I just read five articles on this guy and his sexual exploits in his career as a fashion photographer. His female assistant, Leslie Lessin, age 40-45, is on the whole shady enterprise and serves as a partner in crime for his creepery.
I will not go into details about what he does on his shoots, but aspiring models and working models say it nearly borders on sexual assault. He manages to get quite a few of them to have sex with him during the shoot while his male assistants and Ms. Lessin cheer, cajole and egg them on. Most of the women are disgusted and horrified at what has happened to them and feel they were taken advantage of at the very least.
There are a lot of misconceptions about this man. First is that he is a pedophile. He is not. All models were 18+.
The second is that he is a rapist, and he is committing rape or sexual assault against these young women. I do not buy it. The women were all more or less consenting adults. Granted, what he is doing is sleazy as Hell, but I do believe that it is not only legal but ought to be legal. To some extent of course, these women are to blame for getting themselves into sexual situations that they did not want to be in.
Is this sexual harassment or quid pro quo? Not formally, but it is almost verging on it. A lot of models think if they turn the guy down, they will be blackballed in the industry so they feel they cannot say no.
Sure he uses his fame, power, money and status to get laid, but so what? So do many men with fame, money, power or status. Hell, I probably do it myself. If you get to be a big enough blogger, believe it or not, you attract writer groupies or blogger groupies. Some are very attractive, and yep, you can have sex and even relationships with them. I can attest to this personally.
So it isn’t rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment or any of that. So what is it? It is extremely creepy, bullshit, outrageous, unprofessional and unethical behavior. A number of professions have guidelines against this sort of thing. Therapists, attorneys, physicians, teachers and professors can lose licenses or jobs if they have sex with clients, patients or students. They won’t go to jail, but they will have their license pulled and it will be hard to get that big bucks profession of theirs started again. Obviously photography or the fashion industry has no such code and this behavior is rampant in the whole industry. Male models are preyed on by gay photographers in the exact same way.
I know that I would not be comfortable getting laid in this way. If the models wanted to have sex with me out of their own free will, that would be ok, but I could not live with myself if people were going around telling stories like this about me and models felt disgusted and horrified by my behavior.
Granted, I am definitely quite aggressive with women, especially on dates. Women have been telling me this my whole life and it is not rare to hear them say I am the most aggressive guy they have ever met. Nevertheless, I keep it all on the up and up, and it all has to be consensual. I do not believe I have ever had sex with a female that was not 100% consensual at the time we were doing it. Sure, at times I used every trick in the book to get them into the sexual situation in the first place, but so what? Ever seducer all down through time has done the same thing. They’ve all got a system. Some had buyer’s remorse afterwards, but so what? Women often do that.
Seduction is indeed a scam, a game, a con, a ruse, a trick, a way of fooling and manipulating women into bed. Females ought to know this and should have been given some talks by their mothers or fathers about the sleazy and piggish nature of us males and how to stand up to us, avoid this behavior, turn us down, or not get into these situations in the first place. I do not know how many times young women told me, “My mother warned me about guys like you!” Well, she got the talk. Good for her.
The best seducers have a bag of tricks that would put Felix the Cat to shame. Seduction is like warfare and if females want to have a fair war they should not disarm themselves. Unilateral disarmament never makes sense. They own their bodies and they need to learn about men and what we are like and be smart and savvy, not fall for our crap, turn us down firmly and even aggressively and learn how to win these little battles of the sexes.
How do you folks feel about this guy’s behavior? About his female assistant? Is it rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment? Is it legal? Is there quid pro quo going on? Are the women to blame? Would you engage in this behavior yourself if you had the chance and could get away with it. Feel free to weigh it.