Weinstein Controversy Not Selling Well in Italy

Actress Flees Italy as ‘Sophisticated’ Europeans Side With Harvey Weinstein

Our “allies” are so thoughtful and enlightened:

Italian movie actress and director Asia Argento is facing pushback in her home country after speaking out about an alleged rape at the hands of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. While Argento’s courage in speaking about what happened to her was praised in Hollywood, and helped encourage at least 40 women to speak out about their own experiences of assault at the hands of Weinstein, public opinion in Italy has sided more with Weinstein than with Argento, according to Quartz’s Annalisa Merelli.

 Asia was apparently sent in wired to tape Harvey in mid-harassment by Ronan Farrow.

Merelli points out that the opinion writers have been remarkably bold in their condemnation of Argento and other actresses speaking out against sexual assault — former journalist and MP Renato Farina, for instance, has suggested that the assaults described by actresses are “prostitution, not rape.” Vittorio Feltri, editor in chief of Libero, a right wing populist newspaper, said that since Weinstein didn’t physically harm Argento that the sex must have been consensual — and that, if anything, Argento should be thankful to Weinstein for forcibly performing oral sex on her. Politician Vittorio Sgarbi went still further, arguing that Weinstein “was actually assaulted by her.”
Prominent Italian women have targeted Argento as well, questioning why she didn’t speak out earlier about the rape or claiming that she deserved what happened to her since she willingly visited Weinstein in his hotel room.

In wake of the public outcry against her, Argento has said that she is leaving Italy for Germany to escape the “climate of tension” and “victim blaming.”
“Italy,” Argento said, “is far behind the rest of the world in its view of women.”

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Every American woman I’ve known who has traveled in Europe has talked about how different attitudes are there. Especially in France and Italy, women report that the cat-calling is horrific. In fact, if you pay attention to complaints about cat-calling in America, you’ll notice that the problem has an ethnic aspect. When a video of a woman being harassed on the streets of New York went viral in 2014, nearly all the harassers were black or Latino. This resulted in a discussion among feminists of whether complaining about cat-calling is racist. This is how “intersectionality” works: Only white men are to blame for sexism — and only American white men, because every American liberal believes Europe is better than America.

I'm a little less harsh on Italy than Stacy. It seems to me that the Italians understand and tolerate the transactional nature of sex among the elites more than we in the United States, witness Silvio Berlusconi and his various women, and Cicciolina, pornstar and parliamentarian.  I suspect the idea of Asia Argento carrying out a sting on a fellow filmmaker.

Although I had no personal experiences in Italy (being a 65 year old man apparently made me immune), the two young women on our tour did report that Italian men were almost laughably forward in their advances, but took rebuffs as if it happened a lot.

Linked by Wombat-socho in "Rule 5 Sunday: No, Not That Asia" and "FMJRA 2.0: Deep Dark Depression, Excessive Misery."