This whole thing with Harvey Weinstein is giving me PTSD. Why? Because this kind of thing happened to ME. (1/Cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
My wife n I were at a Hollywood function last year n a high level Hollywood executive came over 2 me and groped my privates. (2/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
Props to Mr. Crews for speaking out, because his experience is further proof: It’s not about sex for powerful predators, it’s about the rush of knowing that they can treat “the help” like pets or furniture.
Liz Meriwether, at NYMag‘s The Cut, “I’m A Coward”:
… Years ago, I went to a meeting in a hotel room with a powerful man. We started talking. He asked me about my sexual past, and I laughed and told some funny stories. I expect to talk about relationships and love and sex in meetings, since that’s what I write about. It was just the way he was asking me — he was pushing for details. I was suddenly aware of how alone I was in that room. Then he pointed to the bed next to us and said, “You know there’s a bed in here.” Like a young Dorothy Parker, with eloquence and wit beyond my years, I responded: “Yeah. I see that! Cool bed, man!”
Eventually the meeting was over, and he walked me to the door of the suite. I was starting to feel relieved it was over, when he suddenly grabbed my shoulders and held me in front of the gilded hallway mirror. I couldn’t move. He was watching me through the mirror. I could barely bring my head up. He said, “Look. Look at yourself. Do you see how beautiful you are?”
It was at that moment that I did something insane. I started laughing. Like, uproariously laughing. It was not a fun laugh. It was one of those crazy, terrifying laughs. Suddenly, I was Laura Linney in an Oscar clip. I turned my head and looked at him, still laughing, and said, “This is my worst nightmare!” That must have surprised him or offended him, because then he let me go. I headed for the door, walked through the lobby of the hotel, and didn’t stop walking until I was back inside my apartment downtown. I walked the way I walk in dreams, without feeling my feet on the ground. I was buzzing. I didn’t feel real.
It must have been my fault. It must have been something I said. Was I flirting with him? I shouldn’t have told that story. I shouldn’t have gone to his hotel room. What can I do about it? Who do I tell? I don’t have enough money for a lawyer. I don’t want to suddenly become unemployable because of something he chose to do to me. Was it that big of a deal? Did I make it up? It wasn’t an assault — it was just, like, an aggressive mirror hold. There are no laws against forcing people to look at themselves in the mirror. I’m fine. I’m tough. I’m one of the guys. It was just a weird thing that happened, and now it’s over, and I’m fine. What if I said something and he stopped me from getting another job? So I made a decision: I chose to stay quiet. I kept working with him. As I said, I’m a coward…
And yet, when something like Harvey Weinstein’s behavior comes to light, the same arguments are repeated over and over again: Why did the women wait so long to report it? Why did they take money and sign nondisclosure agreements? Why did they keep working at the company? Why did they accept roles? Why did they stay friends with him? Why didn’t they kidnap Harvey and lock him in an S&M harness like the ladies in 9 to 5? I don’t know. Maybe they decided they wanted to keep working, keep supporting themselves, keep doing the thing they loved. Maybe they were ambitious and angry, and, yeah, maybe they wanted some money for having to deal with all of it. This kind of thing doesn’t only happen to heroes. It happens to normal women — women who are cowards, ambitious jerks, talented artists, lonely girls, girls who put out, girls who don’t, girls who don’t like being called “girls,” wonderful and complicated and still-forming creatures who are forced to make impossible choices that follow them forever. Life isn’t a Miramax movie. Life is a mess. Yes, I am a coward, but let’s be clear: The man in the hotel room is to blame.
Jumping back I said What are you doing?! My wife saw everything n we looked at him like he was crazy. He just grinned like a jerk. (3/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
I was going to kick his ass right then— but I thought twice about how the whole thing would appear. (4/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
Only I probably wouldn’t have been able to read it because I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN JAIL. So we left.
(6/cont.)— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
He called me the next day with an apology but never really explained why he did what he did. (8/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
I decided not 2 take it further becuz I didn’t want 2b ostracized— par 4 the course when the predator has power n influence. (9/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
I let it go. And I understand why many women who this happens to let it go. (10/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
Hollywood is not the only business we’re this happens, and to the casualties of this behavior— you are not alone. (15/cont.)
— terrycrews (@terrycrews) October 10, 2017
Aaand, of course, the Worst People are using the Weinstein scandal for their own vile purposes:
These men have outed themselves as potential sexual predators. Consider their words as warnings to all women. Report them. #USA #Misogyny pic.twitter.com/ocs7vddgom
— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) October 11, 2017
Baud
Wait, are Erick and Gorka saying that Pence is a sexual predator?
ETA: That’s what Mona saying. Took me a moment to get it.
germy
Corner Stone
I thought everyone knew that a man left alone with a woman has no choice?
germy
trollhattan
@Baud:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Fucking Weinstein is now the Republican’s auto-response to every liberal thing that happens.
Baud
@trollhattan: They always have an auto-response. We just need to punch back twice as hard.
ETA: this is where our hack deficit really hurts.
germy
@trollhattan: Weinstein used right-wing tabloids to attack his accusers.
Shana
Of course it’s not news, but this happened once to me too. I was a secretary, went into my boss’ office while he was having a meeting with some of his colleagues. One of them reached over to me from his seat while I was standing near the doorway and grabbed me while three other people were in the office. It’s wasn’t aggressively sexual, I hope he thought he was being kind of paternal; I was in my early 20s, he was in his 40s and this happened in the mid 80s. I was however freaked out by it, went back to my desk, made a copy of the firm’s sexual harassment policy and sent it to him anonymously through the interoffice mail. Within an hour my boss came to my desk and asked to see a copy of the policy.
I like to think it wasn’t meant as sexual harassment and was a learning experience for both those guys, but I’ll never know for sure.
Corner Stone
I recently finished watching a 20 minute interview with Terry Crews. I found it linked off of TNC’s twit feed.
Ah, here it is
Smart guy, very positive and no BS. Strange to see this incident happened to him, but I guess that is the point. Lots of strength to talk about it, IMO.
lamh36
Uh…huh… methinks Casey Afleck should thank whatever lucky stars he has that all this didn’t blow up when he was “campaigning” for that Oscar he won…Denzel might just have won another one.
Uh…maybe it’s a family thing…
Oh and I’m sorry, but Ben apology is 14 years too late. Plus…the ONLY reason the incident came to light was because a fan commented on twitter about it and tagged Hilarie Burton
Hilarie Burton Recalls Being Groped by Ben Affleck on TRL in 2003
Corner Stone
I hope many things can come out due to this latest disclosure that men are pigs, but the main thing I hope happens is when a cascade of unstoppable statements and disclosure and accusations hit Silicon Valley.
Major Major Major Major
Pretty sure Erick ibn Erick and Gorka have been out and proud potential sexual predators for some time now.
germy
Is weinstein traveling all the way to Europe to seek treatment because the long arm of the law won’t reach him?
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Yes pretty much. So we have a President and VP who are sexual predators. Good to know. The Party of Family Values, y’all.
schrodingers_cat
@Shana: There was a math professor when I was a freshman, who leered at me and called me dear and darling when I went to his office hours, I was keeping an eye on the door and almost ran out of his office after asking him one question about a problem. Though I had a long list of things to ask. It was a class we had to take, and prerequisite, no way I could drop it. Thankfully no touching was involved. Eeww. Of course I never went to his office hours again.
ETA: I must have been 16 or 17 at most. He was in his 50s.
Kristine
@Baud: The best response I’ve seen is essentially that we call out/fire our predators while they nominate/elect their POTUS.
Baud
@Kristine: Agreed.
Jeffro
Has David Brooks weighed in yet to let us know which senator had his hand on his thigh multiple times? Surely it is time to revisit that column, Villagers!!
lamh36
@germy: doing the Polanski “I’m busy working overseas” route?
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: Because grown men just can’t help themselves around temptresses and hussies. That’s why our VP just can’t be around any of us without witnesses.
Corner Stone
@germy: Harvey is probably going to Italy to see if the Miramax Italy main guy still had anything left in the pipeline. He has to be feening for a fix about now.
debbie
@Baud:
I can’t remember whether it was yesterday or the day before that I told you I had known Harvey back in the 1980s. I didn’t hear the tape until today and it totally freaked me out. He sounded exactly as he had sounded when bossing my best friend (his assistant) around. I just emailed her, and if she tells me he pulled any sexual shit with her, I am going to have to kill him.
debbie
@trollhattan:
So? Throw Ailes and O’Reilly right back at them.
schrodingers_cat
@Patricia Kayden: AIB. an Indian comedy group had done a biting parody of blaming the woman syndrome, if anything is much worse in India than here.
Its your fault
Baud
@debbie: He’s left the country!
peej01
I was in college. I was sitting in a lounge by myself watching tv when a guy came up and started stroking my hair. I brushed him off, and got up and left. I know it wasn’t anything I did, since I wasn’t doing anything except sitting there by myself. I just figured that, since I’m fat, he decided that I was easy prey..that I was desperate enough for any man. But I never put myself into that situation again at college…something that most men don’t have to even think about.
debbie
@Shana:
Similar things happened to me when I was in my 20s. I had an interview with one guy who had worked with my dad (who had died just a couple years earlier). While I was going through my portfolio, he told me what a great guy my dad had been and then proceeded to grab my breast. I didn’t know what to do, so it was repeated a few times. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
A couple years later, my boss continually made lewd suggestions to me in front of other people. He thought it was funny because I always blushed. Again, I didn’t know what to do. Finally, he said something horrible, I turned and looked at him, and I said, loud and clear, “Fuck you, old man.” Quite a hush fell over the department, but I had found my voice and it stopped him cold.
Aleta
@lamh36: Saw (the video) how careful he was to grope in a way that it would not show on camera or to her cohost/staff. Fortunately she brought it up to discuss on a show afterward, so there is a record remaining today. Pretty sure he’d be denying it otherwise.
debbie
@Baud:
I’ve got plenty of credit cards!
trollhattan
@debbie:
C’mon now, we all know Ailes and O’Reilly were falsely accused in the biggest fake accusationfest ever conceived!
Tit for tat will never work with these creatures. Just ask Newt and Trump and their six wives.
Baud
@trollhattan: What do mean by “work”? You aren’t going to convert them, if that’s what you mean. You push back to let them know you’re not a pushover.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
“Mother” has decreed that Mike is never allowed to be in a room alone with a woman.
You do the math.
RinaX
@lamh36:
I’m only surprised that this is the only story that’s surfaced about him so far.
trollhattan
@Baud:
“Work” as in distract our so-distractable press and win that day/minute/second. T’is how “her emails” gives us Trump.
MoxieM
Oh Ick. Grad school advisor who leered, licked his lips, was way too “huggy”. He liked to reach over and touch my arm or whatever. ew ew ew. I still get squicked out thinking about it. What a creeper! and, he was one of the nice guys, really. I mean, in other ways, he had integrity.
Welcome to life as a woman, guys. (And, I’m so white I’m practically transparent.)
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
I’m biting my keyboard and praying that God will not punish me for my thoughts.
Mnemosyne
If people haven’t seen “The Rock Test for Men” yet, Dwayne Johnson is fully on board with it:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheRock/status/917619595015487488
SiubhanDuinne
There are probably very few women on this blog (and likely some men as well) who haven’t experienced some form of sexual aggression at some time in our lives. It can be anything from inappropriate ogling/wolf-whistling/commenting, to unwanted touching and grabbing, to power-play career threats, to outright rape. And as awful and humiliating and demeaning as all those things are, they’re not the end of the story. Margaret Atwood once said (from memory, so possibly paraphrasing) “Men fear that women are going to laugh at them. Women fear that men are going to kill them.” A few men understand this, but most — even the finest — do not, not really. Women everywhere in the world get it.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
I will say only that sexual harassment is by no means limited to men.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
There was a big ugly case here at the GEC where a very senior VP was fired because he was covering up for a harasser, who happened to be a woman harassing her ex-boyfriend.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
When I first started with my employer 20+ years ago, we had a receptionist who made wildly inappropriate comments to all the men in the department (including the chairman). Women weren’t completely protected, either. She didn’t direct lewd comments at them, but she said all kinds of wildly inappropriate things around them. None of this was a secret, either. The relevant authorities treated it as a joke; she even received a gag gift of a beefcake calendar where faces of the men in our department were pasted over the original models’. The message that nobody was going to do anything about it couldn’t have been clearer.
Shana
@debbie: Good for you. It must have been scary to say, but you’d been pushed far enough.
@SiubhanDuinne: Amen sister! You and Margaret Attwood.
geg6
I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t experienced this crap. None. My mom told me stories about the crap she had to put up with working as a bookkeeper at the huge J&L Steel plant here. My sisters and I worked at one time or another (and one made a career of it) in the hospitality industry. Waitressing, bar tending, hostessing, owning and managing restaurants and bars and country/yacht clubs. It happens every single day in that business. Haven’t run into it in higher ed but I sure have been discriminated against because I’m a woman. One boss I had at a community college at the start of my career flat out told me that I wouldn’t be getting a raise because, although I was an excellent employee, I had a boyfriend who I lived who had a very good job and I didn’t need the money like the men who had families. This was in the very early 90s. Shit never changes.
Humdog
@peej01: I am sorry this happened to you and that the memory survives. You never deserve such treatment, no matter your size.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: I liked that. Funny, and makes its point well. The Rock.
Might be good that sexual harrassment has come up for discussion, here and in offices and in families. I worked as a temp for a trade industry association where all — every one — of the male executives had been fired, in a clean sweep — big sexual harrassment case; don’t know if all were harrassers or some of them were enablers. It was a dinosaur industry trade group.
So, eventually, we had all these acting executives, and the Board insisted the whole staff sit through a long, long training session on sexual harrassment with a heavyset woman who looked like Brunhilde and whose jokes fell kind of a flat. As a temp, I was not required to actually attend the training, but I flitted in and out, out of curiosity.
After, some of the younger guys — who were decent to a person — were grumbling that they had to attend the training and they hadn’t even done anything. Kind of insulted. But I guess it was the Board, covering its asses.
If only we could discuss racism as frankly.
efgoldman
As an old white guy, and the father and grandfather of girls, I’d be just fine with each and every one of these guys getting his gonads caught in a pair of Vise-Grips.
bemused
Hmm, the guy in hotel room thought he was flirting or it was his idea of sexual flirting on high speed. He thought talking about sex meant she was interested in having it with him. He was clueless that she was on a different plane. Many men just can’t read women.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: That is excellent, forwarded on. Although the people I forwarded it to don’t need it.
The Moar You Know
Every woman I’ve ever known has been through this. My mom, my wife, former girlfriends, coworkers, no exceptions. It’s vile and men who do it should be flayed alive.
Also, not that this is germane to the topic but just something I noticed, is that Steve Bannon has got to be walking around today with a huge sigh of relief that he is no longer the ugliest man in the media. Christ. That Weinstein guy looks like God assembled a man out of a trash bag, mashed potatoes and burned tri-tip while high on spray paint.
Aleta
Reposting this link to a story in Science. The article doesn’t include many other corroborated examples of abuse of women students by Professor David Marchant, particularly when out doing field work in Antarctica.
Marchant is the chair of the Department of Earth & Environment at Boston University. He also controls or directs resources at BU’s Digital Image Analyses lab and its Experimental Permafrost lab. Has previously been Director of Undergraduate Studies, Earth Sciences Dept. and Director of Graduate Admissions, Earth Sciences, both at BU.
Because of his power, influence and control of funding and opportunities in his field, it took carefulness and a long time before accusations and charges could be made. The support of men, some as witnesses and some in the departments of other universities, was so important.
Corner Stone
@bemused:
Ummm, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
condorcet runner-up
@Baud: This right here is exactly right. Cheap, uninformed talking points only go so far and when their purveyors sense that you’re not buying it, they tend to back down. The fewer places these creeps feel free to spew nonsense, the better.
debbie
@Shana:
Thanks. This was back in the late 1970s when no one would have even thought of going to the Personnel Dept. There was nothing to do but do it yourself. He was the same guy who was reluctant to hire me from a temp position because I looked like I was just going to get married and pregnant. (I still don’t know what that even means!)
SiubhanDuinne
@The Moar You Know:
This is so excellent, it made tears spring to my eyes.
Lyrebird
@Mnemosyne: Thanks, I like it, and I needed to read some smile-making stuff. I especially like the last bit where you imagine that huge guy and several police officers. And what not to do in front of them!
Mnemosyne
@eclare:
I had seen the Medium piece earlier today, but I liked that the Rock has now officially endorsed it.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Well done, Moar You Know.
That is damn classic.
bemused
@Corner Stone:
A lot of guys think just having an average, laughing, nothing out of the ordinary conversation with a woman means he can hit on her.
Corner Stone
@bemused: A lot of guys think a lot of things. Personally, I would suggest you curb this thought line and take a pause to reflect on it.
gene108
I wonder if anyone will ask Trump to apologize for groping Ivanka at the RNC convention?
God knows if that is happening on national TV, what goes on when millions are not watching.
bemused
@Corner Stone:
Well, you clearly took what I said quite differently from what i intended. Clearly, I was not clear.
Trentrunner
This is hogwash. Rape & sexual assault are about both sex AND power.
My fellow lefties annoy me so much when they trot out the self-serving tropes like
“Rape is about power, it’s not about sex.”
“Bullies are just afraid on the inside.”
“Racism is just about ignorance, not hate.”
No, no, and no.
Rape is about sex. Without sex, it’s not rape.
Most people are afraid on the inside; most of us don’t bully.
Ignorance is a by-product of the hate the drives the racist engine, not the other way around.
Do better, sisters and brothers.
Mnemosyne
@bemused:
That’s what that “The Rock Test” is about. That kind of thing will help with the clueless ones.
However, in the Liz Meriweather story, the guy was very clearly propositioning her and refusing to accept her refusal. The mere fact that he would insist on having a business meeting in his hotel room says that it was a setup by him.
I was a freelance journalist once upon a time. I interviewed Leonardo di Caprio in a hotel suite — on the living room side of the suite. Because it was a business meeting that was set up by professionals.
(This was for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? so he was, like, 19. Nice guy, pretty hyper, publicist stayed in the room like she should in a normal situation.)
Corner Stone
@Trentrunner: Oy, vey.
Mnemosyne
@Trentrunner:
Go fuck yourself. It wasn’t fucking sexy when someone groped me against my will.
The fact that someone’s turn-on is sadistically forcing someone else to do something they don’t want to do doesn’t make it “about sex.”
bemused
@Mnemosyne:
Right, he didn’t care about her signals.
Mnemosyne
@bemused:
But it’s not that he didn’t pick up on her signals, or that she gave the “wrong” signals. He didn’t care that she was signaling “no.”
You were veering a little close to he just didn’t know any better. Which is the point of that article that advises men to picture The Rock when they’re in a work situation — they should treat their female colleagues the same way as they would The Rock in the same situation.
Ladyraxterinok
In grad school in the 60s (in the humanities at a prestige school) a woman student was pursued by a young, highly respected scholar. All the students knew of it; as far as I know neither she nor anyone else thought it was worth reporting. She and her best friend in the department changed schools after a year.
Shortly theregafter a woman assistant dean (I think) reported some female students reported being hit on by male TAs. She was very vocal in her concerns and emphsized the power imbalance (first I recall ever hearing about this concept). Her concerns were ridiculed, and they were the topic of running jokes for several years. Everyone knew these events had been reported, but it was just a big joke. I don’t recall anyone being upset by this.
bemused
@Mnemosyne:
Right, he didn’t care about her signals, no, not interested signals I sure didn’t mean anything else.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Absolutely appalling that that attitude still persists.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
So funny!
SiubhanDuinne
@Trentrunner:
Nope. Is about power. Period, full stop.
The power may be expressed via the sexual organs, but it is no more about sex than Hamilton is about cat food.
SiubhanDuinne
@Trentrunner:
Wow.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, rape is an act of violence with sex as the weapon.
Tazj
@gene108: I think Hillary will have to apologize for it, after all it’s her fault Trump is president. Really, what’s happening on CNN is insane.
Hillary agreed to give money to charity because of Weinstein’s donations and it’s still not good enough for CNN. Dylan Byers said if she donates money to charity(she said she always gives 10% of her money to charity), then what difference does it make and Jake Tapper agreed with him. Yes, because it’s all up to Hillary to solve this problem. They’re not interested in solving the problem of sexual abuse, they just want to kick a Democrat.
Anthony Bourdain just criticized her on Twitter and is convinced that she had to have known. Why is she being held to account more than everyone else for the sins of Weinstein? I know she was the Democratic nominee and he gave money to her, but I’m sure anyone who was the nominee at the time would have excepted the donations, even Bernie.
They just want to be absolved of their role in Trump’s election by trying to prove that she is actually as bad as Weinstein or worse than Trump.
schrodingers_cat
@Tazj: She should just tell them to go fuck themselves. AB is an asshole. Another old guy with a young wife. IIRC also a cheater.
J R in WV
Mrs J was one of the first women hired into her career company. They had/have tests applicants must take before being offered a job. She aced her test, her future boss made her take it again while he watched, thought she cheated.
Later on he nicknamed her “The Bod” as she is… um, well built. Later on he was transferred to a larger bureau, where he eventually retired. At his retirement party, a long-time senior woman asked him, loudly “Dick, is it really true that you used to call Mrs J “The Bod”? and he flushed red and ran away. Shame it didn’t happen years earlier in his career.
So we know all about abuse by the powerful and immoral.
Corner Stone
@Tazj: For what little it is worth, AB is getting dragged for his non-stop bullshit at about 95% return rate. What a typical misogynist asshole.
“She’s smaht so she had to have known everything!”
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Wasn’t he playing a WWC whisperer just after the elections. He has a lot of fans on Balloon Juice. I think his schtick is getting rather old and repetitious.
But her emails!!!
@Tazj:
Anthony is getting push back on twitter for his comment.
The entire media fixation on Hillary with regards to Weinstein smells extremely fishy. He was a donor and as a high profile politician, her world does intersect with Hollyworld more than the average persons, but not to the extent she would necessarily be aware of him being an abusive asshat.
Network executives like Zucker and high profile TV and Cable news personalities would far more likely to be privy to the apparently open secret that Weinstein was a sex predator. So why aren’t we hearing about this aspect? If everyone connected to the industry knew about this, why wasn’t it broken years earlier by at least the entertainment media if not the news media? And where are network executives like Zucker who must have had relationship with Weinstein stepping forward personally to disown him and disavow their contacts with him? I can’t help but think this is a concerted effort to deflect attention from Hollywood and the media by attacking Clinton.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: I actually like some of his projects, as interesting craft type work. But I also read his earlier books and know how he celebrated manliness and toughness and all that misogynist bullshit that working in the kitchen comes with. So the fact that he’s not outing a fuckton of his fellow celeb chefs for all kinds of mistreatment of women in the industry tells me all I need to know about his hypocrisy.
The relentless drive to pin this on HRC, from any direction possible, should tell rational people all we need to know about how sexism and the media hurt this last election.
Corner Stone
@But her emails!!!:
The larger problem with this example is that he didn’t stop at one or two and start thinking about what they were telling him. He pushed forward with like 6 twits all saying variants of the same thing. In one he hid behind Asia Argento, like that made his criticism ok.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: I used to like his Travel Network show in the mid aughts. Do you remember an episode where he hung out with Ted Nugent? Gross.
lowtechcyclist
@debbie:
There’s a Doonesbury for that. (From that time period, even. Early 1974.)
Alain the site fixer
I’ve both been subject to unwanted sexual advances/pressure and I’ve known many women who’ve told stories.
As a white male, well-educated, upper middle class, it was a shock to me when I was 21, to be pressured by a rich customer who asked for me to deliver his purchase to his room in the Ritz-Carlton. This rich doctor was clad in just a robe and told me his wife was out shopping and that I should sit on the bed next to him. I felt a lot of pressure and recall him making a comment or two when I made it clear I wasn’t playing those games. I took a long weird walk back to my store and later, confided in my manager what had happened. She was outraged but not entirely surprised.
Power and control over others are strong drivers for many around us and we must always be careful not to surrender to it, nor fall victim to it.
Tazj
@Alain the site fixer: How awful, sorry you had to go through that.
Gretchen Diefenderfer
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re so right – all women understand this. I’m reading all the comments and my heart is clenched up – PTSD.
Alain the site fixer
@Tazj: It was weird but nothing like what so many have suffered. Mostly, it enlightened me a bit as to what women suffer. I mentioned it to encourage other men to speak up, or to at least consider how they’ve just been lucky. I’ve also felt inappropriate pressure in work environments from straight women, and negative pressure (hostility because I was straight male) from pro-gay-women coworkers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alain the site fixer: I’ve been sexually harassed in the workplace (female on male) a couple of times and I have been the subject of unwanted propositions and people who don’t get that no means no – to the extent of being offered money (male on male). My situations were rare in my life, but they were horrifying. They give me some insight into what women experience, but I can count mine on one hand. Everyday? Jebus.
Peale
@But her emails!!!: yep. I bet all of these Nitwits knew about Ailes and O’reilly and they aren’t that interested in uncovering any more of their own industry’s secrets. Hillary hasn’t done enough to stop Weinstein is a convenient way to make sure they aren’t ever asked what they didn’t do.
Hillary isn’t running for any office, but they they still wank off when she’s punished.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Holy WTF crap
You know, if Trump is right, and while he maybe a narcissist with dementia he is good at reading a mark from his life time of scamming people, Trump’s lost his base so it makes a Trump resignation only a matter of time, likely after the primaries so to the Republicans can go into the 2018 elections claiming it was all Trump’s fault, he was crazy you know.
fuckwit
Men know that this kind of predatory behavior is pervasive and blatant.
I have long seen and heard evidence that this knowledge (guilt?) is lurking behind a lot of homophobia.
Most gay men have no interest in straight guys. However, the fear of what would happen to us if they were…
RobNYNY
@fuckwit:
My opinion is different. Many straight men are interested in gay men who have a convenient apartment within walking distance of the office at lunchtime, and who can keep a secret. Lots.
RobNYNY
@RobNYNY: @RobNYNY:
Oh, and business trips. Married guys love business trips. Top or bottom, bring condoms.
EthylEster
Name names. That’s the only thing these douchebags understand.
EthylEster
@Corner Stone: OK, this is the thing I don’t get. Harvey has a hand. Why not just beat off and avoid all of this embarrassment?
EthylEster
@debbie:
Floyd (can’t remember his last name and he’s got to be dead now), the stockroom guy in the chemistry department, used to pat my ass and make suggestive comments when I was a grad student in the 70s. He said something horrible one time while I was teaching lab. I told him to fuck off in a loud voice so others around me would hear. He was gob-smacked and made a beeline for my advisor’s office to complain. My advisor’s secretary later told me that my advisor’s response was: “She wouldn’t have said without good reason.” I got unexplained friendly smiles from other female staff in the department after that. I guess it wasn’t only my ass he was patting. He was never a problem after that. BUT he was also a low level employee, not a faculty member. And my advisor was obviously a standup guy.