one? they're all equal intellectually. so sexuality differentiates. if the prof puts the moves on and fails, then, s/he can turn her/his attention to another of the attention seekers. Is that a quid pro quo? Sorta! But the prof's attention, if s/he's a biggish deal, is at a premium, and so only a few can be chosen to spend time with. This relationship can be abused by the prof, but using sexual reasons to choose what'll be in part an intellectual relationship doesn't imply that the attention seeker was valued only for sexual reasons.

― droit au butt (Euler), Tuesday, December 12, 2017 3:17 PM (eleven seconds ago)

you don't see how that is, frankly, abhorrent? as you mention, there are any number of students this professor could choose to mentor. through no fault of her own (other than being born attractive, i guess) the opportunities available to this person depend on her willingness to maintain a relationship with her mentor

sexual* relationship

just don't entertain romantic relationships in circumstances where there's a drastic power imbalance, this is not difficult

^^^^^^^

ding ding ding

Which involves standing up to persistence in that situation, or actors with directors, etc.

By which I mean, it's a substantial cultural shift for many women to say - your appearance, your attractiveness will not be validated or do you any good here.

olberman always seems so fuckin phony I wonder about him in all this

dan patrick's whole scene is so ultra bro also wouldn't shock me

i've had bad vibes about Bill Simmons ever since he thought it was a good idea to publish a particularly disgusting attractiveness ranking of female tennis players, part of me is surprised nothing's ever come up with him but then again i could see him being a guy whose negative contributions in all this "only" extend to his part in demeaning women in sports in columns.

I think it is not a good idea to start down the “you know who wouldn’t surprise me at all if they turned out to be a gross creep?” path

simmons seemed to make a good-faith effort to get diverse voices on grantland/ringer and has maybe grown up some, but

http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/2010/12/17/the-book-of-basketball-and-staggering-casual-sexism

el tomboto otm

I think it is not a good idea to start down the “you know who wouldn’t surprise me at all if they turned out to be a gross creep?” path

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, December 12, 2017 11:02 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/harvey-weinstein-s-hong-kong-associate-accused-sexual-misconduct-by-multiple-women-report-1066921

Salma Hayek on Harvey Weinstein, in @nytopinion:
"No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
No to letting him give me oral sex.
No to my getting naked with another woman.
No, no, no ...
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage." https://t.co/8KfW3y3Igz

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 13, 2017

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/luc-robitailles-wife-stacia-alleges-trump-made-aggressive-advances-elevator-150356866.html

that Salma Hayek piece is rough:

The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”

When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.

In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.

Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role.

It was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.

I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a producer, who on top of delivering his list of demands shepherded the script and obtained the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government, and with whomever I had to, to get locations that had never been given to anyone in the past — including Frida Kahlo’s houses and the murals of Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, among others.

But all of this seemed to have no value. The only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making me think that the film was not worth making.

He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.

Salma <3

that story made me cry

Frida was such a heartfelt & beautiful movie, and the knowledge that she was dealing with that level of abuse from Weinstein, & fighting so hard to realize such a personal dream just breaks my fucking heart

(and that her friends helped her when she really needed it was v moving)

i've had bad vibes about Bill Simmons ever since he thought it was a good idea to publish a particularly disgusting attractiveness ranking of female tennis players, part of me is surprised nothing's ever come up with him but then again i could see him being a guy whose negative contributions in all this "only" extend to his part in demeaning women in sports in columns.

Drew Magary wrote a pretty good column about this sort of thing (in the beginning, before all the football picks)
https://deadspin.com/the-reckoning-always-comes-1819874125

The new Russell Simmons piece in the NYT is pretty horrible.

Also breaking:

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/tavis-smiley-pbs-1202639424/

that Salma Hayek story. sad.
and once again, another one of those "whatever happened to her career..." memories ruefully explained

I just saw this on twitter

https://mic.com/articles/186795/after-allegations-against-johnny-iuzzini-abc-pulls-the-great-american-baking-show-off-the-air

from a previous Iuzzini story
https://mic.com/articles/186721/four-more-women-accuse-celebrity-chef-johnny-iuzzini-of-sexual-harassment-and-abuse

In the spring of 2010, a female pastry chef and food stylist who’d briefly worked under Iuzzini at Jean-Georges the year prior reached out to Iuzzini over text message, she told Mic in a phone interview. She requested anonymity because she still works in the industry. The first season of the Top Chef spinoff show Top Chef: Just Desserts had just been announced, and since Iuzzini was a judge on the show, she wondered if the show had food styling work opportunities. She said that Iuzzini texted her back amenably, adding, “Why don’t we get together and talk about your career?” The woman said she repeatedly suggested a public meet-up over coffee during daytime hours, but Iuzzini countered that she come to his apartment for drinks at night. The woman received Iuzzini’s final text messages in the presence of a friend, who confirmed to Mic that he’d seen the texts and had been told about the full exchange at the time.

“I’m like, ‘Well, jeez — you’re living up to that bad boy reputation.’ I was trying to make light of it,” the woman said. “And then he very blatantly put it out there. He said, ‘This isn’t high school anymore, sweetie. I’m not helping you for free.’” When the woman questioned what Iuzzini meant by “for free,” she said he responded, “When you want to be a real woman, then give me a call.” She did not end up meeting with Iuzzini or working on Top Chef: Just Desserts

gross

We’ve finally reached the stage where men just start outing themselves as creeps. https://t.co/CFCRZNIGWa

— Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) December 14, 2017

the cynic in me thinks it was less “i wonder when they will come for me” and more “no one talks about me anymore so i will talk about myself in a topical manner”

he sure is getting out in front of that story and calling into question the memories and motives of those he wronged...

eating big macs for a month and filming it is already pretty deep self-abasement so

Oh god, please don’t let Spurlock make a film about all this.

I think it is not a good idea to start down the “you know who wouldn’t surprise me at all if they turned out to be a gross creep?” path

I've been trying to discourage too much invocation of "witch hunt" in this context, but yeah groundless speculation doesn't help.

spurlock has a movie coming out soon so i assume he wanted to get in front of the allegations lest they come up from the woman/women and tank his deal. his non apology here is pretty weak.

Yeah like his language in the piece --

The first incident she remembered as a rape and he's literally remembering them rolling around giggling in bed.

The second incident he almost portrays as him giving in to blackmail.

The cheating stuff, well I'm sure the cat's already out of the bag there.

It's trying to be The First Good Apology but it's terrible.

The time is right for collective revenge fantasy screenplays for sexual misconduct to circulate. Mary Harron directing, of course.

spurlock: cookies denied

that spurlock statement is... not good

there will soon be a Groundhog's Day remake where the main character has to keep writing an abuse apology until he GETS IT RIGHT

I think in most circumstances there's really no substitute for "I fucked up, I apologized in private and am now doing so publicly. I'm sorry. I'm gonna fuck off indefinitely."

oh no not the guy that ate a bunch of shitty food and filmed it, we really are losing our heroes

eh his permanent association with a movie i really like, the one direction documentary, means this bums me out. it's extremely cool to be an asshole about it though