Amber Tamblyn Just Published a Powerful Piece About Harassment in Hollywood
One thing that should definitely be on your weekend reading list? Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants star Amber Tamblyn‘s powerful New York Times op-ed published online Saturday. In it, she calls out the men who deny women’s stories of harassment and the ubiquity of sexual harassment in the acting industry before encouraging women to rise up and come forward with their own accounts.
A bit of background: Tamblyn and actor James Woods got into a heated debate about relationships and consent on Twitter last week when Woods criticized the age difference in a relationship in Armie Hammer’s upcoming movie Call Me By Your Name. Hammer called him out by tweeting, “Didn’t you date a 19-year-old when you were 60?”
Tamblyn added on to Hammer’s reply with a biting allegation: “James Woods tried to pick me and my friend up at a restaurant once. He wanted to take us to Vegas. ‘I’m 16,’ I said. ‘Even better,’ he said.” Woods responded that Tamblyn was lying.
https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/907061616197464064
In Tamblyn’s new Times op-ed, she writes about how she’s fed up with not being believed—and wants other women, especially in Hollywood, to speak up with their own stories of harassment.
“I told this story publicly as a way to back up the claim that Mr. Woods was, indeed, a hypocrite. Mr. Woods called my account a lie,” Tamblyn wrote in her Times piece about the Twitter exchange. “What would I get out of accusing this person of such an action, almost 20 years after the fact? Notoriety, power or respect? I am more than confident with my quota of all three.”
In her piece, Tamblyn recounts another incident, years ago, when she was starring in Joan of Arcadia. After being harassed on set, she writes, she’d worked up her courage and gone to the producer of Joan of Arcadia to talk about what was going on. Tamblyn says he listened but then told her, “There are two sides to every story.”
“For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem,” Tamblyn writes. “Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.”
Tamblyn continues by powerfully describing the minute-but-impactful risk negotiations involved in being a woman, especially when it comes to speaking up about matters like harassment.
“Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift,” she writes. “We have a diploma in risk consideration. Consider that skirt. Consider that dark alley. Consider questioning your boss. Consider what your daughter will think of you. Consider what your mother will think of what your daughter will think of you. Consider how it will be twisted and used against you in a court of law. Consider whether you did, perhaps, really ask for it. Consider your weight. Consider dieting. Consider agelessness. Consider silence.”
Tamblyn, who also penned an open letter to Woods in Teen Vogue last week, spoke of sexism in the industry by comparing the sad state of Hollywood to a deep swimming pool: “I have been afraid of speaking out or asking things of men in positions of power for years. What I have experienced as an actress working in a business whose business is to objectify women is frightening. It is the deep end of a pool where I cannot swim. It is a famous man telling you that you are a liar for what you have remembered. For what you must have misremembered, unless you have proof.”
Her powerful opinion piece ends with a call to action for women to rise up and share their own stories: “The women I know, myself included, are done, though, playing the credentials game. We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir. And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.”
Read her full op-ed here.
Related: Amber Tamblyn Writes Powerful Open Letter to Actor James Woods