Gibson’s well-deserved downfall took up much of the early 2000s. Here are some highlights: When he got arrested for drunk driving in 2006, he called the arresting officer “sugar tits” and told her male partner that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." In 2004, he directed a movie, The Passion of the Christ, in which Christ is “relentlessly pursued by an evil cabal of Jews,” which a joint scholarship committee of the Anti-Defamation League and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops found to be “one of the most troublesome texts relative to anti-Semitic potential that any of us had seen in 25 years.” Finally, in 2010, Gibson was caught on tape threatening his then-girlfriend (“I am going to come and burn the fucking house down… but you will blow me first”), admitting that he’d hit her (“you fucking deserved it”) and, in one of the most unfortunately memorable celebrity quotes of all time, telling her that “You look like a fucking bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n----s, it’ll be your fault.”

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

We all assumed the tape would be the coup de grace. No reasonable person could make excuses for a man who’d done and said those things, no matter how charming he had been in Lethal Weapon. And indeed, Gibson’s name became radioactive, and he disappeared from the public eye. So it is especially baffling that now, in 2017 and in the midst of the #MeToo movement, Mel Gibson is back—plastered all over previews and posters for Daddy’s Home 2, which, of course, stars Mel Gibson.

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

Daddy’s Home 2 (“More Daddies. More Problems.”) is supposed to be a family comedy. Audience members are presumably not supposed to be frozen in terror or booing loudly the entire time. Which is why it's odd that at some point in the developing of this movie, a team of people decided that what it really needed was Mel Gibson, and Mel Gibson complied. It’s the end of a redemption arc that began earlier this year with his Oscar nomination for Hacksaw Ridge and has proceeded through countless friendly, fluffy talk-show appearances and headlines: “Mel Gibson Is Once Again Family-Friendly,” a recent Hollywood Reporter piece blared. I suppose that depends on how much you dislike your relatives.

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

Of course, Gibson isn’t the only celebrity enjoying our unearned forgiveness. Mike Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992. Then, The Hangover turned him into a teddy bear with a funny voice and an air of comic menace. Chris Brown was arrested for assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. He has since had 11 hits in Billboard’s Top 40. Christian Slater served 90 days in jail for beating his girlfriend and was sentenced to spend a year in a treatment program for batterers—but hey, how ‘bout that Mr. Robot? And somehow, no matter how many times he’s accused of child abuse, Woody Allen continues to make movies with all-star casts.

The mass bloodletting that began with the New York Times’ expose of Harvey Weinstein last month has been unique. Abuser after abuser has been exposed, and—for a change—actually punished. Last Thursday, for example, the Times published five women’s accounts of “sexual misconduct” by Louis C.K. (C.K. has since confirmed their accounts.) In the aftermath, FX Networks cancelled C.K.’s overall deal; Netflix cancelled his forthcoming standup special; HBO removed all of C.K.’s past projects from its On Demand service and booted him from an upcoming comedy special, Night of Too Many Stars; and, of course, C.K.’s film I Love You, Daddy will likely never see the light of day, having been dropped by domestic and international distributors. All that went down in less than a week—and that’s just one example.

RELATED STORIES

Ben Affleck on Sexual Harassment Allegations

Woman Accuses Sen. Al Franken of Sexual Assault

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

With punishments this dramatic, you’d think the upshot was clear: These men have no future. Yet you can sense the wheels of rehabilitation turning already. On Tuesday, Bryan Cranston argued that Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, both of whom have have been accused of multiple sexual assaults, might eventually deserve a second chance.

“It would take tremendous contrition on their part and a knowingness that they have a deeply-rooted psychological emotional problem, and it takes years to mend that,” Cranston told the BBC.

Which would be a good point, if he had just stopped there. Alas, he did not stop: “I think, in the face of it, we should let that open,” Cranston continued. “We shouldn’t close it off and say, ‘To hell with him, rot and go away from us for the rest of your life.’ Let’s not do that. Let’s be bigger than that… It would be egotistical for anyone to say, ‘I hope he fails.’ To that person, I would say, ‘F— you. Why would you want that? So you can be right?’”

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

But for sexual assault survivors, it’s not unreasonable for them to want their assailant to “go away for the rest of [his] life," to quote Cranston. In fact, ejecting predators from the community is usually the only way to make room for victims, who cannot and should not be forced to work in proximity with their abusers. Even if their assailant somehow becomes a “nice” person, even if he never sexually assaults anyone again, he still assaulted them—and they shouldn’t have to be reminded of that experience every time they show up to work. Still less should their abusers be allowed access to the power, resources, and influence they once used to exploit and silence their victims.

WE’RE NOT JUST EXPECTED TO SHOW SEXUAL HARASSERS THE SAME CONSIDERATION AS EVERYONE ELSE; WE’RE ASKED TO EXTEND THEM MORE.

Cranston’s call to be the “bigger” person only works if you prioritize the abuser’s feelings and forget the victim’s. Which is, well, standard practice in rape culture. We’re not just expected to show sexual harassers the same consideration as everyone else; we’re asked to extend them more. Women, in particular, have been ruined for offenses that are insignificant in comparison: Katherine Heigl was all but blacklisted for calling a Judd Apatow script sexist. Megan Fox was done after she called out Michael Bay for giving her directions such as “be hot” and “just be sexy.” Yet for Weinstein, who seems to have harassed every actress in Hollywood except Meryl Streep, we’re asked to open our hearts and be “bigger” as he embarks on his spiritual journey of healing. No thanks.

The door for sexual predators to return to the communities they’ve harmed is already open, and it has been for years. The new, revolutionary idea is that we can close it. Abusers routinely try to exploit our forgiveness or forgetfulness—and not only in entertainment: Venture capitalist Jason Caldbeck, who resigned in disgrace from Binary Capital last summer after multiple women came forth with harassment allegations, popped up this week with a plan to “to educate young men about the dangers of ‘bro culture’ in the workplace,” with tools including a website and a “51-slide presentation,” which he has already presented at Duke. Brock Turner, the infamous Stanford rapist who was sentenced to only six months in jail and served just three of them, claimed that he wanted to educate other college students about the dangers of "college party culture."

In my own loose-knit community of feminist writers, one notoriously abusive man has been staging the same comeback, over and over, for around four years; no matter how loudly he’s expelled and denounced, he will sooner or later start a new social media account and start “liking” women’s posts, necessitating the wearying and (for some) re-traumatizing experience of having to warn one’s friends about him all over again.

ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW

WE NEED TO CENTER SURVIVORS’ NEEDS, ASK THEM HOW THEY WANT US TO DEAL WITH THEIR ABUSERS, AND THEN HONOR THOSE REQUESTS.

The current resistance to these men’s comebacks rests largely on public outrage, which is a finite resource. No matter how intense these last months of 2017 have felt, they will sooner or later fade from memory. New media consumers will come of age, who were too young to have heard these stories the first time around; older consumers will lose interest. Unless there’s a People vs. O.J. Simpson-style miniseries about the life and times of Harvey Weinstein, our kids are not going to know who the hell he is. And, at that point, when there’s less chance of audience blowback, it is very likely that some of the men we’re now denouncing will be invited back into the ring by their enablers, collecting lifetime achievement awards or turning in well-received novelty cameos or booking roles on cable TV. They always have.

The situation is not hopeless. We can prevent abusers from going through an endless spin cycle of crime and shame and redemption; we can keep their communities safe from constant re-intrusion. But to do that, we have to shift our focus. Rather than worrying about whether we’re being fair to the abusers or urging survivors to be the “bigger person” at the expense of their own health and safety, we need to build a culture where the survivors come first. We need to center survivors’ needs, ask them how they want us to deal with their abusers, and then honor those requests. Shifting from an abuser-privileging culture to a survivor-centered one is not easy. It’s a 180-degree shift.

But if we want to get started, I’d say putting more women in power is a good first step. It’s harder for a community to be dominated by toxic masculinity when it isn’t dominated by men.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34715466)

ADVERTISING CONTINUE READING BELOW

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34715470)

*Mel, top five grossers of all time, can't get work*

hehe

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34715497)

You could probably actually say Muslims are responsible for 50% of all current global wars and the Jews are responsible for what, the conflict in Gaza?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34716189)

The METOO movement increasingly looks to be just the rejection by women of forcememed nebbish Jewish males.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34715796)

Lib here: mainstream liberalism is totally incoherent at this point. Are we for rehabilitation of criminals or not? Or just the poor ones? The black ones? The female ones? Gibson didn't even commit a crime!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3801372&forum_id=2#34716246)