Rum wrote:The outrage does seem somewhat out of proportion. He may be a slimeball, but headline news?
It's the celebrity factor - the women he apparently did things to or with are popular celebs, and he is very well known in terms of the movies he made. I think Miramax did the Lord of the Rings, didn't they? They did Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Clerks, Good Will Hunting, Chicago, No Country For Old Men.... and boatloads of others.
Ashley Judd reported this in 2015, without naming him - "In 2015, she first described the alleged incident without naming Weinstein: “He was very stealth and expert about it,” Judd told Variety. “He groomed me, which is a technical term—Oh, come meet at the hotel for something to eat. Fine, I show up. Oh, he’s actually in his room. I’m like, Are you kidding me? I just worked all night. I’m just going to order cereal. It went on in these stages. It was so disgusting. He physically lured me by saying, ‘Oh, help me pick out what I’m going to wear.’ There was a lot that happened between the point of entry and the bargaining. There was this whole process of bargaining—’Come do this, come do this, come do this.’ And I would say, ‘No, no, no.’ I have a feeling if this is online and people have the opportunity to post comments, a lot of the people will say, ‘Why didn’t you leave the room?’, which is victim-blaming. When I kept saying no to everything, there was a huge asymmetry of power and control in that room."
I had an interview once, ages and ages ago, for some sort of sales-related position - way back when I was, I think, looking for my first post-collegiate job. It was a female interviewer who held the interview in a hotel suite. She had flown in from out of town, and there was a one-room suite, with a work table/desk. I remember thinking it was odd. But, she never asked me to help her try on clothes or anything. I didn't make any move, nor did she, and i did not get the job.
I don't think "why didn't you leave the room?" is an unfair question, though, nor is it victim blaming. I think it's a reasonable question. There are plenty of reasonable answers to it. But, if some guy got me up to his hotel room for an interview, and then started obviously hitting on me by having me help him try on clothes, and bargaining for things, well, I would say that I'm not interested, and if he persisted I would excuse myself and leave. That's just what I would do.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
