
Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too - smacktoward
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html?_r=0
======
ashwinpp
Curious about why this article went missing from the first few pages in a few
minutes it took me to read it. Is it by design or intervention and if
intervention then the rationale for it.

I found the article to be underscoring in detail the modus operandi of sexual
harassment in the film industry (and workspaces in general) and adds a fair
amount of interesting thoughts to my mind about the functioning of society and
inherent oppression within.

~~~
klenwell
I noticed the same thing. Right now it's near the top of the second page. But
at 90 upvotes in less than an hour, it appears it should be solidly on the
front page.

My educated guess: lots of downvotes pushing it down, a fact (more cruel
perhaps than ironic) consistent with the points Salma Hayek is making in her
article.

~~~
dominotw
>My educated guess: lots of downvotes pushing it down, a fact (more cruel
perhaps than ironic) consistent with the points Salma Hayek is making in her
article.

You cannot downvote a submission, just comments.

~~~
dragonwriter
IIRC, submission flags act like downvotes before reaching the threshold where
the entry is killed, so this is essentially a distinction without a
difference.

~~~
smacktoward
It's now flagged as "[flagged]", so I guess we know the answer to this
question.

Sigh. HN is so disappointing sometimes.

~~~
abritinthebay
Yet incredibly predictable. I mean... are you surprised?

------
JBlue42
Guy seems to fit every characteristic of a psychopath. Glad he's finally been
taken out of power and society.

------
abritinthebay
Wow. An incredibly frank and honest article from Salma.

It underscores that the problem in these situations for women isn’t just
assault - it’s a sexualized power that has _expectations_.

It’s disgusting and Weinstein should be rightly vilified for what he has done;
let’s not forget that he’s a symptom of a larger societal problem however.

~~~
mkempe
Weinstein's course of action is a personal choice and responsibility. It is
absurd to infer or assert collective guilt, or to ascribe some sort of
original/social sin to "society." What he did is his individual vice; it is
simply not a "larger social problem." Any other man who raped or otherwise
assaulted women is similarly responsible for his own actions, and should be
punished accordingly.

~~~
Floegipoky
His abuse was a personal decision, but it wasn't made in isolation. The
behavior that Hayek described doesn't fit into the traditional model of sexual
misconduct. He didn't physically force himself on her, instead he used his
power to emotionally degrade and control her. And that's the point- the
traditional model of abuse utterly fails to protect victims. There's a reason
the word "complicit" is so popular right now; abusers rely on a support
network to minimize and cover up their actions. This network begins with
knowledgable persons who turn a blind eye (like Tarantino) but extends all the
way out to those who victim-shame on social media. And the fact that so many
women suffer sexual abuse and so few abusers are held accountable shows that
it is absolutely a larger social problem. "Isolated incidents" that affect 1/6
of a population must be viewed systemically.

[https://www.rainn.org/sites/default/files/Out_Of_1000_Rapes%...](https://www.rainn.org/sites/default/files/Out_Of_1000_Rapes%20122016.png)
[http://www.11thprincipleconsent.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/...](http://www.11thprincipleconsent.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/Rape-Culture-v4.png)

------
mfoy_
So much damage done to so many people in so many ways... ugh.

------
vmnieowan873
Anyone who thinks, "a little nudity in a movie is harmless" needs to read
this.

~~~
dragonwriter
So, I read it, and it doesn't say anything to indicate that nudity (whether a
little or a lot) in a movie is harmful, but that the particular nudity in this
particular movie wasn't the product of the creators artistic vision but power
plays by a funder, and that the harmful stemmed explocitly from the
manipulative personal power dynamics, not the nudity.

~~~
vmnieowan873
Yes, this was probably a very isolated incident. Keep telling yourself that.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yes, this was probably a very isolated incident.

That's not the issue; the harm—and the article _explicitly_ says this—wasn’t
the “nudity in a movie”. I’m sure this _isn 't_ an isolated incident, either
for Wienstein or more generally.

But Hayek has done a fair amount of nude work for a mainstream actress, so
when she explicitly points to the source of the problem and says it's _not_
the fact of doing nude work for a film, I wonder why your so desperate to
recast it as being about nudity in film.

~~~
vmnieowan873
We are talking about _sexual_ harassment here. How could nudity not be the
problem? The fact that nudity in film is common allowed Harvey the pretense to
demand full-frontal nudity, "the senseless scene," as Hayek described it.

The point I'm trying to make, apparently too subtly, is, how many nude scenes
were coerced just like Hayek describes the one in Frida in order to satisfy
the lusts of the male director/producer/writer just like this? It doesn't seem
far-fetched, with all the revelations of sexual harassment coming out, that
it's a lot of them.

Maybe it's so many that we should simply not tolerate nudity in films. If
there was some way to certify that the nude scene wasn't "forced" then it
would be OK, but if we accept that this was an act of force on Weinstein's
part (Salma could have chosen not to do the movie, yet we all seem to agree
this was still evil on the part of Weinstein), then how could that
certification ever be done?

~~~
dragonwriter
> We are talking about sexual harassment here. How could nudity not be the
> problem?

It was in large part retaliation for Hayek not acceding to Weinstein's demands
for sexual favors offscreen. If nudity were categorically prohibited or simply
commercially unviable in film, and instead of a “do this scene or no movie”
threat Weinstein had simply canned the film in retaliation, or demanded some
distasteful (whether or not itself sexual) offscreen favor to avoid such
cancellation in retaliation, it would have been just as much of an act of
sexual harassment.

The problem here has nothing to.do with nudity.

------
agnivade
What is the reason for this to be flagged ?

~~~
gspetr
Since not everyone regularly submits to HN, I think reposting the link from
the footer is relevant:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

"Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle
or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures.
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

This isn't anything groundbreaking as Harvey was already exposed, this is just
another data point.

