To hav3 had enough of Harvey Weinstein on the radio

However there is a big difference between the effect of the abuse on a young, vulnerable and totally helpless child and a fully grown woman who went along with the ‘casting’ couch to further her career.

Please tell me what your qualifications are for saying this? Are you a qualified psychologist? psychiatrist? or have you been raped as a child and then again as an adult when someone was using their power over your ability to get work to do this so that you are in a position to compare? How easy it is to suggest the brave 'nos' are the answer when it is not you in that position.

Noticeably Anya, you are just as anonymous - with your comments about other posters - as we all are.

I agree with anya. Children are the most vulnerable in society. I'm not a psychologist, and haven't been raped: its opinion. That is also why paedophilia is reviled by society. Its the ultimate in dominating someone who has no way of reporting, resisting, or in some cases even knowing its wrong.

It's and opinion based purely on what I would see as misguided emotion MissAdventure as you admit it is not based on knowledge or experience.

Different circumstances will bring about different results but on the whole such comparisons are odious and do not improve the situation for either the children or the adults.

The women who are able to say no are very lucky to have the strength of personality to do so but predators seem to be able to sense the vulnerable which makes children an easier target.

But, no one can actually say with absolute certainty which victim has been the most affected.

In my work, protection of vulnerable people is mandatory training on the protection of those deemed as vulnerable. It includes children, those in hospital, the elderly, etc. So, my opinion has some basis to it. Regardless, my opinion stands.

kitty the women who are now coming forward are not your usual victim types, they include famous actress, news anchors, female film makers, and the like.

My reaction is one of almost disbelief that these strong women just le the matter go, even though it was common knowledge about this man. I simply don’t believe that they were traumatised in the same way a vulnerable child would be, having listened to victims of child abuse and compared them to the way these women are coming forward now. Indeed they are not actually claiming it has completely affected their lives but rather that it was a distasteful incident that they wish they’d done something about earlier.

not your usual victim types, they include famous actress, news anchors, female film makers, and the like

What the * are your "usual victim types". No wonder there is so much prejudice against survivors

A lot of the emotive comments expressed on this subject is just so unpleasant, thoughtless and without any understanding of what being vulnerable to someone in power can do to you.

I will leave you to your superiority and victim blaming.

A lost of famous people distancing themselves from him now, who were probably previously sucking up to him to get jobs.

lot not lost

Get off your high horse GG

These women were only ‘vulnerable’ in as much as it affected their careers. They had a choice and could have reported him, indeed many did. They chose to keep quiet unlike little children in care homes who had nobody.

And let’s not get personal. If you can’t make your point withoit resorting to what you see as insults, then that’s a failing.

It gives the MSM a very good, and "politically correct", reason to put glamorous, scantily clad women all over the TV news and front pages.

I feel you are making it very personal Anya. You are denying the survivors the truth and supporting the culture that says it is okay for powerful, predatory men to do what they want because it will always be the woman's fault.

Add to that your sickening comparison between vunerable children and vulnerable adults and the 'getting personal' comes from you Anya and your superior vision of yourself as the 'better person' than these women in the same circumstances. You are making it very personal indeed.

I don’t think comparisons are de facto odious. Vulnerable children being abused and let down by the very institutions that should be protecting them - the care system, the police, the CPS and god knows who else in the establishment (MT was informed about CS behaviour but still chose to approve his knighthood) is very different from the stories coming out about HW. I am not victim blaming but there are different degrees of victim hood. Apart from mostly’s excellent point, I’m finding some of the details voyeuristic and salacious.

GG I do think your posts are going a bit OTT.

As for comments about his wife - this whole sorry saga is full of a cast of hundreds of enablers who all it now appears ‘knew something’ and his wife knew nothing?

To answer the OP, yes, YABU.

The Harvey Weinstein story is just the tip of the iceberg. The type of harassment these women have had is repeated throughout society. I endured it myself in the 1970's. I was young and naive and didn't have a clue what to do about it. My word against an older, very much senior colleague? I wouldn't have had a chance. Luckily an older woman witnessed what was going on and took my harasser to task.

For the average young woman to see that this harassment can happen to famous women is a step to helping them realise they don't have to put up with it. The more women speak out, the more likely it is that the problem can be tackled. After all, we encourage the victims of domestic violence and abused children to shout out. The HW story is just a continuum of the same sorry tale and it's better to get it out into the open and call it what it is - abuse of power and privilege with evil intent.

Standing up for Anya here. The people who were abused or molested by the loathsome HW were victims, but they were adults, adults who had an element of choice. Yes, he was a bully and abused his power and no doubt did the 'you'll never work in this town again'threat, but, but, but, the adults involved could have decided that getting into or staying in the film industry just wasn't what they wanted if doing whatever unspeakable things HW wanted them to do was the price. The children in care had nobody to fight their corner, nobody to believe them, nowhere to walk out and go to. This is not about degrees of victimhood or victim blaming, but to compare Ashley Judd or whoever being groped to a terrified child in care being held down and raped by the very people who were supposed to be looking out for them is not helpful and somehow diminishes the dreadful abuse that children have suffered. I am not in anyway excusing what HW did.

I agree with the op to a certain extent, the coverage of this news item is way over the top, given it's Hollywood which isn't the real word. There's an air of hypocrisy about it, because the way HW behaved was a well known fact in many circles, I'd read articles that alluded to his behaviour. The shock horror expressed now seems almost forced, in that anyone who has had dealings with him is expected to make some sort of statement expressing their condemnation in a too little too late kind of way.

Possibly some of the women accepted the quid pro quo of the casting couch, but I don't think it can be assumed just by looking at well known actresses as they are today that they weren't at one stage the young ingenue as the incidents referred to are historical. Many said they felt cornered and humiliated by his gross misconduct. In some of their descriptions it sounded as if they the victim had been cornered and had to use their wits to extractate themselves from a tricky situation. As one of the women stated, HW was all powerful in Hollywood so there wasn't anyone who they felt they could go to journalist or otherwise who would have listened to their side and possibly they would have been cast as some money grabbing opportunist.

I also think that there is a huge difference between sexual harassment in the ordinary workplace and that in HW’ s world. His world is one where women’s looks above all determine their success. All these names we’ve heard about in the last few days are complicit in the construction of a view of women which impacts then on all females - size of breasts, smoothness of skin, thinness of body. And adds to the narrative that encourages men to see women merely as sexual objects of desire in the workplace and elsewhere

GG I do think your posts are going a bit OTT.
Do you maryeliza? I am shocked and horrified by what some posters are saying. If it sounds like that my message is exactly what I want it to be.

I don’t think comparisons are de facto odious.
There maybe some truth in that of course. Just because people have been saying it since the 1500s doesn't mean that that collective view, gained over those hundreds of years has any truth in it.

Vulnerable children being abused and let down by the very institutions that should be protecting them
So are the adults. What is the point of this comparison? Both should be looked after under the law and within our culture.

Apart from mostly’s excellent point, I’m finding some of the details voyeuristic and salacious.
That is because you and mostly are choosing to access the very sources you are complaining about and it is whatifery when it comes to the survivors and the predatory acts.

As for comments about his wife - this whole sorry saga is full of a cast of hundreds of enablers who all it now appears ‘knew something’ and his wife knew nothing?
Again you are complaining about the very thing you are helping to engender. If you didn't watch, listen or read the more gossip orientated source they would stop a lot more quickly.

SueDonim thank you. That was a really well directed post.

the adults involved could have decided that getting into or staying in the film industry just wasn't what they wanted if doing whatever unspeakable things HW wanted them to do was the price.

Do you not realise what you are saying GillT57. Your words are comparable with those boys who shout "whore, whore" after a gang rape at girls who have gone into the 'wrong place' despite the fact that it is public space.

You are agreeing that a man who is powerful is above the law and may, not matter what the woman's job is, either assault them or deprive them of their livelihood. Is this just inverted snobbery because their job is as an actor - presumably you are saying we don't need actors so they should do something else - or would you apply this to the office worker - she could always have left her job - or a nurse, say - she could always have left her job. The surgeon may be a nasty piece of work but he is powerful so she must loose one way or the other because of his sense of entitlement.

I cannot believe in this day and age these things are still being said and women are still blaming women.

isn't rape and abuse ALWAYS about power and control? There are no degrees of rape its a vile abhorent crime against women and children and we shouldn't be victim blaming regardless of the reason they kept their abusers secrets

I realy think comparing casting couch antics with those boys in North Wales children's homes is cruel, they lay in blood stained beds frightened and in pain. Many have taken their own lives. Ms. Paltrow and Ms Jolie looked very healthy and Ms Jolie's husband continued to work with the man who allegedly harassed his wife. Not forgetting Ms Jolie has been showered with humanitarian awards and praise yet remained silent on an alleged sex fiend