Twitter, allow me a ranty thread of anger about Harvey Weinstein claiming he isn't a rapist and acting the jerk in therapy. https://twitter.com/TomNamako/status/921354392271491072 …
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What you've got to understand is that abusers, by their very nature, internally justify their own actions to themselves as acceptable.
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I would lay cash-money that Weinstein thinks he can't be a rapist because, deep down, he thinks rape is the last resort of unwanted men.
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A rapist has to force women into bed; force means the man is undesirable; Weinstein's ego cannot conceive of him that way; ergo no rape.
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In the accounts of Weinstein's assaults I've seen, while he physically overpowered struggling, protesting women, he didn't punch/strike them
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To the victims, that's a meaningless distinction: he was already stronger than them! He was already protected! He still used force!
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But in Weinstein's head, I imagine that distinction is crucial. He doesn't see sexual violence as violence w/out that other "physical" type.
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Sure, they struggled & said no. But all he needs to justify that is a voice in his head that says "women don't really know what they want."
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His transactional expectations were clear. He did the women the favour of finding them fuckable enough to cast; their return favour was sex.
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Let's not delve into the misogynistic cesspit of justifications around why he felt that was just how the industry worked, or should work.
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Sufficed to say, it's a problem unique neither to Weinstein or to Hollywood. Way too many men think this; he just had power & opportunity.
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The honeypot tactic of bringing a woman exec to make his prey feel safe? I'd bet he thought of it like buying a woman a drink at a bar.
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That is to say, as a way to lower his target's inhibitions, either through generosity or making himself seem approachable.
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Men who buy women drinks to purchase their gratitude &/or lowered inhibitions seldom think they're predatory either. It's transactional too.
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Which is the point. Weinstein doesn't think he's a rapist because he thinks he held up his end of the transaction: giving the women roles -
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- or "lavishing" them with gifts, or the perceived gift of his attention, which he used to extort more sexual favours. He GAVE to them!
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I can very easily imagine Weinstein screaming that he can't POSSIBLY have raped a woman by giving her oral, because it was for HER PLEASURE.
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This is an argument which, if manifested into physical form, I would cheerfully set ON FIRE.
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What fucking enrages me in this is how practised his predations were, down to having his staff arrange his meetings & cover for him.
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Weinstein views actresses as self-trading commodities, where "self" is always less vital than his ability - and desire - to buy them.
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Weinstein does not belong in rehab. He belongs in fucking jail. His rape system was extensive and practised, and he thinks it was all okay.
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Weinstein doesn't want to view himself as coercive, because that might imply (to him) that he's not good in bed, or that he's unattractive.
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Weinstein doesn't want to live in a reality where all the beautiful women he's boasted about sleeping with think he's gross, criminal, vile.
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He wants to tell himself that he won them over. That he relaxed them with wine or massages or the fake security of having others present -
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- that he impressed them with his forthright intentions; that the knew better than they did what they wanted and gave it to them regardless.
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Weinstein doesn't want sex with him to be an unpleasant but unavoidable evil at best & degrading rape at worst. But that's what he made it.
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End of conversation
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