In order to understand what I mean by "sexual blackmail" let's look at regular blackmail
When woman A uses the fact
that she's seen woman B steal money
from ABC Corporation to extort money,
both the blackmailer and the blackmail-ee are criminals.
However,
if man A takes pictures of man B's teenage son
while that son was engaged in a legal but embarrassing act
and man B extorts money from man A
saying he'll delete/destroy the photos in exchange for a lot of money
and man A complies by paying the money,
both the blackmailer and the blackmail-ee
are engaged in the criminal enterprise that is blackmail,
but most of us see the blackmailer as the criminal
while the blackmail-ee is an innocent victim
And this is how we need to see some women who were attacked by men like Harvey Weinstein and continued to work with him.
continued from STRONG BLACK WOMAN, INFANTILIZED WHITE WOMEN, AND AZIZ ANSARI
A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE OF "SEXUAL BLACKMAIL:"
HARVEY WEINSTEIN AND SALMA HAYEK
When Weinstein agreed to do a historical project close to her heart, on Frida Kahlo, Weinstein turned up the sexual heat on Hayek. She writes,
"Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.
- No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.
- No to me taking a shower with him.
- No to letting him watch me take a shower.
- No to letting him give me a massage.
- No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
- No to letting him give me oral sex.
- No to my getting naked with another woman.
- No, no, no, no, no …
- And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage."
But then, as her producer, he was able to demand a non-existant sex scene between her and another woman be inserted into the movie FRIDA. Weinstein "had his way with her" anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html
#MeToo and #TimesUp needs to move on to changing laws and putting people in prison. This is not just about embarrassing men until they have to resign....and go get a job elsewhere once the heat is off.
Before the #MeToo movement can move on to changing laws and adding onto existing laws, we need to create better definitions and definitions of levels for sexual harassment and sexual assault.
And in order for definitions to be created, we need to do a detailed examination of what is already happening in this moment when American woman have the world stage through Tarana Burke's #MeToo movement. We need to examine what we seek to define.
That means the details of what the predator did as well as the victim's detailed response needs to be known if the victim is an adult. #BelieveWomen, end of story, is not enough to take the actions we need to take against some of these predators. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry it's humiliating to tell the details of sexual assault and sexual harassment. But Salma Hayek and Lupita Nyong'o and dozens of other women in Hollywood told the whole truth about their assaults, their near assaults, and the coerced-cooperation that followed after Harvey Weinstein victimized them.
Believe Women + End of Story = Not enough.
Rose McGowan, for example, probably has a story similar to other women in Hollywood. But sometimes she appears to be trying to hide her coerced-cooperation with Weinstein behind something that, in one interview, sounded like
"I practically fainted while wide awake...and all of sudden I was naked."In separate interviews she says her career was affected by him. But when she described the attack itself, at least in one interview, she got defensive about basic questions and went into the...it just happened routine -->Believe me. It happened. End of story.
This is not enough testimony for someone who wants to be a leader of #MeToo.
The only way we know 99.9% know McGowan was raped because of all the other women that testified in detail as to what Weinstein did -- humiliation or no humiliation. They were also willing to say what they did and didn't do in response to being attacked and also what they were thinking at the time
And I'm sorry. But this is what is required if we're going to move forward because "believe me" because women are offended right now and women have the world stage right now is NOT enough to create lasting change.
None of this means I've forgotten that men have lied and lied and lied some more about the reason they raped women (reportedly, only 2 to 4% of women like about rape when they report it to police - estimate vary)
Men have said things that mean 'I was drunk which made me all but insane' OR 'she was drunk which made her nearly insane. And we'll never know what happened so you can't even charge me with anything.'
The men who don't DO the raping and sexual assaulting have become part of this by offering up reasonable doubt beyond reasonable belief. That is, the mostly male justice system cosigns the men confused about consent/drunk insanity nonsense. And the jury, the lawyers, the judges, all have the same attitudes that the general population does.
So, I'm not crying for men that feel unjustly accused at this point. Look for tears elsewhere.
The pendulum is swinging. And I'm not so sure the swing has gone so far to the other extreme yet. But the pendelum has been doing some serious hang time on men's side for a long time. So, I know it will swing back.
Men didn't lose most of the social power they hang onto in this country behind #MeToo any more than white people lost a bunch of social power based on whiteness just because a black man got to be president
But when the gender pendulum swings back
will it settle somewhere in the middle
where we can stop using vague ass terminology like
"sexual misconduct" which means
"men behaving like dirty, bad little boys"
and identify more instances of "sexual assault"
at a variety of levels
(no charges / misdemeanor charges/ and felony charges)
then legally define "sexual blackmail"
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