#themeadows

by Ethlie Ann Vare

Like much of the country, you have probably been reading the horrifying (also salacious, titillating and downright irresistible) reports of film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual harassment, abuse and assault on decades’ worth of actresses and employees. Alleged harassment, abuse and assault. Like other famous men who got caught with their dicks in their hands, he – or his handlers – are crying “sex addiction” and have trundled him off to rehab, reportedly the well-known and respected Meadows. 

Here’s my highly educated but technically non-professional opinion: Harvey Weinstein is not a sex addict. Harvey Weinstein is an abusive asshole. Some sex addicts may be abusive assholes. Some abusive assholes may be sex addicts. But they are two very different things.

Tell me that Harvey Weinstein was running up his credit cards paying hookers, or that if he failed to manipulate Actress A into sex he would dash off in the middle of the night to Actress B before coming home and lying to his wife… now I’m starting to see a pattern of sex addiction. Addiction is by definition a behavior that is out of control. It is an obsession, a compulsion, a phenomenon of craving that cannot be reasoned with. Harvey thrived on control. 

Bullying and intimidating people who have no power to fight back isn’t sex addiction. It is sadism. Weinstein continued this behavior for years (allegedly, allegedly….) not because he was a hopeless, helpless addict but because, as another malignant narcissist once put it, “when you’re a star they let you do it.”

Of course, you don’t have to be a star to be an abusive asshole. I was pressured for sex by the manager of the radio station where I applied for work as a disc jockey. I was pressured for sex by the field producer interviewing prospective video jockeys for MTV. I was pressured by one movie producer to procure other girls for him to have sex with, which now that I look back on it may have been a smidge insulting. But I was also pressured for sex by the manager of the leather shop where I punched holes in belts after school, and by the owner of the bar where I slung beer underage. You don’t have to be rich and powerful to be an abuser; you just have to be richer and more powerful than the person you’re abusing. And a young woman is almost always the less powerful. 

Joey will be at The Meadows NYC this Friday at 5pm.  Cop tix below.

Joey Bada$$ will perform at this year’s Meadows NYC Festival in September