Ashley Judd has never been quiet about the media's sexist coverage of women, and now she's opening up about the misogyny she's encountered as a working woman in Hollywood.
The 46-year-old actress sat down with HitFlix on Sept. 12 to discuss her upcoming movie "Dolphin Tale 2." About three minutes into the interview, HitFlix's Louis Virtel brought up Judd's articulate 2012 Daily Beast article on the media's "misogynistic assault on all women," and asked if she's ever encountered this sexism in her professional life. Her response: "Absolutely."
Judd pointed out both subtle and blatant sexism she's experienced in the workplace:
Recently, in part of the strength of my growing up -- and I don't mean just in years -- but growing up spiritually, growing up emotionally, is being able to risk authority figures disapproval in order to point out what I think is workplace discrimination.
She also recounted numerous times she received "sexually charged" comments from producers and fell victim to "egregious sexual harassment" from a "famous movie mogul." Judd told Virtel that, despite being a well-versed women's studies minor, it wasn't until years later when she and other actors traded similar stories of this man's inappropriate behavior that she realized it was sexual harassment.
At the time... I had no idea at the time that that's what was happening to me. It took years for me to identify in retrospect that that is what had occurred. Later, when some of us other actors got together and talked about it, "Oh yeah, he did that to me too."
Judd used this anecdote to point out the importance of "female-to-female alliances" and that it's not just women who are negatively affected by everyday misogyny. "I think the patriarchy is as abusive and exclusive to boys and men as it is girls and women and totally limits these constraining definitions of who we are and how we're supposed to be," she said.
That's definitely a "W" in our book of feminist takedowns.
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