More Violations of Dude Process

I’m tempted to propose a seminar called “That Is Not What Due Process Means,” and powerful men accused of sexual assault since 2017 alone would provide enough case studies:

Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual assault or harassment by more than 80 women. News of the allegations against him helped kick off the current, most public phase of the Me Too movement. To many, he is a symbol of the way influential men can abuse their power, unchecked and even aided by those around them. He’s often held up as an example of someone accused of so many serious crimes and misdeeds that other accused men pale in comparison — maybe some people can be forgiven, the argument sometimes goes, but surely not Harvey Weinstein.

Then, on Wednesday, he walked right into a comedy show.

Specifically, Weinstein — who has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges and has denied any “nonconsensual sexual activity” — visited Actors Hour, a monthly event for young comedians and actors at a Manhattan bar, as Amber Jamieson reports at BuzzFeed News.

When actor Zoe Stuckless confronted Weinstein at his table, they, not Weinstein, were asked to leave. “This guy was leading me out the stairs,” Stuckless told BuzzFeed, “just repeating ‘due process, due process’ to me.”

As Weinstein’s representative reminded the public in a statement, the producer has not been convicted of a crime. But the fact that a venue apparently welcomed him into an event for young actors, then punished someone who tried to criticize him, is a reminder of something that’s become apparent at this point in Me Too: While powerful men routinely compare the allegations against them to “death,” they’re often welcomed back into their old circles after only a brief departure.

To state what should be obvious, it does not violate anybody’s “due process” rights to be criticized, onstage or off, at a comedy club. Harvey Weinstein is entitled to a presumption of innocence in a court of law; he is not entitled to the presumption that dozens of women are lying about him when he interacts with other private individuals in public. As North says, the idea that powerful men credibly accused of abusing women are entitled to freedom from social sanction unless they’ve been convicted of a crime in a court of law is both absurd and pernicious.

Another example of this phenomenon is an awful recent article by Emily Yoffe, which inter alia asserts that a Jonathan Kaiman’s “due process” rights were violated when he was fired after a three month investigation determined that charges of sexual misconduct by other journalists were credible. Again, it’s just amazing what “due process” protections people pretend to think American workers are generally entitled to whenever a white guy is a accused of a sex-related offense. Even better is that this article was published in Reason. My questions are 1)what “due process” rights do the editors think workers are entitled to before being terminated and 2)should these rights be available to people other than white guys accused of sexual misconduct? I think we can be pretty confident that they haven’t embraced Elizabeth Anderson and come out against at-will employment.

By the way, a special Harvey Weinstein Due Process Award goes to Caitlin Flanagan, who grossly smeared one of Kaiman’s accusers — the journalist Felicia Somnez — while being almost proud of having no idea what the facts of the case were, but going ahead and fitting them around misogynist 80s movie tropes anyway.