A Voice for Men: The real victim in the Harvey Weinstein case is Harvey Weinstein

By David Futrelle

The folks at the Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men like to make up their own rules about rape. The founder of the formerly-sort-of-influential site, one Paul Elam, once famously announced that he was so mad about the way rape trials are conducted that if he were to serve on a jury in such a trial he “vow[ed] publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”

Now another writer for A Voice for Men — a pompous Canadian windbag named David Solway — has decided he wants to rewrite the laws in rape trials so as to exclude the testimony of the victims because, in his view, “personal allegations do not constitute evidentiary certitude.” Never mind that testimony is allowed as evidence in American criminal courts and that we have juries whose entire job is to evaluate whether or not this evidence is credible and convincing beyond a reasonable doubt.

Solway says “nuh-uh” to that, and devotes most of a rambling 1800-word essay to arguing that the real victim in the Harvey Weinstein case was Harvey Weinstein.

It’s not that Solway doesn’t think the now-convicted rapist is a predator; he thinks that just “[b]ecause a man is a scoundrel with predatory inclinations does not mean we have license to clap him in irons.” (Well, yes it does, if a jury is convinced that his predations rise to the level of a criminal offense.)

Solway begins his long tirade, naturally, by attacking Weinstein’s victims for supposedly allowing themselves to be abused by the predatory film producer — in essence, agreeing to their own sexual abuse and rape. Instead of avoiding him “like the plague,” Solway sniffs, these women sold their souls and their bodies to this particular devil.

Not only that, Solway argues, but they didn’t immediately distance themselves from the man.

[W]hen one reckons that those who claim to have been assaulted or raped by Weinstein did not go to the police immediately after their ordeal when forensic evidence was fresh and may still have been gathered, and that many of these plaintiffs continued to seek out Weinstein’s company with letters of affection and adulation years after the events in question, the issue begins to grow clouded.

It’s “clouded” only to those who don’t understand how powerful Weinstein was and what he could do to people’s lives and careers.

But as Solway sees it, this means that the women in question were not only not really victims; they were also essentially accomplices to Weinstein’s crimes — sorry, to the bad things that he did that somehow aren’t prosecutable crimes to Solway.

Weinstein had accomplices — and the accomplices were the very people who sought his favors and his friendship despite the criminal acts which they allege Weinstein to have committed. No psychological theory of traumatic innocence routinely espoused by feminists can launder such behavior unless we are dealing with infantile minds utterly devoid of moral agency. If Weinstein is guilty, so are his accusers who by their ongoing actions — and lack of consequent reactions — are equally complicit in allowing such criminality to persist, from which others would likely suffer in the future. Participation equals facilitation.

“Participation” in what? Their own rapes? Apparently.

Weinstein’s “casting couch” depredations were apparently common knowledge, but no one seemed very upset. If women sought his company, if they went to his hotel room, if they did not report his outrages, then they were in effect a willing part of the whole disreputable affair.

That’s not how rape works, you piece of shit.

If Weinstein was a perpetrator, they were enablers. They were under no compulsion or violent coercion to traffic with him. Those who decided to sleep their way to the top or to keep silent for fear of jeopardizing their careers must take responsibility for their decision or subsequent omertà and acknowledge their complicity.

Fuck you.

Solway goes on to suggest that Weinstein’s accusers are

a bunch of grasping, invidious, self-infatuated and morally corrupt people … in cahoots with the man they have now turned against.

After a bizarre detour into astrology (don’t ask), Solway concludes that the real criminal here is … Hollywood itself, with Weinstein playing out his role as “the victim of a jurisprudential travesty.”

It’s not much of a surprise that this despicable essay found a home in A Voice for Men — where, it seems, all rape accusations are false allegations, regardless of the number of accusers, regardless of their believability. Elam, long-time readers may recall, responded to the accusations against Bill Cosby by suggesting that the former comedian’s accusers were

just a bunch of drug whoring star fuckers … who commoditized their bodies like groupies who managed to get backstage at a rock concert. …

Women have been trading gash for stash for as long as I can remember, and they still are.

Saying that Bill Cosby gave women ludes to loosen them up for sex is about as worthy of pointing out as the likelihood is that those women loosened Cosby’s grip on his drugs by sticking their tits in his face.

Solway’s language may be less crude than Elam’s, but his argument is essentially the same: Weinstein’s accusers were selling their bodies to get ahead in Hollywood, and thus were at least as guilty as their abuser.

I’m not making any accusations myself here, but this is how abusers think. This is how rapists think. And this is evidently the party line at A Voice for Men.

Just more evidence showing why the Men’s Rights movement is a hate movement.

Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.

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