New York, – Actress Ashley Judd, one of the first women to accuse producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, follows the feminist struggle that amplified the “Me Too” movement and, despite the setbacks, will not waver in her judicial battle against the businessman of the cinema, according to what he said this Thursday in New York.
“The lawsuit we’re in is for everyone and has been talking about whether or not the sexual harassment part has been dismissed: it’s really going to be heard by the appellate court of the ninth circuit,” Judd said. January the accusation regarding the crime of harassment was dismissed.
The interpreter inaugurated the second day of the summit “Women in the World”, in New York, together with other activists defending women’s equality and rights, and participated in a debate about the victories and defeats that the battlefield of feminism “, in which his own experience is the protagonist.
Judd’s testimony about how Weinstein tried to get out of a business meeting at a Beverly Hills hotel in 1996 was picked up at the end of 2017 by The New York Times, triggering a barrage of accusations against the producer, and the actress exposed it to the courts in April of last year.
After the judge’s rejection of the accusation of the crime of sexual harassment -the defamation and economic damage continue-, Judd pointed out that now the appeals court will evaluate “if, being a producer, it was criminal” that he allegedly sexually harassed her. “He does not debate if he did it, even he admits it,” he said.
The closeness of the actress triggered applause from the mostly female audience that filled the Lincoln Center of the Big Apple when, asked by the popular presenter Katie Couric, said she feels “grateful” to have spoken on the subject, not only with the journalists of the Times, but from the beginning.
“I told the story about Harvey’s sexual harassment from the later time,” said the activist, who told her father first and then “everyone, but nobody was able to listen or wanted to do it” until the opportunity of the interview, almost two years ago.
“I am a fighter, and one of the ways I fight and I like is talking,” said the actress, who collaborates on different initiatives to combat “the global scourge of control over women’s reproductive health and sexuality”, a mission in which one can not be anything but “indefatigable”.
Although “Me Too” grew thanks to the voices of Hollywood women, for Judd the work of “Time’s Up”, the resulting pressure entity, is for everyone: it has just led to the US Congress. a bill called “Be Heard” (Be Heard), with a battery of proposals against sexual harassment.
These are measures to fight in these times in which very restrictive laws on abortion have been approved in several conservative states, which prohibit it if the beat of the fetus is detected, something that, he acknowledged, leaves it “without words”.
“I have survived a rape three times and in one of them the conception was given, I am grateful to have been able to access a safe and legal abortion”, he revealed in an emotional moment, later adding that, by law, his rapist ” he would have paternity rights “to be from Kentucky, and would have had to raise the son half-heartedly with him.
He also spoke on another hot topic in the US, that of complaints of touching women against former Vice President Joseph Biden, potential candidate for the White House.
He said that the photo of one of them, Sofie Karasek, with the Democrat at the 2016 Oscars, “makes her uncomfortable” and suggests a “patronizing and condescending” attitude.
“Democracy begins in my skin, and the reach of the state ends in my body, and that includes those who have been elected to power,” Judd said, recalling that the simplest thing for a man is to ask the woman if it’s comfortable.
In the debate of the event organized by Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, the authors and activists Rebecca Traister, Sarah McBride and Brittney Cooper also participated, the latter blunt: “Feminism does not take anything away, it gives you a language to fight. Patriarchy is the real problem. “(EFEUSA).
