STASI: Itâs time to recognize male victims of Hollywood sex abuse
Nobody listened as Hollywood pedophiles allegedly raped, molested and destroyed male child actors' lives for decades. Few believed it. Even fewer cared. Most still don't.
To some, the newest revelations reinforce what they already believed about gay men â that gay men like underage boys. How crazy is that?
Pedophilia is no more gay sex than rape is heterosexual sex. Both are crimes committed by perverted beasts, not consenting adults.
The now-grown male victims of these Hollywood rapists and assaulters were laughed at, mocked, shamed, put down, degraded and some say threatened. They were called deranged and wacko opportunists, because, really, who doesn't want to get famous by admitting you were raped by a pedophile power broker when you were a frightened, helpless little child?
Corey Feldman, for one, has been mocked for years for trying to let the world know what happened to him and to his best friend Corey Haim, who he says was raped at 11 years old while filming a movie. He's now raising money for his own documentary about it.
Feldman ended up a Hollywood pariah for among other things, speaking out. Corey Haim wasn't as lucky. He ended up dead at 38 from untreated pneumonia after years of suffering from depression and drug addiction. Some wounds are so deep the only way to get relief is to die.
Now suddenly each day we're hearing about other Hollywood victimized kids, but unlike the tales of women who were sexually assaulted and harassed, the ordeals of these now-adult men tend to be smaller stories.
Accused sexual predator Kevin Spacey should be taken to court.
(Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Take Kevin Spacey â or I should say take Kevin Spacey to court? The allegations he assaulted a child actor, (as well as other young men, which went on apparently for decades) should be front page news every day as each new allegation arises.
But new accusations from men are often relegated to a strip, a mention, a note, while Harvey Weinstein's crimes against women continue to capture the big news.
Spacey is not just seemingly unrepentant, but still so full of himself that he said of the accusation he sexually assaulted 14-year-old Anthony Rapp â in a tweet yet â that he didn't remember the "encounter." Encounter? An encounter implies a romantic interlude between consenting adults, not the sexual assault of a child.
Worse, he then wrote that if it had happened, he had no recollection of it because he would have been drunk at the time.
I once interviewed a notorious pedophile priest who had been accused of raping dozens of little boys. He said the same thing.
A man possibly rapes or assaults a child and he can't remember it? That only makes his alleged crimes that much worse. Do men like this feel so little for their victims that they can't even honor them enough to remember destroying their lives?
Anthony Rapp accused Kevin Spacey of groping him when he was 14 years old.
(Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Spacey added in that same statement, that he'd had relationships with men and women throughout his life, as though coming out as bisexual would be so shocking that no one would care that he could be a pedophile. That's how sick this dude is.
Now another man has anonymously accused Spacey of attempted child rape, and actors and staffers at the Old Vic, where Spacey was artistic director for 11 years are claiming that a blind eye was turned on his sexual misconduct.
Oh, you missed those stories? Maybe because they weren't that big a deal. Unless you were that kid or those staffers.
In 2014, filmmaker Amy Berg made a documentary about the scourge of Hollywood child sexual assault titled "An Open Secret." Variety called it "nonsensationalist" at the time because the film treaded lightly to avoid lawsuits.
No one wanted to distribute the movie and few believed the accusations, which were met with disdain. It was recently released for free and has had more than 3 million views. Suddenly it's an "overnight" hit and no one's laughing anymore.
We all feel for the female victims of Hollywood sexual assault. Now it's time to feel for the men too â and well past the time for potential criminals all to be prosecuted.
Bill Maherâs Half-Baked Rant Against Hollywood Predators
On Friday nightâs edition of Real Time, host Bill Maher dedicated the final of his âNew Rulesâ to the ongoing crisis in Hollywood: powerful men exploiting their positions of power to allegedly sexually harass and/or assault young women and, in the case(s) of Kevin Spacey, boys.
The first alleged serial offender to be exposed was film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who stands accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct with close to 100 women; he was followed by independent filmmaker James Toback and his pal, hack studio director Brett Ratner.
âYou probably have noticed in America lately that thereâs something wrong with dudes. The recent stories of sexual harassment are about many thingsâlike misogyny, and white privilege, and old-fashioned being a pigâbut Iâm telling you, there is something toxic about this male laziness,â offered Maher on his HBO program.
He continued: âIf Harvey Weinstein had made even a minimal effortâjoined Jenny Craig, shaved, listened, generally tried to not look like a Russian cab driverâhe could have attracted women the old-fashioned way: by being rich and not entirely repulsive. With all these creeps, thereâs no wining, no dining, no game, no effort to be charming or witty. Just open the bathrobe and, âSay hello to my little friend.ââ
On Friday nightâs edition of Real Time, host Bill Maher dedicated the final of his âNew Rulesâ to the ongoing crisis in Hollywood: powerful men exploiting their positions of power to allegedly sexually harass and/or assault young women and, in the case(s) of Kevin Spacey, boys.
The first alleged serial offender to be exposed was film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who stands accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct with close to 100 women; he was followed by independent filmmaker James Toback and his pal, hack studio director Brett Ratner.
âYou probably have noticed in America lately that thereâs something wrong with dudes. The recent stories of sexual harassment are about many thingsâlike misogyny, and white privilege, and old-fashioned being a pigâbut Iâm telling you, there is something toxic about this male laziness,â offered Maher on his HBO program.
He continued: âIf Harvey Weinstein had made even a minimal effortâjoined Jenny Craig, shaved, listened, generally tried to not look like a Russian cab driverâhe could have attracted women the old-fashioned way: by being rich and not entirely repulsive. With all these creeps, thereâs no wining, no dining, no game, no effort to be charming or witty. Just open the bathrobe and, âSay hello to my little friend.ââ
New Rule: Toxic Male Laziness | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
To recap: Maher is attempting to blame these menâs sexual predation on their being lazy. But sexual assault isnât about passivityâitâs about power. Laziness, it seems, has very little to do with why these men did what they did.
In fact, what Weinstein stands accused of doing took considerable effort. He wined and dined many of these women, and invited them to events. Sometimes, he would prey on a woman for months on end, as in the case of Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyongâo, who claims that as a Yale graduate student she was invited to Weinsteinâs home in Connecticut, to âdinner meetings,â you name it. He would often attempt to inveigle and manipulate these womenâto establish a rapport, to earn a degree of trustâbefore he allegedly violated it, and them. He had no issue attracting âwomen the old-fashioned way,â as Maher claims. Rather, most of these alleged sexual assaults occurred while he was married to striking women. Heck, Brett Ratner dated Serena Williams and Mariah Carey.
The Real Time host went on: âAnd when they get turned down, what is with this epidemic about, âI give up, you win, Iâll just masturbate in front of you.â Cosby didnât even want his women conscious. Apparently [journalist] Mark Halperinâs m.o. was just to rub his erection against a woman in the office, like heâs some horny spider monkey that dabbles in political analysis. Someone needs to write a book called, âHow to behave with a woman like youâre not an asshole.ââ
Now, these men are certainly assholes. But itâs hard to believe that they preyed on women out of laziness or their inability to get laid. Most of these men, according to the womenâs (and boysâ) horror stories, felt that their positions of power entitled them to the privilege of their bodies.
It would also be remiss not to mention that Maher himself has long stood accused of a certain degree of misogyny (though, to be fair, there is a great deal of distance between the comedianâs casual misogyny and sexual harassment or assault). His good friend Ann Coulter once remarked on his program that the proof of it was in âevery single thing you say about womenââlike, say, constantly referring to Sarah Palin as a âbimboââwhile one of Maherâs exes, Karine Steffans, said of him, âBill wants someone he can put down in an argument, tell you how ghetto you are, how big your butt is and that youâre an idiot. Thatâs why you never see him with a white girl or an intellectual.â
What Bill Maher Gets Wrong About Sexual Predators in Hollywood (and Beyond)
