Did Justin Baldoni Dig His Own Grave With Naive Male Feminist Philosophy?

Insisting that backlash against Blake Lively was entirely manufactured—via bots, planted stories, and shady PR tactics—betrays a disconnect from reality. It never takes much for a feeding frenzy to organically erupt against a celebrity in the age of the internet, let alone one as divisive as Lively, who has a history of putting her foot in her mouth during interviews.

Then, there’s the issue of weaponizing DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender— an unfalsifiable claim used by the media to ironically shut down public figures who dare to defend themselves. In a muddy sea of he-said, she-said, pleading DARVO to essentially say, “shut up, your defense is proof of guilt” is a bit circular in logic, to say the least, especially when it’s wielded against the player in this legal battle who has provided the most evidence for his claims. If defense is inherently an admission of guilt, then legal media disputes will devolve into a level of seriousness no more sophisticated than an elementary school’s “he who smelt it, dealt it” fart testimony. 

The War Between Narratives & Evidence 

Justin Baldoni alleges he has documentary evidence and text exchanges that prove Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds resorted to blackmail and extortion to take control of Baldoni’s film—something Reynolds is rumored to have done before—and support his claim that the harassment allegations were a strategic ploy. Although Lively could still produce evidence to bolster her account, her actions—seeking a gag order against Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman, attempting to refuse being deposed by Freedman, and filing to dismiss Baldoni’s lawsuit—are more consistent with someone who has something to hide than Baldoni’s much more forthcoming behavior. Certain accusations, like whether or not Justin Baldoni hired an intimacy coordinator can only be true or false, and we have text and documentary evidence that don’t just establish that Baldoni hired an intimacy coordinator from the beginning, but that Lively knew about it, and continually avoided meeting with her. 

For Lively to misrepresent that fact makes me wonder if she’s operating on a different plane of reality. This is a big deal, since most of Lively’s sexual harassment allegations are downstream from this insistence that there was no intimacy coordinator. That’s not the only miscommunication, either. It seems like for every allegation lauded by Lively, Baldoni has a neatly tucked away response, supplemented by evidence that contradicts Lively’s account of events. Maybe she’s tremendously unlucky, and happened to, at every turn, be okay with something one minute, only to have Baldoni push that behavior to the extreme in the next minute. 

Maybe she somehow didn’t know they had an intimacy coordinator, despite texting Baldoni that she didn’t want to meet her. Maybe Lively really was being sexually harassed by the co-star and director of the film she seems to have hijacked from him at every turn. Maybe she feared his sexual advances whilst inviting him into her trailer while she pumped (according to text messages that reportedly took place after the alleged harassment) only to then accuse him of coming into her trailer uninvited while she’s breastfeeding. Maybe she did initiate references to being “sexy” by telling Baldoni over text that she wanted her character’s wardrobe to be “sexier” but felt uncomfortable later, when she felt Baldoni crossed a line, or like he wasn’t describing the character. 

Call me crazy, but I don’t think her claims juxtaposed by her hard-to-read sexually charged late night texts about “ball busting” pass the smell test. In newly released texts, Lively says to Baldoni, "If you know me (in person) longer you'd have a sense of how flirty and yummy the ball busting would play. It's my long language. Spicy and playfully bold, never with teeth. And him serving it back to her is just as important. You don't usually see both the man AND the woman with such agency and humor." I’ll do you one better, Lively — I’ll attribute so much agency to women that I’ll hold them accountable for their actions instead of perceiving them to be helpless victims. Lively continued, "I can act it out for you next week to make sure it comes through."

Look, the lines aren't exactly clear in this profession, but at the very least, this is the sort of sexually charged message that Lively (and certainly the media) would characterize as harassment if it had come from Baldoni. Lively's allegations seem to hinge on carefully constructed misrepresentations or distorted perceptions, like the inquiry about Lively's weight for the safety of a lifting scene due to his back problems being conflated with fat shaming despite text messages confirming his sensitivity toward her postpartum body. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back was in the way Lively misrepresented onset conduct during the filming of a scene that was literally caught on camera, complete with audio. Lively’s representation of the scene in her complaint was incredibly disingenuous—accusing Baldoni of acting out of character to caress her with his lips and tell her that she smells good. What we witnessed in the unedited footage was Lively competing for control over direction of the scene and advising him to continue talking because she thought it would be more romantic, and continually bringing up her real relationship. 

Baldoni followed her lead, responding to the out-of-character comments she kept making while filming an intimate scene, which made for a murky situation: one where they’re both breaking character, but filming a romantic scene as Ryle and Lily. The statement put out by Lively’s lawyers in response to the leaked video was one of misplaced confidence that insisted, “Every frame of the released footage corroborates, to the letter, what Ms. Lively described in paragraph 48 of her complaint.” To the contrary, it only shows that Lively has a warped perception of the world, if not lends credence to Baldoni’s account that Lively continually tried to set him up. Why did she want him to keep talking and break character while filming a romantic scene? Why did she want access to all of the dailies footage? So far, Lively hasn’t been vindicated on a single allegation — only contradicted by her own words and actions. It behooves the mind that with all this on public record, Lively is given endless plausible deniability, while Justin Baldoni is employing “another chapter out of the abuser’s handbook” by daring to clear his name.

Was Justin Baldoni’s Feminist Allyship Weaponized Against Him?

Justin Baldoni has staked his career around being a good male feminist — elevating the voices of women, holding men accountable, and redefining healthy masculinity. He’s written books like Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity and Boys Will Be Human: A Get-Real Gut-Check Guide to Becoming the Strongest, Kindest, Bravest Person You Can Be. He hosts The Man Enough Podcast, whose co-host Liz Plank quit amid ironic allegations being levied against Justin Baldoni. The podcast, much like his TED Talk: Why I'm done trying to be “man enough,” have scrutinized the unhealthy habits he sees in men — among them include bottling up their feelings, feeling like they can’t open up to their male friends for fear of being perceived as weak or feminine, equating femininity with weakness, objectifying women, and failing to hold men accountable for locker room talk or more nefarious actions, like sexual harassment or assault. 

He’s devoted a considerable chunk of his career to promoting gender equality and even participated in an hour-long video conversation for Wayfarer Studios’ YouTube channel to talk about the #MeToo movement alongside five other men working in Hollywood, including his collaborator Jamey Heath, who is named in Lively’s complaint as someone who sexually harassed her. In the video, Baldoni invites his male peers to have tough conversations about the ways in which men are socialized to see women as sexual objects to be conquered, what it means to give consent, and how attitudes about looking the other way or not speaking up contribute to the problem. "Because of the Me Too movement, I started thinking about my own silence and complicity,” Baldoni said. 

Baldoni's brand as a "woke" ally to women is no secret. With his man bun proudly adorned to his head, he wore his feminist badge on his sleeve. Lively acknowledges his reputation in text messages attached to Baldoni’s lawsuit, where she makes mention of how "woke" both of them are, and I don’t think this fact was incidental. Baldoni’s reputation as a male feminist made him the perfect sacrificial lamb for Hollywood elites looking to atone for the industry’s past sins. I think it’s no coincidence that the same journalist that brought us the scathing investigative reporting that took down Harvey Weinstein was behind the Justin Baldoni “smear machine” reporting. In an industry that relishes patting itself on the back for supporting women, there's no downside to ditching a man who supposedly failed to meet the standard he himself advocated for: listen to women, shut up, and take it lying down. Whether or not any of Lively's allegations prove to be true (and currently, it certainly does not look good for her) the optics of his naive political philosophy basically sealed his fate.

Post-Me Too, anyone with any stake in their reputation—be they studios, agencies, the press, creatives—have no problem throwing men who have been accused of sexual harassment out to the wolves for the better good. If in the past, Hollywood roles were gatekept by sex pest producers, logic would have it that it was best to air on the side of caution by believing women to atone for the industry's past sins. Those sins may feel a little too fresh for such reporters like Twohey, who helped break the Weinstein bombshell for The New York Times back in 2017. This ideological blinder has led to tunnel vision when it comes to Me Too cases, and I unfortunately don’t think Meghan Twohey is any exception, even if she did do some of the more important and substantive legwork earlier on.

Men like Baldoni who so vocally champion women's empowerment invite an avalanche of scrutiny, because people love to see supposed good guys be called out for hypocrisy. They also make easy targets for baseless allegations since they never see women with malicious intentions coming. They hold women on bizarre god-like pedestals, as though they're inherently more benevolent, virtuous, and unassuming than men. If anything, it seems a little benevolent sexism would have served Baldoni well. While Hollywood types are quick to denounce the Mike Pence rule, it's a wise boundary put in place so this sort of situation never happens.

Maybe Baldoni should have been more wary of sending Lively sultry-sounding voice notes at 2 A.M,, even if it was a direct response to a text she had just sent to him threatening to sick her dragons on him. I'm sure the feminist brigade will totally see it that way. The voice note shows a desperate Baldoni groveling at Lively’s feet in an attempt to to validate her feelings and concerns over the rooftop scene, but to the less discerning listener already primed to assume he’s some seedy sexual abuser, it sounds creepy. It’s clear that Baldoni followed Lively’s lead in a lot of ways, repeatedly referencing how Lively “set the tone” of open, casual communication by slinging around references to boobs, ball busting, and being sexy. His mistake was in following her lead in good faith, when they appear to have been clever little traps.

And just like clockwork, Baldoni's good will and activism were used to indict him. Because he championed a morality that essentially demands unwavering belief in women, defending himself looks like a betrayal of his own gospel—and this information makes for good leverage for those who want to weaponize it. The more he pleads his innocence, the more he's gaslit as some manipulative abuser with DARVO accusations. The less he speaks up, the more people assume it's because he's guilty or has no defense. 

Baldoni's overly amenable personality, refusal to establish boundaries, and famous reputation for being a feminist ally would have made him an easy target for people looking to take advantage of him. After reviewing the text conversations between him and Lively, I got the sense that he saw an idealized version of his female collaborator which was slowly demystified after Lively allegedly tried to exert more control over his film. If Baldoni’s allegations are true—that Lively made up sexual harassment allegations against him to wrangle control of his film and take control of the narrative after she was getting bad press—he holds some responsibility in that. 

For one, while he does provide ample receipts to support his account of events that Lively kept encroaching on other film departments until eventually she was writing, editing, directing, making her own cut of the movie, and cutting him out of all promotion, I don’t think I saw one text message where Baldoni actually holds his ground. Texts show him messaging back and forth to his fellow editors, producers, and distributors voicing how much he isn’t okay with what Lively’s doing, but he appears to immediately capitulate to her every demand with very little, if any, pushback. If Baldoni is guilty of anything, it’s not being an inappropriate sexual predator, but in being a pushover. 

Meanwhile, an insufficient amount of praise for rewriting a scene Lively had no creative authority over as an actress resulted in Lively allegedly giving Baldoni the silent treatment for multiple days. The way Lively talks to Baldoni both in person and via text reveals how obviously unafraid she is of him. She continually pushes for more control, disagrees with his direction, uses the threat of her powerful friends i.e. dragons to get her way, all while positioning herself as Khaleesi—the queen of the dragons turned homicidal maniac in Game of Thrones. 

If bringing receipts that establish the allegations lauded against you by the co-star who allegedly stole your movie from you or the mainstream media, who failed to do their due diligence in fact checking the story is gaslighting victims, I can’t imagine what we’re supposed to make out of these scenes in Deadpool. The film features Ryan Reynolds as Nicepool—a male feminist version of Deadpool who dawns a man bun and makes a reference to a woman losing weight after giving birth. He’s then brutally killed by Ladypool, played by Blake Lively, after she guns him down in front of a flower shop. Super subtle and probably means nothing, right?

Final Thoughts

It’s fine for Lively to accuse Baldoni of sexual harassment, no matter how baseless her claims turn out to be, but for Baldoni to defend himself—well, that’s just another play out of the abuser’s handbook. The message being sent by the media is clear: men who are accused of sexual harassment are collateral damage. No one is coming to save you. We should all welcome the opportunity for Lively to prove Baldoni’s claims wrong with actual evidence, but so far, I don’t see any basis for the media’s reverence for her claims and dismissal of Baldoni’s.