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Ben Affleck Wants To Be Part of the Sexual Harassment 'Solution'. Let's Hope He Means It.


With holiday movie releases and awards season looming, it should come as no surprise that there are going to be a lot of questions asked in interviews and on red carpets about the Weinstein scandal and all that has come in its wake. It’s also no surprise that we’ll be hearing a lot of canned replies that have “my publicist approved this message” written all over them—though not from you, Uma Thurman! And calls for change. So many calls for change.

Here are just a few of the stars with projects coming out over the next few months to keep an eye on: Matt Damon (“Downsizing”), Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), the entire cast of “Murder On the Orient Express” including (ahem) Johnny Depp, Woody Harrelson (“LBJ”), Julia Roberts (“Wonder”), Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”), and Anna Kendrick (“Pitch Perfect 3”). And that’s just the beginning.

Yesterday, it was Ben Affleck’s turn as he was out promoting his latest film, “Justice League”. He had a few words to say about the current climate in Hollywood telling the Associated Press that he’s “looking at my own behavior and addressing that and making sure I’m part of the solution.”

It’s probably a good idea that the actor does some self-reflection given the accusations that he groped Hilarie Burton and makeup artist Annamarie Tendler. (He has already apologized for acting inappropriately toward Burton.) And then there’s this video interview from 2004 that recently resurfaced. It’s, frankly, hard to watch.

So, yes, it’s great that Affleck says he wants to be better. (Though it’s more than a little bit distressing that at age 45, he’s just seeing the error of his ways.) That he wants to see “more women need to be pushed to power.” And that sexual harassment also has to be a “men’s issue.” We’re sure to hear many more echo his sentiments.

We just hope they all mean it.



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Brett Ratner Accused of Sexual Misconduct and Harassment


And so it continues. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy piece in which six women, including actresses Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, open up about alleged incidents of misconduct and harassment they say occurred at the hands of director Brett Ratner.

Ratner got his start as a music video director but is best known for films like Rush Hour (and its sequels) and X-Men: The Last Stand. It is during his video days in New York that Henstridge, then a 19-year-old model, claims Ratner forced her to perform oral sex on him in his apartment where she had been hanging out with friends. Via his attorney, he disputes the claim.

Munn says that when she was an aspiring actress visiting the set of Ratner’s film After the Sunset, the director masturbated in front of her in his trailer. She wrote about the incident (hiding details and names) in her 2010 book, Suck It Wonder Woman! The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek and Ratner would later go on to claim they “banged”, eventually retracting that story in an interview on Howard Stern. Munn also alleges that Ratner once told her at a party that he masturbated to a magazine cover she appeared on. While he “vehemently disputes” her allegations, Munn says that she’s made conscious efforts to not work with Ratner telling the Times: “It feels as if I keep going up against the same bully at school who just won’t quit. You just hope that enough people believe the truth and for enough time to pass so that you can’t be connected to him anymore.”

While Ratner has been romantically linked in the past to actress Rebecca Gayheart and athlete Serena Williams, this isn’t the first time inappropriate behavior has gotten him into trouble. He was brought on to produce the Oscars in 2012, but was removed from that role after making a comment that “rehearsal is for fags.” Even those not super connected to Hollywood may be aware of the director’s party boy image. He told Variety that directors James Toback (currently facing similar harassment accusations) and Roman Polanksi are his close friends which is…interesting, to say the least.

It’s still unclear what effect these accusations will have on Ratner’s career. But what has become evident in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal is that women in Hollywood are no longer willing to remain quiet and we hope that their voices will empower others to do the same, prompting a real cultural change in the treatment of women everywhere.

As Munn said, “How broken do women have to be before people listen?”



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Ashley Judd Just Shared Her Go-To Way to Respond to Sexual Harassment


Ashley Judd—like many women—is no stranger to instances of sexual harassment. The actress was one of those on record in the bombshell New York Times investigation that revealed decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault by former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. This week, she opened up on Good Morning America about the encounter she had with him early in her career, saying that “there has to be a real profound understanding on the part of the sexual predator that what he was doing was wrong and criminal.” She also accepted the “Speaking Truth to Power” award at the Women’s Media Awards on Thursday.

Now, in a Teen Vogue interview published Saturday, Judd shared how she responds to sexual harassment—particularly the sort encountered on the street. Yelling, “Stop! That is inappropriate and unwelcome,” Judd “holds her hands up like catcher’s mitts, telling her potential harasser to stop what they’re doing and, at the same time, making her hands like a shield between her and the hurtful comments.”

Judd adds that expecting to be harassed isn’t something we should have to do, but “disrupting the structures” that allow it to occur is really important. So practicing what to do when it happens—getting comfortable with making the gestures and speaking loudly, in her case—is important for her to be able to respond in a way that she’s comfortable with and feels empowering.

For those who don’t feel like they can respond, Judd says, just being able to extricate themselves from the situation—in whatever way is safe—is important.

“Feeling safe is everything,” she told Teen Vogue. “That’s essentially what is taken from us when we experience sexual harassment and microaggressions.”

She added that two things that can’t be taken away are your power and instinct. “You are ineffably powerful,” she told Teen Vogue. “If it feels wrong, it is wrong.” And it’s more than OK to make that known.

Related Stories:
–Ashley Judd Thinks There’s Still ‘Help’ for Someone Like Harvey Weinstein



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The White House Just Said Trump Accusers Are Lying About Sexual Harassment


During a press conference earlier this month, Donald Trump was questioned about an ongoing legal case involving a former Apprentice contestant—one in which the President has been accused of sexual assault.

Trump immediately dismissed the situation as “totally fake news,” adding, “It’s just fake. It’s fake. It’s made-up stuff, and it’s disgraceful, what happens, but that happens in the—that happens in the world of politics,”

The litigation dates back to last October—not long after Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood leaked—and was brought forward by Summer Zervos, who says Trump kissed and grabbed her during a meeting at a Beverly Hills hotel a decade ago. Recently, BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s campaign had been subpoenaed for “all documents concerning any accusations that were made during Donald J. Trump’s election campaign for president, that he subjected any woman to unwanted sexual touching and/or sexually inappropriate behavior.”

As the news cycle has been dominated by the barrage of reports of sexual harassment and misconduct against numerous powerful men, Trump’s ongoing legal trouble was once again brought up during Friday’s daily White House press briefing with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Obviously, sexual harassment has been in the news, at least 16 women have accused the president of sexually harassing them throughout the course of the campaign,” one reporter began. “Last week during a press conference in the Rose Garden the president called these accusations fake news. Is the official White House position that all of these women are lying?”

Without mincing any words, Sanders confirmed that the White House does believe all these women are lying, saying “Yeah, we’ve been clear on that from the beginning and the President has spoken on it.”

Numerous women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct against the President. As accusations mounted during the 2016 campaign, Trump said that he was “a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country.”





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Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem Talk Race, Sexual Harassment, and Harvey Weinstein


Feminist legends Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem appeared on MSNBC Wednesday, and as to be expected, the icons had plenty of thoughts on the ongoing Harvey Weinstein scandal. The women stopped by All in With Chris Hayes as representatives of the Women’s Media Center—a progressive, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that they co-founded with Robin Morgan in 2005 to raise the visibility of women and girls in the media—and discussed the dozens of women who have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault against the former Hollywood powerhouse.

“It feels like something has shifted,” Fonda said. “It’s too bad that it’s probably because so many of the women that were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein are famous and white and everybody knows them. This has been going on a long time to black women and other women of color and it doesn’t get out quite the same.”

Fonda added that the women who have come forward have made a big difference, and she hopes that it will cause a “domino effect” that will spread to other industries.

Steinem built upon Fonda’s point, saying that more women speaking out has potential to change attitudes about these types of crimes and cause society to reevaluate a previous (lack of) response.

“If you steal money, you probably get arrested and convicted, because everybody says stealing is wrong,” Steinem said. “But if you do something that is very sexist or racist, because there still is a critical mass of bias in this country, it takes more cumulative instances for it to be recognized. So we have reached a tipping point, I think.”

“The important thing to remember is that it’s about power and the idea that you have to dominate to be sexual,” Steinem added. “That’s the fundamental problem.”

Fonda then added that the Weinstein revelations have focused on a lot of high-profile women in a widely-talked about industry—but this is not the same experience for millions of women across numerous professions in the U.S.

“Twelve million people in the United States work in restaurants. Most of them are women,” she said. “They’re often young—but not always—but they survive on tips, which means that they have to put up with a lot.”

Host Chris Hayes chimed in, adding that in the service industry, the customer acts as the boss and restaurant workers will have to “grimace through an inappropriate comment.” Fonda seconded this idea, saying if a woman doesn’t “look smiley with a low-cut, tight dress” it could work against her.

“You’re not being paid a living wage so you depend on your tips,” she continued. “This often is the first job, right? So for these young women it becomes the norm: ‘Nothing can be as horrible afterward as what was done to me in restaurants, so it must be this is just the way life is.’”

As the interview concluded, the discussion turned to Republicans who have criticized the Democratic party and said they have not been tough enough on Weinstein (who had donated to a number of political campaigns). However, Fonda and Steinem countered that the GOP has no grounds to offer such criticisms, considering the reaction to sexual harassment allegations against men like Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and even Donald Trump.

“That we have a president who profiteered off of beauty contests is absurd in itself,” Steinem said, adding, “In addition to the fact that he is a self-confessed harasser.”

You can watch the full interview below.



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38 Women Have Just Accused Hollywood Director James Toback of Sexual Harassment


PHOTO: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

Almost 40 women have come forward to accuse Hollywood director and screenwriter James Toback of sexual harassment in a bombshell L.A. Times story published Sunday morning. Known for movies like The Pick-Up Artist (1987), Love & Money (1982), and Two Girls and a Guy (1997), he would allegedly approach young women wanting to break into the industry or those he just saw in the street, try to impress them with name-dropping actors or producing clips about his work, and then try to arrange a one-on-one meeting with them that “quickly turned sexual,” according to the Times report.

Not just sexual, but “humiliating”: Toback would allegedly ask these women how often they masturbated and how much public hair they had. According to several accounts, he would tell them to take off their clothes, saying if they weren’t comfortable, then they didn’t have the “sexual confidence” for a role. Typically, he would grind his crotch into women’s legs or masturbate in front of them until he finished, alleges the Times, either on them or in his pants. Some women report him asking them to look into his eyes while he masturbated and pinch his nipples before he came.

He allegedly told one woman, 18 at the time and thrilled about a connection to help in her along with her dream of screenwriting, that she had to “be ready to turn yourself completely over to me.” He met with then-As the World Turns actress Terri Conn in Central Park and, she says, told her that “the best way to get to know someone is to see their soul. And the way you can see someone’s soul is to look into their eyes when they’re experiencing orgasm.” He allegedly “began humping her leg”—with people nearby—until he finished in his khakis.

“I was shocked and frozen and didn’t know what to do,” she told the Times. “I thought if I resisted, it could get worse. He could overpower me.”

Toback’s alleged behavior was whispered about enough in Hollywood that his name became a verb: “You got Tobacked.”

Not a single one of the 38 women in the story felt comfortable at the time reporting their alleged incidents to the police. “I felt like a prostitute, an utter disappointment to myself, my parents, my friends. And I deserved not to tell anyone,” said actress Adrienne LaValley in the Times story. Toback had allegedly met with her in a hotel room before trying to grind against her leg. She “recoiled,” and he came in his trousers.

Another actress, Starr Rinaldi, says that there was no good way out in an encounter with Toback, who she says “always wanted her to read for him” in a hotel or his flat: “The horrible thing is, whichever road you choose, whether you sleep with him or walk away, you’re still broken. You have been violated.”

As the Times points out, Toback’s name showed up in “his own special universe” of the #MeToo movement on social media, with many women hashtagging him in their posts last weekend. Even more have included #JamesToback in #MeToo posts since the Times story broke.

Toback, who is 72, denies the allegations in the Times article, and says that this behavior would have been “biologically impossible” for at least the past 22 years due to diabetes and a heart condition. His latest movie, The Private Life of a Modern Woman, starring Sienna Miller, was released September 3.

The L.A. Times story follows, of course, the massive New York Times investigation into decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault carried out by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein—whose behavior also allegedly followed set patterns. Like Weinstein, there were rumors and whispers. It’s yet another tale of yet another man (allegedly) abusing his influence and power to prey on the ambition of women. And as long as women keep speaking out, there will be more of them.

Related Stories:
–These Are All the Women Who Have Accused Harvey Weinstein of Sexual Harassment and Assault
–An Explosive Report Alleges Decades of Sexual Harassment by Harvey Weinstein
–Jennifer Lawrence Calls Harvey Weinstein Allegations ‘Inexcusable and Absolutely Upsetting’



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