New Questions Arise After Harvey Weinstein Accuser Jessica Mann Claims He 'Does Not Have Testicles'
She gave a graphic description of his genitalia.
Getty It was only a matter of time before the details coming out of the Harvey Weinstein rape trial in New York shocked the world. But we did not expect to be shocked by a graphic description of Weinstein's genitals this soon in the trial.
Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress who claims to have been assaulted by Weinstein two different times testified last Friday. She shared details about how she knew the disgraced mogul and why she tried to have a normal relationship with him even after he attacked her the first time.
Her recollections about the way he treated her physically and emotionally were quite disturbing and anyone who's sensitive to such material should be cautions before reading the rest of this piece. We will be quoting her testimony.
Perhaps the most unsettling part of her story is the way she described Weinstein's body. Mann gave a disturbing account of how Weinstein looked — and smelled — without his clothes on. She shared intimate details about his genitalia that are raising all kinds of questions about whether or not Weinstein might have suffered some sort of injury or if he could possibly be intersex, as Mann surmised in the trial.
Is Harvey Weinstein intersex? Read on for all the details.
1. Who is Jessica Mann and how did she meet Weinstein?
Jessica Mann is one of two women pressing charges against Weinstein for sexual assault in New York City, along with former Project Runway production assistant Mimi Haleyi. The 34-year-old told the court that she grew up in Washington state in a rural community.
“It was a lot of cows, it smelled like poop,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot of culture.” She also explained that her family had been deeply religious, saying, "I would describe how I grew up [as] a cult. It was extremely religious, Evangelical.”
Mann said that her move to Los Angeles at the age of 25 brought a lot of tension to her relationship with her family. She had left, hoping to pursue an acting career and when she met Weinstein at a party in 2013, she wanted to believe it was a sign that she was making the right choice with her life, despite what her family had said.
"I had given up a lot to be in Hollywood. It was a big fight between me and my dad and with my religious background, I thought God was blessing me by meeting him,” she explained. “I thought it was a blessing.”
2. At first, he seemed interested in helping advance her career.
The first time she and Weinstein had a date, it was at a bookstore where he bought her a number of books on film history. He said it was important that she understand the whole industry. While the evening was largely unremarkable, Mann did notice some quirks in Weinstein's behavior.
“There were a few moments where he made like a grunting sound, and he would look at me, but I didn’t know if it was a personality [trait] or sort of an autistic-like trait,” she said. But apart from that, she said she found him engaging.
At a subsequent meeting, however, he claimed to be annoyed by people approaching him in a bar and invited Mann up to his room instead. Once they were there, he tried to coerce her into letting him give her a massage. She refused, so he asked her to massage him instead.
At that point, her testimony started to reveal intimate details of Weinstein physically. “At that point, he had his shirt off and he had lotion. I started putting the lotion on his back... just like very awkwardly... with flat palm, stiff fingers, and smeared it around,” she said. “He had a lot of a lot of blackheads, and the texture of that was uncomfortable.”
Another time, Mann and a friend met with Weinstein and he gave them career advice, though some of it included telling them to lose weight. After hinting that he had lead roles for them in an upcoming film, he invited them up to his hotel suite. While they were up there, Weinstein pulled Mann into the bedroom, saying to her friend, "We’ll just be a minute.”
Inside the room, he tried to force Mann to have sex with him but when she struggled, he said, "Let me do something for you. I’m not letting you leave until I do something for you.” He convinced her to lie on the bed and he performed oral sex on her, even though she did not want that to happen.
In another incident, he raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on him. She had been trying to end their relationship because she had met someone new and he demanded "one last time" from her.
Mann testified last week.
3. Weinstein was allegedly into golden showers.
Mann also testified that some of the sexual things Weinstein asked her to engage in were unusual and she found them demeaning. One time he urinated on her.
“We were in the shower. He wanted to shower first which was beneficial to me," she said, recalling that he felt his hygiene was usually lacking. "And he asked me to come into the shower and then he said to me, ‘Have you ever had a golden shower?’ and I said ‘no’ and then I felt him peeing on me."
When Weinstein's attorney Donna Rotunno asked why she didn't refuse or leave, she testified to feeling too shocked to react. "I was in shock by it. It was gross. I turned into the corner of the shower and just looked away.”
Mann admitted to having some consensual sexual encounters with Weinstein but over time became more and more reluctant to engage with him that way. “The more I realized I was just being used, I tried not to have sexual encounters with him... sometimes he just wanted to masturbate while holding me,” said Mann.
4. Is Harvey Weinstein intersex?
Mann testified that she was very inexperienced sexually and decided that the best course of action was to try and have some sort of relationship with Weinstein even after the first assault. That developed into a sexual relationship, which is how she came to know a lot about his body. She alleges his hygiene was poor and he smelled like feces.
She also shared a detailed description of his genital area. While he was proud of his anatomy and often said things like, "Do you like my fat, Jewish d***?" Mann said she observed that he looked very different than most men.
“The first time I saw him fully naked. I thought he was deformed and intersex. He has extreme scarring that I didn’t know, maybe [he] was a burn victin. He does not have testicles, and it appears that he has a vagina,” she testified.
5. Being intersex is not a negative thing.
Before we go too deep into speculating about Harvey Weinstein, we should remind everyone that being intersex and being an alleged serial rapist are separate claims and should be viewed as such. Being intersex simply means being born with "reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male."
Basically, all it means is that a person that has genitals that look more ambiguous than is typical or their chromosomes might say one thing but their bodies say another. Being intersex is not as uncommon as you would think; one estimate says that 1 in 2,000 live births are are intersex. It's a situation that comes with some complexity but in no way is it an indicator that a person is going to become a sexual predator and the two should never be conflated.
If Harvey Weinstein is guilty of the things he is accused of, that has nothing to do with the kind of sex organs he has and everything to do with him being a rapist.
6. Does not having testicles automatically mean Weinstein is intersex?
The detail about Weinstein having absent testicles is certainly striking. Being intersex is one reason for testicles to be missing but there are others as well. A person could have cancer or an injury to the region that might necessitate their removal. It's also possible to have congenitally undescended testicles that can require surgery to remove them.
Mann testified that Weinstein used an injectible medication in order to get an erection with her. If he lost his testicles for some reason, he would no longer be producing his own testosterone and he would need medical assistance to regain sexual functioning.
One thing to note is that Weinstein has five kids with two different women. Neither of his wives, Eve Chilton or Georgina Chapman, has ever indicated publicly that the children were not biologically his. However, it's possible he never had testicles and the kids were conceived with assistive technology and donor sperm, but we can't confirm that one way or another.
One other item that might raise questions about Weinstein's genitals is the accounts some women, including Mann, have given about him ejaculating during their encounters with him. Would this be possible without testicles? The answer is: possibly.
The testicles make sperm, but semen is made in the prostate and seminal vesicles. If those are intact then ,theoretically, a person without testicles could still have an orgasm that contains fluid.
7. Did any of the other accusers corroborate the description of Weinstein's genitals?
There's been a lot of talk about Weinstein's alleged acts of assault since we learned about them in 2017. Over 80 different women have told stories about being harassed, assaulted, and raped by the movie mogul. Many of the stories are from outside of the statute of limitations for a criminal prosecution, which is why there are only two plaintiffs in the current criminal case against him.
There were other corroborating witnesses who testified last week, all of whom told stories very similar to Mann's. But so far, none of them have shared details about Weinstein's genitals at all.
Assuming her lawyers knew what Mann was going to say, it would make sense that they would be prepared for other witnesses to be asked to corroborate the details so it's possible we'll be hearing more about Weinstein's penis and testicles as the trial goes on.
As for Weinstein's response to the allegations about his body, he hasn't testified so he hasn't had to say anything about his genitals under oath. When Mann described what she saw when he took off his pants, he reportedly looked down but didn't say a word. When a reporter asked him later if the descriptions were accurate, he replied, "Yeah, perfect," but it's safe to assume that was sarcasm.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.