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Samantha Bee On Harvey Weinstein and The Infuriating Part Of Needing To Speak Out

By Emily Chambers and Kristy Puchko | Videos | October 12, 2017 |

By Emily Chambers and Kristy Puchko | Videos | October 12, 2017 |


In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein shit storm, waves of Hollywood celebs have come out to denounce the alleged criminal behavior of the infamous studio exec. But when one Twitter user noticed outspoken feminist and Full Frontal host Samantha Bee had yet to respond, she demanded to know why. This user’s account has since turned private, but Full Frontal’s official account responded:

And so we waited. Bee and her Full Frontal team did not disappoint.


So many treasures here: “White Cosby,” “all about mea culpa,” the Monkees tramp stamp, calling out the abject hypocrisy of Republicans over this, and the eyeroll for “#notallmen.” But our favorite part, Bee’s advice to all men. Yes. ALL men:

“(Women) don’t have to put up with this shit. It is 2017 and we are coming for you. Talk to every woman you work with like she has the NY Times on speed dial…Talk to every woman you work with like she has me on speed dial. My show is only once a week. I’ve got some free time.”

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Here’s the thing that jumped out at me: “Women talk to each other.” Yeah, we fucking do. As it is happened, I’ve been talking with a group of women the past few days, because we all share an unfortunate trait. We’ve all been hit on by the husband of a close friend. Not the same guy, mind you. I mean, six different women have been hit on by six different men. Men married to women who are our close friends. It’s a fucked situation.

And the reason the very need to speak out infuriates me. In our collective cases, speaking out against the guys who behaved inappropriately with us means hurting the very people we’re trying to protect. We’ve gamed out the options, and it’s pretty hard to see an outcome that doesn’t include the loss of a marriage, friendship or both. One woman was sexually assaulted by a guy she’d previously thought to be a good friend. And she has no idea how to tell one of her oldest friends, “Hey, the father of your child stuck his hands up my shirt and down my pants while I slept. We still on for brunch?”

It’s not that any of us don’t know that speaking out is the right answer, we just don’t know how.

Which brings me to what might be one of the most necessary PSAs in all of history.

Here’s partly why, as much as I encourage all women to speak out and understand why it’s so vital to stopping ongoing sexual misconduct, the very need for women to come forward is so horrible: “Some have stopped having solo meetings with women altogether.”

OR YOU COULD JUST NOT JERK IT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH. You could not hit on your wife’s best friend. You could fucking refrain from climbing into bed with a sleeping woman and rubbing your (unattractive) boner on her back. We could start expecting men to act like decent fucking human beings all the time, not only after they’ve had career ending accusations made against them.

I’m not actually stupid or naive. I know that men who feel entitled to treat women any way they want aren’t going to stop on their own. I’m not suggesting that we suddenly expect everyone to behave perfectly. What I’m suggesting is that we all start speaking out. Don’t let your friends get away with shit that’s “kinda creepy”, and start recognizing that there is actually no creepy/harasser line of demarcation. We don’t let our friends slide on being creepers because they’re usually good guys. We don’t only warn women not to get too close to guys we know; we stop knowing those guys instead. We call out our creepy friends when they hit on the waitress or make inappropriate comments among our groups of friends. We start doing that shit because waiting until a woman or group of women comes forward means we’re too fucking late.

And for the women who can’t speak out yet, I see you and I believe you. We’ll keep talking until you can.

And so we join Rose McGowan in saying, Fuck off, Ben Affleck. Sam Bee is the hero we deserve.