On the original & most effective women’s media network: gossip

Lots on the fallout of the NYT’s investigation into our current sexual harasser flavor of the week, Harvey Weinstein, but what’s especially interesting is how it’s so clearly another chapter of Women Told You So. And with a story that’s so at the center of the Hollywood celebrity industrial complex, there’s no take smarter than this one from BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen: Here's Why So Many Women Knew The Rumors About Harvey Weinstein.

It’s a short, smart analysis of the role that celebrity gossip — a topic that Petersen has tackled extensively (you can get a taste for her takes in this Twitter thread here) — and gossip in general serves in society: as an ancient, unsanctioned mode of communication that passes down important information, particularly among women — making it kind of like humanity’s oldest media network, in a way.

Must-read graf here:

“But there are enough men like Weinstein and Ailes, young and old, liberal and conservative, ones who make us feel like objects, or dirty and out of control in our workplace or classrooms, ones who can and will ruin our lives — that we’ve become dependent on unofficial modes of communication to protect ourselves. It’s no wonder, then, that so many men deride and degrade gossip: It’s our most effective armor against their abuses.

Thoughts? Questions? Useful gossip? Please forward it all over.

Like Deez Links? Forward to a Woman Who Told You So.