Meryl Streep Responds To Rose McGowan's Claim That Her Complicity Propelled Harvey Weinstein

Meryl Streep has come forward with her own statement to the Huffington Post following Rose McGowan's criticisms of her response to the #MeToo movement in Hollywood.

The #MeToo movement is about empowering survivors to come forward and share their experiences of sexual assault and harassment in an effort to highlight, and subsequently eradicate, rape culture. As the past few months have shown, this collective call to action isn't easy, bringing with it feelings of guilt, sadness, shame, and anger.

Everyone processes things differently, as actress and #MeToo advocate Rose McGowan demonstrated over the weekend when she tweeted her frustration with the women in Hollywood she claimed remained silent in the wake of Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein's decades of abuse.

Her tweet, which has since been deleted, specifically called out Meryl Streep.

"Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @GoldenGlobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy. Maybe you should all wear Marchesa," McGowan shared with her 905,000 Twitter followers.

The statement caught actress Amber Tamblyn's attention, who tweeted her wish that McGowan refrain from "shaming or taunting the movements of other women who are trying to create change." Now, Streep herself is responding to McGowan's comments.

In an exclusive statement to The Huffington Post, Streep claimed that while she didn't know about Weinstein's disturbing actions at the time, she was abhorred by his behavior. To help make other survivors feel heard and believed, Streep said she is helping establish a legal defense "to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within."

Of course, providing affordable legal representation is just one solution. To really solve the problem, Streep argued, we have to be willing to stand "in defiance of the same implacable foe."

Streep makes a valid point: Fighting a common enemy (in this case, rape culture) is easiest when people are united. But, let's not mistake unity with complete and total agreement. We will occasionally disagree and make mistakes, and when we do, we should try to allow for forgiveness and understanding. As McGowan stated in an apologetic tweet on Monday, "There is no map for the road I'm on, I will fuck up."

The real power comes with how we proceed, together, going forward.

Read Streep's full statement on The Huffington Post.

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