Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

Heard about James Rosen of Fox on the way home today.

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/10/577093288/top-fox-news-d-c-reporter-james-rosen-left-network-after-harassment-claims

ok so is this thread now just the dumping ground for accused rapists

not to split hairs but "fourth wave feminism" feels like a different topic than "rich and powerful men accused sexual assault discuss them here"

Bit of a headline fail TBH.

Great piece from the person who actually started the shitty media men list:

https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/moira-donegan-i-started-the-media-men-list.html

This escalated when I learned Katie Roiphe would be publishing my name in a forthcoming piece in Harper’s magazine. In early December, Roiphe had emailed me to ask if I wanted to comment for a Harper’s story she was writing on the “feminist moment.”

Nice

Probably last TV appearance:

http://deadline.com/2018/01/james-franco-seth-meyers-take-knocks-ally-sheedy-sexual-misconduct-1202240604/

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialElizaDushku/posts/1769957739689557

When I was 12 years old, while filming “True Lies”, I was sexually molested by Joel Kramer, one of Hollywood’s leading stunt coordinators.

ugh god that is gutwrenching
fuck

the part where she talks about suffering an injury on set shortly thereafter...fucking hell

yeah

and there’s no way he hasn’t done the same with other girls throughout his career. it’s so awful & sickening. and it’s true that he has worked consistently - he was stunt coordinator on Blade Runner 2049 ffs

fYI the 'shitty media men' list is on youtube, though you have to listen to some choad walk you through it person by person and misprounce places like "the Baffler" as "the baffier". a couple of surprising and familiar names on there to anyone on ilx.

I heard about one of them

Male Models Say Mario Testino and Bruce Weber Sexually Exploited Them

yeah ugh i read that this morning
modelling is such a cesspool for that kind of behaviour, and male modelling even more so. it’s great that they are starting to speak out, especially against such heavy hitters like Weber & Testino

Also, some good/provocative thoughts from Margaret Atwood:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/am-i-a-bad-feminist/article37591823/

margaret atwood's thing is a fucking travesty and a direct insult to the survivors of a toxic culture in Canada's in writing programs

Is that the thing she’s describing, or her article just posted?

“I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life” https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355

I thought the Atwood piece was fine, she’s not wrong about extremism and vigilante justice. I don’t know about the UBC situation but she didn’t attack the victim, she criticized the administration and many others’ “guilty until proven innocent” attitude.

But Aziz Ansari isn’t an 18-year-old. He’s a 34-year-old actor and comedian of global renown

I guess that's why comics' stage persona is called AN ACT?

aziz also fashions himself as a “relatable” expert on love and dating.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23453112

the elevation of comedians into experts on humanity has been pretty bad for society

golden globes really dropping the... uh... globes

maura otm. Reminds me of something Norm Macdonald said: “Calling comedians modern day philosophers must be really insulting to... modern day philosophers.”

tbf lots of modern day philosophers are also sex criminals

Comedians are good at observations but not necessarily advice

UBC did handle their inquiry poorly, but Atwood's article is misrepresenting the open letter she signed, which had zero sympathy for victims.

The following statement is from Signatory Margaret Atwood and was drafted with input and guidance from UBC Student Elaine Corden.
We’re sorry we hurt any survivor people out there by seeming lacking in empathy for your experiences. Our letter was not intended to wound you, but it seems to have done, and for that we apologize. We do not intend to discourage anyone from speaking up in future, and hope the University will put in place a workable support system. To survivors of abuse, we were, are, and will be your allies.

Sincerely,

Margaret Atwood

I really do not see an attack on the victim whatsoever.

maybe people should just stop sign those 'open letter' things. They often feel itchy to me. Like, 5 people are really behind the idea epressed in the particular letter, the rest of the people are either famous 'backers', or people that want to be on this list with famous people themselves...

otoh Atwoods piece in The Globe & Mail seems perfectly reasonable/fine.

I read about Ansari's book, and my first thought was it should be titled, like all Jackson Browne albums, Fuck Me, I'm Sensitive.

that is a bullshit take on Jackson Browne Dr. M

is it tho

yes. all Jackson Browne albums should be titled Fuck Me, David Lindley is Amazing

well the whole band tbh

that was the apology for the open letter, VHS, not the letter itself.

judge for yourself: http://www.ubcaccountable.com/open-letter/steven-galloway-ubc/

This is a local Houston story, but I am curious if similar situations are coming to light w/Theatre Companies in other cities.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Actors-describe-toxic-bullying-atmosphere-during-12492467.php

Similar stories about other theaters have definitely happened, even before the Weinstein moment. Shockingly they seem to have in common a male founder/director around whom the entire company orbits.

i withdraw the cheap Jackson Browne joke, tho Daryl Hannah might not.

Fact of the day(TM): Jackson Brown wrote “these days” when he was 16!

but anyway, the margaret atwood article is probably the best thing i've read about this cultural moment.

why?

As for vigilante justice – condemnation without a trial – it begins as a response to a lack of justice – either the system is corrupt, as in prerevolutionary France, or there isn't one, as in the Wild West – so people take things into their own hands. But understandable and temporary vigilante justice can morph into a culturally solidified lynch-mob habit, in which the available mode of justice is thrown out the window, and extralegal power structures are put into place and maintained. The Cosa Nostra, for instance, began as a resistance to political tyranny.

The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn't get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.

If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers? It won't be the Bad Feminists like me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.

this part

especially paragraph 2. she recognizes why this is happening, and why it's good and necessary, but then says that what ultimately needs to happen are actual institutional and legal reforms. it can't just be about accusations and tarnished reputations -- 1.) the public will lose interest eventually and 2.) this doesn't establish the conditions for a better world. atwood also recognizes that the new institutions that are set up are going to need to recognize the rights of the accused to defend themselves, which is a taboo thing to want to focus on right now, but it's the essence of any just system.

otm

Well an important feature of criminal justice is that it must be designed to routinely fail to convict people for lack of evidence, even in a better world where calling the cops is not a miserable and traumatic waste of time for many or most survivors of sexual assault, somehow. I’m more than okay with outing, outrage, and censure continuing indefinitely.

Which is to say, naming, censuring, and firing rapists without being subject to the criminal justice system is good and if it really is a trend it’s making the world more just

I mean of course por que no los dos but yknow I’m just posting online at bedtime

such a gross vacuum. where all the rapists (those on tv) lose their shows, law be damned.

what do you figure when the stakes are actually real? i assume they always are for a victim, especially when so many people who've gone on record to date have stressed how hard it is, how they want it to matter?

i guess more important, what do you do when you're tired of seeing people 'outed in outrage, censured and fired' and it doesn't sate you anymore? it's probably just about as boring as having the bedtime opinion that your cheap idea of justice isn't disgusting.