6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Weinstein: Is his conviction a turning point?
Harvey Weinstein’s many victims have “finally
got their Hollywood ending,” said Maureen
Callahan in NYPost.com. Two and a half
years after published reports of sexual assault
and harassment against the movie mogul
launched the #MeToo movement, a New York
jury this week convicted Weinstein, 67, of
third-degree rape and criminal sexual assault.
Weinstein was acquitted on the more serious
charges of first-degree rape and “predatory
sexual assault,” but he’ll spend at least five
years in jail, and another rape trial is pending
in Los Angeles. “It’s hard to overstate how
consequential this is.” Weinstein’s humiliating trial and convic-
tion puncture the absolute sense of impunity enjoyed by powerful
predators, making it more likely women will report their abusers.
Weinstein’s journey “from untouchable to incarcerated” is a sym-
bolic turning point, said Moira Donegan in TheGuardian.com,
signaling our society’s repudiation “of the abuse that women have
endured for millennia.”
Despite the verdict, the case demonstrated “the extreme difficulty
of prosecuting men for sexual assault,” said Barbara Bradley
Hagerty in TheAtlantic.com. More than 90 women came forward
with allegations against Weinstein, yet thanks to statutes of limita-
tions and the inherent challenge of proving that a sexual encounter
wasn’t consensual, only two of the cases made it to trial—those of
actress Jessica Mann and producer Miriam Haley. There, as our
system demands, Weinstein’s victims had to relive their intimate
trauma in a public setting, while defense lawyers catalogued each
woman’s “sexual history and personal flaws” and portrayed her as
a liar happy to trade sex for career success. This trial was a painful
reminder of why only 25 percent of rapes are ever even reported
and only 0.05 percent of those who commit
sexual violence are ever convicted.The trial saw one “crucial breakthrough”
that could change those statistics, said
Jeffrey Abramson in the Los Angeles Times.
Weinstein’s defense team showed that both
women stayed friendly with him after their
alleged assaults, and even had consensual sex
with him. Historically, this kind of evidence
has guaranteed acquittal. But the prosecu-
tion’s expert witnesses helped “jurors under-
stand how rapists overwhelm their victims
psychologically, as well as physically,” and that trying to “normal-
ize” relations with one’s attacker is common behavior for trauma-
tized women seeking to rebuild their lives after an assault. These
are “nuances that feminists have tried to explain for decades,”
said Alyssa Rosenberg in WashingtonPost.com. For a jury of
Weinstein’s peers to grasp them points to a “significant cultural
shift in the understanding of sexual violence.”But when does that shift become an overcorrection? asked Eddie
Scarry in WashingtonExaminer.com. Weinstein “got what was
coming” to him. But the #MeToo movement has also “wreaked a
lot of havoc.” In workplaces and on college campuses, we’ve cre-
ated a climate where claims have become facts, and any woman
feeling “simple regret” over a consensual encounter now has the
cultural and legal tools to ruin a man’s reputation. Spare me, said
Rebecca Solnit in The New York Times. Every day, women world-
wide still live under a mortal threat of “gender violence.” The
Weinstein verdict won’t change that, but you’ll forgive us for cel-
ebrating the news that “there are people willing to listen to women
now, and sometimes what we say has consequences.”Only in America
QAn Iowa lawmaker wants to
require people to declare their
sexual orientation when ap-
plying for a marriage license.
Republican State Sen. Dennis
Guth says his bill was inspired
by the collapse of a friend’s
marriage after her husband
revealed he was gay, and that
it would help a spouse sue for
damages if someone “falsified
his sexual orientation.”
QA New York woman who
falsely reported that she had
been the victim of a rac-
ist assault is appealing her
conviction, saying the lie was
“free speech.” Asha Burwell
claimed in a 911 call and
on Twitter that she and her
friends were “jumped” by an
N-word–shouting mob in 2016.
Surveillance video showed
otherwise, but Burwell’s
lawyer argues that if lying on
Twitter is a crime, “someone
would have to arrest our presi-
dent immediately.”No recourse for
cross-border killing
The family of a Mexican teen-
ager fatally shot by a border
agent can’t sue in U.S. courts,
the Supreme Court ruled this
week. The court’s five conser-
vatives said foreigners need
congressional authorization to
file U.S. lawsuits. The case be-
gan in 2010 after Sergio Adrián
Hernández Güereca, 15, was
playing a game in which
boys touch a fence in El Paso,
Texas, then run back to Juarez.
Border agent Jesus Mesa Jr.
grabbed one of Hernández’s
friends on the U.S. side, then
shot across the border at the
unarmed Hernández. The
U.S. has refused to extradite
Mesa to Mexico, where he is
charged with murder. Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissent-
ing, said Hernández’s parents
are entitled to sue, writing that
his location “at the precise
moment the bullet landed
should not matter one whit.”Timeless classics, after President Trump complained at a rally
in Colorado that a film from South Korea, Parasite, won the 2020
Academy Award for Best Picture. “Can we get Gone With the
Wind back, please?” Trump asked, referring to the 1939 film that
caricatures slaves as happy and simpleminded.
Extra pounds, after new research from Cornell University found
that overweight men have greater “perceived leadership potential”
in the workplace because of the “big man” stereotype. The find-
ings, researchers cautioned, do not apply to women.
Potty mouths, with the formal repeal of Virginia’s 1792 ban on
“profane swearing.” Legislators, however, kept a prohibition on
public spitting. Spitting is “yucky,” one lawmaker explained.Modern fairy tales, after armed robbers who made off with
more than $320,000 in opioid pills from a Florida pharmacy were
arrested by police who simply followed the bread crumb–like trail
of empty pill bottles thrown from the windows of their getaway car.
Trolling, after Pope Francis called on Catholics to give up insult-
ing people on social media for Lent, and pray instead of wasting
time with “useless words, gossip, rumors, tittle-tattle.”
Sexters, with the launch in Japan of the Tone e20 smartphone.
Retailing for a teen-friendly $180, the Tone e20 features an algo-
rithm that disables the camera if the user is attempting to take a
nude self-portrait, and flashes the message “Photo not taken due to
inappropriate content.”Good week for:
Bad week for:
ReutersAfter the conviction, Weinstein is cuffed.