Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Elvis Presley etc.
by John Lawrence
Every day it seems a new Hollywood sexual predator comes to light. It's now an all too familiar saga. Just recently more than 30 women have come forward to accuse movie director James Toback of sexual harassment. Dozens of women are "coming forward" to claim unwanted sexual advances or in some cases outright rape. However, it usually is the case that none of these women ever reported the situation to the police or other authorities at the time that the incident occurred. In some cases they come forward 20 or 30 years later. So it all amounts to a public shaming as is the case with Harvey Weinstein. The public shaming cost him his job, his company and evidently his wife and children - a considerable penalty.
For what it's worth here's my advice to women who find themselves in the situation of being in a hotel room with a powerful mogul in a bathrobe. #1 Never agree to meet anyone for a supposedly "business meeting" in a hotel room. #2 If there are unwanted sexual advances, take Nancy Reagan's advice and "Just say No!". #3 If there is an actual rape, go immediately to the police and demand that a rape kit be started. They will do a vaginal swab which will contain semen which can be directly connected to the perpetrator by means of DNA testing. That is an open and shut case for criminal prosecution. Even if the authorities are so corrupt that they won't proceed with a criminal prosecution there will be documentation that the event took place.
There are probably a considerable number of cases where women consensually had sex with the Harvey Weinsteins of the world in return for the chance of getting their face and/or body on the Big Screen or even the Little Screen. If things didn't turn out as they had envisioned, they could decide many years later that they had been the victim of a sexual predator. Well, it's not sexual predation if the sex was consensual, that is, if the woman was a willing participant. It doesn't matter who made the advances or how powerful or powerless the guy was or is.
Consider the case of famous rock stars and athletes. Women used to throw their panties at Elvis Presley inasmuch as saying "Come and get it!" I'm sure he and many others did. Does that make them sexual predators or sexual accommodators? Wilt Chamberlain, the basketball star, in his autobiography claimed he slept with 20,000 women. Does that make him a sexual predator or only someone with a healthy sex drive? The fact is that many women will gladly have sex with rich or famous or powerful men, even throw themselves at them. They will even make the advances, in some cases even, unwanted sexual advances. Does that make them the sexual predators?
The Scarlet Letter, an 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt. She is forced to be branded with a red "A" for adulturess and must wear that stigma for the rest of her life. The guy who got her pregnant was not even considered to be culpable. Now a couple of centuries later, the tables have turned and Harvey Weinstein might as well have a scarlet letter emblazoned on his chest. But somehow the question of adultery is entirely moot. It's all about whether or not the sex was consensual. It's "He said;she said."
The other side of the coin is what happens when women throw themselves at famous or powerful men, in some cases calculatedly, because in the back of their minds they think they might get a part in a motion picture or become a rock star's girlfriend. If they are disappointed, they can always have a change of heart later and decide that the guy was at fault. If there is an actual rape, then the situation is legally actionable provided they go to the police and get a rape kit started right away. Otherwise a public shaming is about all they can hope for if enough other women come forward and say #MeToo.
