Harvey Weinstein is the gift that keeps on giving for this blog. Reactions to his escapades are almost as rich a source of material as that provided by the Google heretic.
A few days ago, for example, I posted “Hollywood book idea: I went to this married guy’s hotel room and then…”
The cited article is by Léa Seydoux, an actress, who implies that 100 percent of the women ultimately cast by an unnamed director she “really liked and respected” had traded sex for career advancement: “He has slept with all of the actresses he filmed.”
Ms. Seydoux says that she herself was planning to attend a non-work encounter with Mr. Weinstein in the privacy of his “hotel room”:
This was never going to be about work. He had other intentions – I could see that very clearly. … He invited me to come to his hotel room for a drink. We went up together.
The Outraged-by-Harvey Club seems unhappy with a story that begins “I went to this married guy’s hotel room in order to do something other than work.”
Here’s a comment from Neal on my post:
George A: We’re using the phrase “hotel room” in this thread, but I don’t think the image it conjures for us plebeians corresponds to the kind of suite Harvey Weinstein actually inhabited. It seems unlikely someone like Harvey Weinstein would invite an unknown extra (male or female) to a one on one. Thus, the invitation is probably to a social event in the suite’s living or dining rooms. Of course, in the scenario you don’t know this for sure.
And one from a (female) Facebooker on a friend’s posting of the Léa Seydoux article (how I found out about it):
Could you also mansplain how you would deserve to be harassed if you went to a business meeting at a hotel suite? Maybe you could mansplain how all hotels which have suites for conducting business are doing it wrong? Waiting to hear this information from a man, because of course no women could possibly know anything.
Let’s ignore for the moment that Ms. Seydoux made it explicit that her meeting in the hotel room/suite was to be an extracurricular encounter.
I’m wondering if the Harvey brouhaha is going to be liberating for people married to those who defend the shrinking female violets of Hollywood. Consider the person who is married to someone who explains the interactions between Harvey and the aspiring starlets in the above manner. He or she can fly out to a work conference, call up the spouse and say “Sweetheart, there was no good place to meet in the lobby or a breakout room so I am going up to hang out alone with an [opposite sex] executive from another company in [his/her] hotel room for a few hours. Hope you’re enjoying watching Planes with the kids for the 75th time.”
To cement Harvey Weinstein’s place in the pantheon of villainy it has become necessary to designate hotel rooms as places for opposite-sex married-to-other-people strangers to hold innocent 1-on-1 meetings. Can that designation now be used by ordinary folks who want to spice up their business trips?
@philg: I apologize for the ambiguity in my comment #10 on the “book idea” thread which has apparently caused a misunderstanding. To clarify, the invitation in “Thus, the invitation is probably to a social event in the suite’s living or dining rooms” referred to the invitation in the alternative story I described in comment #8 on that thread, not the invitation Ms. Seydoux received. For this reason, my comment cannot be used to support the idea that “To cement Harvey Weinstein’s place in the pantheon of villainy it has become necessary to designate hotel rooms as places for opposite-sex married-to-other-people strangers to hold innocent 1-on-1 meetings.”
Many of the Harvey Weinstein incidents did involve multi-attendee meetings or social gatherings which started in hotel rooms or homes, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for Ms. Seydoux. The issue in Ms. Seydoux’s case is that she was forced to manage an improper and illegal work related situation which was created by Mr. Weinstein. The “I went to this married guy’s hotel room and then…” formulation puts the focus on how she chose to manage the situation rather than on the person who created the situation in the first place (where it belongs).
“Can that designation now be used by ordinary folks who want to spice up their business trips?”
The Grand Deluxe Suite at The Beverly Hills Hotel starts at $5,700 per night, so probably out of reach for “ordinary folks”.
If we can pan art/entertainment created by sexual sexual harassers, can we rely on science done by sexual harassers? Wired.com seems to think not:
https://www.wired.com/story/science-harassment-data/
Ms Seydoux is the granddaughter of Jérôme Seydoux, the billionaire overlord of French cinema, and a member of the even richer Schlumberger family. She does not need to put out to further her career, and if Harvey Weinstein was too dumb to realize he should not mess with her and her family, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a hand in orchestrating his business and now personal downfall. It would be like messing with someone who was granddaughter of a Rupert Murdoch and Nelson Rockefeller simultaneously.
To cement Harvey Weinstein’s place in the pantheon of villainy it has become necessary to designate hotel rooms as places for opposite-sex married-to-other-people strangers to hold innocent 1-on-1 meetings.
This statement doesn’t make sense. You know, of course, that there is now a long list of women who have come forward. I’ve only read a small fraction of it, but I imagine that some of the harassment took place in offices, restaurants and other venues. Weinstein’s reputation as an a–hole would be cemented even if Ms. Seydoux had never come forward.
If there’s one thing I learned from my marriage, it’s that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth if you try to deny someone their victim status.
I never fail to be amazed at the difference between a woman using her pussy for advancement and a woman using her pussy for advancement. Has Harvey been accused of rape by anyone? Don’t think so.