David Penberthy: Weinstein’s last stand is his saddest

WEINSTEIN’S attempt to hide behind the made-up “illness” of sex addiction is transparent and desperate, David Penberthy writes.

YOU know you’re struggling in the public relations stakes when the only person who has got your back is Woody Allen.

The creep who infamously seduced then married his adopted daughter was out of the blocks this week to back the besieged Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Despite being devoid of a moral compass, even Allen realised the errors of his ways and withdrew his supportive remarks, issuing a 180-degree condemnation of the movie mogul who has set some squalid record for putting the weights on women against their will.

In the absence of any public or industry support, as the evidence piled up of decades of potentially criminal misconduct, Weinstein took the most predictable alternate option. He issued a statement effectively saying that the real victim here was, surprise, him.

This is because he is a sex addict.

Harvey “sex addict” Weinstein. (Pic: AFP/Yann Coatsaliou.)

“Guys, I’m not doing OK,” Weinstein said pitiably. “I’m trying. I’ve got to get help.” He then announced that he would be heading off to an exclusive rehabilitation centre in Arizona which specialises in the treatment of something which most shrinks do not regard as an illness at all, but a sham excuse for bad behaviour deliberately perpetrated by sentient beings equipped with free choice and the faculty of reason.

Weinstein’s decision to play the sex addict card is a stellar example of the modern propensity for medicalising bad choices as uncontrollable desires. Like the rugby league stars who attribute drunkenly urinating in public to a hitherto undiagnosed case of ADHD, or the disgraced former jurist Marcus Einfeld pleading for sympathy on account of depression which followed his own decision to perjure himself to duck a $77 speeding fine, Weinstein is using an imagined mental condition as a shield to ward off legitimate attacks. It is an insult to people who have suffered from genuine and lifelong mental illnesses for others to use them as alibis of convenience, in much the same way people would take sanctuary by cowering in churches in less enlightened times. Weinstein’s alibi has an added bonus of involving an ailment that’s not an ailment at all, but rolled-gold bullshit.

Multiple celebrities have admitted Weinstein’s habits were an open secret within Hollywood. (Pic: Christopher Polk/Getty)

If there were such a thing as sex addiction I reckon many men could claim to have suffered from it from time to time. There would not be a man alive who has fancied a woman and conveyed his interest, only to be rebuffed, and probably on occasion persisting pathetically before the ultimate capitulation. There are plenty of blokes out there with a reputation for being pants men, too. One of the biggest falls from grace in Hollywood involved Arnold Schwarzenegger, who famously had a secret affair (and indeed love child) with his dowdy live-in housemaid while married to the glamorous Maria Shriver, suggesting that the greatest aphrodisiac for some men is proximity.

But there is a huge difference between being a philanderer and a predator. There is a vast gulf between being promiscuous, adulterous, as toey as a Roman sandal and permanently in the market for a like-minded consensual partner with equally loose morals and unquenchable appetites, and being what Harvey Weinstein is. And that’s a predator, a predator who appears to have used entrapment and influence to coerce women into doing things that they didn’t want to do.

Weinstein’s habitual treatment of younger, less powerful women is appalling in itself. Appalling further is his attempt to rope in the rest of mankind as if we should regard his behaviour as relatable. For most of us it’s not relatable at all, because it involves the simple bedrock question of consent. With his imploring of us “guys” to show him some sympathy, Weinstein attempts to rope the rest of us into his sordid world, to give him some cover for stuff that we overwhelmingly abhor.

Weinstein is now seeking treatment for his sex addiction. (Pic: Jean Baptist Lacroix/AFP)

As the American psychologist Dr Joe Kort wrote in a thoughtful article on the Psychology Today website this week: “Harvey Weinstein is not a sex addict, he is someone engaging in non-consensual and exploitive behaviour resulting in violating basic human and sexual rights of another person.”

The list of big names who have claimed to suffer from sex addiction is a fairly long one. It includes the likes of Russell Brand, Tiger Woods, Ozzy Osbourne and Michael Douglas. No doubt their enthusiasm to embrace the term was aimed in part at getting them out of strife at home. It is an ameliorating term, in that it lessens the impact of their misconduct. But however ordinary the aforementioned blokes were in terms of their fidelity to their spouses or partners, none of them was ever accused of what Weinstein has allegedly been doing. It’s for this reason that his attempt to hide behind this made-up “illness” is so transparent and desperate, and why his attempts to enlist the rest of us blokes as inhabiting his spectrum of conduct, should be dismissed as nothing more than the lamest brand of opportunism by a pig of a bloke who doesn’t have a leg to stand on.