Simon Williams Contributing Writer
Dear Harvey Weinstein,
You don’t know me mate, and that is probably a good thing for you, because you just made my life and the lives of millions of fathers like me that much more difficult. Your actions of abusing women and abusing your position of power in the Entertainment industry is now going to be twisted to be perceived as the gold standard for masculinity.
Every time a man must go to divorce court and fight for the right to be with his children and maintain some financial stability in his life, the notion that all men exist to just want to act the same way that you have will be lurking under the surface.
Emma Thompson, you don’t know me either and that is lucky for you as well, because you have already trotted out that Harvey’s actions are an example of extreme masculinity. On what planet do you live on lady?
Do you know what extreme masculinity is?
- It is a father spending years fighting to have the right to spend time with his children after a divorce so that he can be involved with them growing up to be secure, confident individuals.
- It is a firefighter standing on the front line of the fires in California for 18 hours to save the house of someone he will never know.
- It is a young marine throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of others in his troop.
- It is a man quietly, dedicating his life to work hard to provide food, shelter and safety for his wife and his family and then has to read an online article about how his contributions to the world are so meaningless that many women are up in arms that one woman still makes her husband sandwiches for lunch.
But he still diligently goes to work the next day to provide for a wife that may hold him in such low opinion.
Underdeveloped frat boys who have never had a girlfriend think that being a man is sleeping with a lot of women. Stop hanging around with immature idiots is my advice.
And you throw out that BS to paint every man as wanting to aspire to be Harvey Weinstein so that the institutions of society can be more biased against men. I’ll tell you what extreme masculinity thinks of Harvey Weinstein, he is a fat f#ck who was more than happy to leverage some women’s willingness to engage in extreme femininity to further their career, sleeping their way to the top rather than earning it.
My Dad is an example of extreme masculinity, the man that I spend my life trying to emulate and who hopes my own son will do the same, do you have the balls to meet such a man? Or are you happy to continue to mouth off about what you think extreme masculinity is, because you choose to work in a profession based on narcissism and vanity?
Simon Williams is a writer whose Author Page can be found by clicking here.
Thank you! Very well written, concise and to the point! I feel the same way about my deceased Dad and my weekend only added reinforcement to the way he brought me up. However, I feel like we’re pushing a boulder uphill sometimes!
I disagree with so much that is in this article. Simon Williams appears to be more concerned with Weinstein’s impact on men than all of the victims of his sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.
The fact that Williams has a different definition of “extreme masculinity” doesn’t invalidate Emma Thompson’s point. Emma Thompson is clearly talking about what I would call toxic masculinity, which is a widespread problem. The former MDI fight against violence against women was a fight against toxic masculinity. Weinstein is emblematic of how terribly men often treat women. We can claim a positive interpretation of extreme masculinity, but that doesn’t address the harm that so many men do, They may be immature idiots, but there are too many men who share their way of thinking. Emma Thompson is right that we need to fight against Weinstein’s version of masculinity, because it is widespread and very damaging.
Finally, the 2nd last paragraph goes so far as to blame Weinstein’s victims, describing them as “sleeping their way to the top rather than earning it”, despite having acknowledged that he was abusing women and his position of power in the introduction. I am very disappointed to see this kind of rhetoric in an MDI published article.
Reading your title, I was prepared to be really angry. The Weinstein-types of this world have nothing to do with masculinity – it’s all about abuse of power. Reading your article, I realized that your view of masculinity has to do with using your personal power to effect positive change, which is what our world needs most right now. Accountability, not blame. I am grateful to your father for modeling life as an honorable man. Thank you for carrying forward his legacy.