Sex: Consensual and Non-Consensual
by John Lawrence
There is a lot of hullabaloo going around over Harvey Weinstein who supposedly made unwanted sexual advances to young starlets. He's even been accused of rape. Well, this is nothing new in Hollywood. Most of the great producers, directors, studio heads and moguls of the 20th century operated in the same way. All you have to do is to read some biographies of movie stars, directors, producers and moguls from that era.
For instance, Betty Hutton, one of the biggest female movie stars of the 1940s recounts in her biography, "Backstage, You Can Have," how she got her first professional gig as a singer with Vincent Lopez's band. A requirement of her employment was that she give Lopez a daily blow job. And then her career took off from there.
The "casting couch" is not a new phenomenon. Many aspiring actors and actresses will willingly perform there in return for a chance of becoming a star. So why all the shock and disbelief regarding Harvey Weinstein. He's just conducting business as usual as it's been conducted since the advent of the movie industry.
Songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen was Frank Sinatra's best buddy. He used to gather up a few women in LA and bring them out to Frank's pad in Palm Springs every weekend. These women were either prostitutes or aspiring starlets. After the weekend was over, Jimmy dutifully drove them back to Los Angeles and paid the prostitutes. He didn't have to pay the aspiring starlets however. They were in it to advance their careers.
There is so much cultural hypocrisy going around over powerful men and the women who have suffered through "unwanted sexual advances" at their hands. If the guy made an advance and the woman said "Back off Bub," like some of them have (including Julie Andrews), then the situation is fini, no harm done in my opinion. If the guy persists to the point of forcing her to have sex, then that is rape, and she should call the cops as soon as she extricates herself from the situation. How is it that none of them do? Instead they wait till 20 or 30 years later to stir up a big fuss?
I don't condone rape, but I see no harm in making "unwanted sexual advances". How does the guy know they are unwanted till the woman tells him so? In many cases the woman is all to willing in which case they are not unwanted but indeed are definitely wanted, in which case the sex is consensual and many careers have been advanced that way. It's not all pure acting skill, I hate to tell you.
The entertainment industry, especially the movies and lately TV as well, is all about sex. It should come as no surprise then that the people involved in that industry are involved in it in their personal lives. They are not Puritans as evidently are not those who consume the products of the visual entertainment industry, including porn, vicariously.
