Jury selection opens in Harvey Weinstein’s new trial on rape charges
Jury selection began on Tuesday (US time) in Harvey Weinstein’s new trial on rape and sexual assault charges in Manhattan, a year after a state appeals court overturned the former movie mogul’s 2020 conviction.
Weinstein, 73, faces one rape count and two criminal sexual act counts in the jury trial, with Superior Court justice Curtis Farber presiding.
Weinstein, who co-founded the Miramax studio and was once one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, has pleaded not guilty and has denied ever assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex.
His conviction was a capstone moment for the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men in media, politics and other spheres.
The tactic of bringing in other allegations of coerced sexual assault into the Weinstein case always seemed like an incredibly risky gambit by those prosecuting Weinstein to open themselves up to accusation of a mistrial by polluting the Jury.
The feeding frenzy however as the man who inspired #MeToo erupted meant that punishing Weinstein was far more important than a fair trial, especially when due process and innocent until proven guilty had stopped being judicial benchmarks and had over night become savage examples of heteronormative cis male privilege.
The woke Identity Politics Left have used their newly found power in 2016 to flex and start the cancel culture wars that have backfired electorally against the Left throughout the Western World. At the height of this during Weinstein’s trial there was no certainty more certain than his guilt and his need to pay for centuries worth of unpunished sexual assaults.
This certainty led to legal tactics that were always going to leave the Case open to a mistrial accusation and that’s exactly what has happened.
The wider cultural symbolism of Weinstein’s verdict became part of the Woke Trinity dogma:
All white men are irredeemable cross burning racists.
B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL WOMEN that ALL men are rapists,
and anyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.
B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL WOMEN that ALL men are rapists fell to pieces during the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial as parents of sons started culturally fearing their sons would be accused of sexual assault more so than fearing their daughters of being on the receiving end of sexual assault.
The new evidential threshold is anything a woman says on social media, this Salem Witch Trial Feminist Revenge Vigilantism is the business model of Alison Mau who is now running an agency that pushes for private prosecutions against men…
Breaking barriers on sexual assault figures
Alison Mau had two choices when she was laid off from Stuff – carry on in journalism but not her specialist #MeToo reporting or quit the industry and try to make a meaningful difference in that area.
She chose the latter and teamed up with another high-profile campaigner, barrister Zoe Lawton, to set up the charity Tika (which means justice and fairness) to tackle the persistently low rates of sexual assault reporting in Aotearoa.
Statistics show it is one of our most under-reported crimes at just eight percent of all cases. Lawton and Mau believe Tika, which combines high tech and legal expertise, could be the circuit-breaker needed to encourage more survivors to come forward and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Tika’s platform will allow victims or survivors to register simply and securely online, and have the software search the database for a “match” on anyone who has been harmed by the same perpetrator. They’ll then be able to take group action with the help of Tika’s specialist lawyers, for free.
…the Weinstein verdict getting thrown out using these exact same tactics of using multiple complaints to overwhelm the target looks like a difficult money making proposition right now.
We’ve ended up in a social media resentment algorithm where extreme hatred against women is espoused with disgraceful ease and cruelty and no where are the issues of consent being discussed.
The tiny silver lining is that Lana Del Rey won’t have to censor he song Cola any longer.
I said it was a tiny silver lining.
The culture wars monster on as we redesign our own sexual education curriculum away from consent to a myopic focus on gender identity.
Look at how NZ First have now manipulated this debate…
An open letter is calling on the Government to keep the current relationship and sexuality education guidelines in schools and kura, despite coalition promises to do otherwise.
…now one would have thought in NZ that the pressing issues for sex education was, biological facts, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, biological facts, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent, consent and some more biological facts, look at what the woke pushed through as the sex education…
Level 1 – recognising body parts; knowing about appropriate touching; being able to accept and celebrate difference; and understanding the relationship between gender, identity and wellbeing.
Level 2 – understanding what consent means in a variety of contexts, including online; recognising other people’s feelings and respecting them; being able to identify gender stereotypes and understanding the difference between gender and sex.
Level 3 – knowing about pubertal changes; understanding different types of relationships; understanding consent, pressure, coercion and rights; being able to critique the ways in which people’s bodies, relationships and gender might be represented in the media and online.
Level 4 – further knowledge about pubertal changes and how they relate to social norms around gender and sexuality; understanding approaches to conception and contraception; learning to manage intimate relationships; understanding how to get help if needed.
Level 5 – knowledge about cultural approaches to gender and sexuality; gaining skills for enhancing relationships; analysing representations of sex, sexuality and relationships.
Level 6 – examining how gender and sexual identities can change over time; gaining knowledge about consent and safe sexual practices; critiquing heteronormative messages or practices in the community.
Level 7 – understanding physical changes across people’s lifespans; identifying risks in intimate relationships, both online and offline.
Level 8 – reflecting on their personal identity; exploring things like desire and attraction as interpersonal and ethical concepts; critically analysing issues that affect relationships, gender identity and sexuality.
…it’s all gender identity, gender identity and more gender identity!
Surely consent is far larger an issue to NZ than gender identity?
Surely domestic violence and anger management needs to be discussed well before gender identity?
The trans community represent less than 1% of the population, why has gender identity become a far larger issue than consent?
When you consider the unbelievably scathing Cass Report has been on puberty blockerswhy is gender identity being promoted Uber Alles?
All men.
All men.
All men.
Why the world stopped having sex
The poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) found that 24 per cent of French adults aged between 18 and 69 said they had had no sex over the previous 12 months, compared with 9 per cent in 2006. The proportion of those aged 18 to 24 who had never had sex was 28 per cent, up from 5 per cent in 2006. Overall, 43 per cent of the 1,911 respondents said they had sex at least once a week, compared with 58 per cent in 2009.
Overall, the proportion of French people who have had sexual intercourse in the past year – 76 per cent on average – is at its lowest level in 50 years.
The results mirrored those found in other Western countries, including a separate study last year which suggested that the number of British teenagers having their first sexual experience by the age of 15 had declined by up to a third in the past decade.
In a social media awash with instant connection for desperately lonely people, better educated women have the agency to pursue partners with wealth and power to match their education while capitalism renders those men without money into an incel swamp of self loathing.
Without the 6 million odd years of sex evolution to find a partner and replace that with flat screen attraction, we have embarked upon a new sexual revolution of ghosting with infinite choices.
I think sex has become a lot more complicated and young men are not coping…
…we have raised a generation of girls telling them every boy will rape while raising a generation of boys who fear being accused of rape.
The new woke dogma of B-E-L-I-E-V-E every woman that ALL men are rapists using nothing more than the evidential threshold of something said on social media is as judicious as the Salem Witch Trials with less humour. It’s based on gender critical and race critical intersectionist assumptions that Women are morally better human beings who would never lie where as all men are evil.
No wonder we detach and avoid each other.
Alongside these grim stats is the argument men have privilege when they are the ones failing, which has led to a poisonous broken masculinity that spawns even more incel hate algorithms with a violent misogyny.
The beauty of social media is that it is unforgiving and we are all now unforgivable. Outage Olympics fuels resentment and the most dangerous part of identity politics is when white men become the victim.
Tell young men they are the problem long enough and they become the problem.
The idea we are having less sex is driven by the new cultural disengagement between the genders.
Better educated women with money to buy Taylor Swift tickets vs men who can just stay at home and watch porn.
Less Brave New World and more ‘Sad and Lonely Old World’.
I see only further disengagement between Men and Women socially, culturally and work wise, and the new ‘decentering men’ movement spells that out perfectly…
A groundswell of women are ‘decentering men’ – what does that mean?
God (and Sex) is dead ! Thus woke Zarathustra! – (This is actually a very funny philosophical joke)
A woman recently told me she wasn’t a Feminist, and that surprised me.
I asked why, and she said, “The man hating just seems to make everything worse”.
I laughed, she laughed and we played some Lana Del Rey.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
For every woman ‘decentering men’, there is a man doing MGTOW.
It makes everyone safer and less stressed in the short-term but I don’t know if it will make for a happier society.
Martyn – Many women wanted men to change…so men did change, but not in a way many women wanted…deeply sad for both women and men…no one wins.
You’re gonna open a can of worms here. #MeToo was arguably a witch hunt. But the other side of the coin power arguably provides unscrupulous men with the means for bad behaviour. Women have lived that experience for eons. Arguably, that’s just not on. Not just men chasing women, often too young – that’s what men do, right – but imposing their will where they’re not wanted. Not once but serially. What strikes me though is the contradictions. Think of all ‘the bastards’ brought to justice for their misdemeanors, yet spare a thought for many of the icons of the rock world who pretty much took what they wanted – albeit from willing admirers.
Look, despite the dramatic special pleading for today’s wimpish men in this piece and many other articles on TDB…Weinstein was an oafish, bullying predator and rapist. Harvey got caught, banged up to rights, and no technicality will wind that back.
Yes – thanks.
Darien Fenton + Tiger Mountain – All correct for Harvey Weinstein, and yet – the wider male society movements — missing the point.
The ‘technicalities’ are the only thing holding back a state where the public’s vibe decides guilt or innocence.
Hey! Love that you dare to broach this subject whilst all others wither in their sprockets.
The culture of body modification to appease the gods of cellulose perfection has thrown a curveball across normal sexual relations.
**oxymoron alert ******
**’Better educated women with money to buy Taylor Swift tickets’******
You do have a great sense of humour
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