Minnie Driver is not done putting the men of Hollywood in their place. The actress made headlines for succinctly calling out Matt Damon's disappointing response to the #MeToo movement, and on Tuesday sat down with the New York Times to talk about how the tidal wave of allegations of sexual harassment and assault has rocked Hollywood. For instance, she told the Times' Jodi Rudoren that her ex Damon "represented every intelligent, nice white male who feels it is their job to comment on the way that women metabolise stuff."
The Suburbicon actor shot himself in the foot back in December when speaking to ABC News' Peter Travers about the overwhelming nature of the movement, stressing that there's a "spectrum" of behaviour.
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"We’re going to have to figure — you know, there’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?" he said in the interview. "Both of those behavioirs need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?"
Immediately after this interview, Driver took to Twitter with vigor.
"God God, SERIOUSLY?" she wrote, later adding, "Gosh it’s so *interesting how men with all these opinions about women’s differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault, and rape reveal themselves to be utterly tone deaf and as a result, systemically part of the problem (*profoundly unsurprising)"
She expanded on this idea in her talk with the Times, noting the absurdity of asking women to rank their trauma.
"That somehow we should have a hierarchical system whereby touch on the arse is this, tits is this, you know, front bottom, back bottom, over the shirt, rape! That there would be some criteria," she said.
Damon apologised for these comments last month.
"I really wish I’d listened a lot more before I weighed in on this,” Damon told Kathie Lee Gifford on the Today show. "Ultimately what it is for me is that I don’t want to further anybody’s pain. With anything that I do or say, so for that I’m really sorry."
The importance of listening is something that's been stressed by advocates all over, and this applies especially to the straight, white men who have, more often than not, been the perpetrators of this abuse. You don't get to mansplain a problem you are disproportionately responsible for. This time for listening is something Driver made sure to emphasise in her interview.
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"Women get to be heard," she said about Hollywood's new climate. "You get to be seen and heard and the accusers get to hear that and get to metabolise that and then there is due process and then there is healing."
Because, after all, this is yet another problem that stems from sexism. "When we talk about sexual harassment, it’s not about sex, it’s about power," she explained. These instances are what have kept women from finding the equality they deserve in the industry — but in case it wasn't clear yet, that time is over.
Watch the full interview below:
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