Men not groping women deserve some attention, Matt Damon says
No stranger to jamming his entire foot in his mouth, Matt Damon was at it again this week when he controversially commented one more time on the wave of sexual misconduct allegat i ons sweeping t hrough Hollywood.
“We’re in this watershed moment, and it’s great, but I think one thing that’s not being talked about is there are a whole s---load of guys — the preponderance of men I’ve worked with — who don’t do this kind of thing and whose lives aren’t going to be affected,” Damon said to Business Insider on Monday.
“If I have to sign a sexual harassment thing, I don’t care, I’ll sign it,” he added. “I would have signed it before. I don’t do that, and most of the people I know don’t do that.”
Recently, Damon ignited his own fire when he said to ABC’s Peter Travers that he believes there is a “spectrum” of misconduct, and men like Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K. and Al Franken should be handled differently.
“I do believe that there is a spectrum of behaviour … there’s a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation,” Damon said. “Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated, without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.
He added, “When you see Al Franken taking a picture putting his hands on that woman’s flak jacket and mugging for the camera … that is just like a terrible joke, and it’s not funny. It’s wrong, and he shouldn’t have done that. But when you talk about Harvey and what he’s accused of, there are no pictures of that. He knew he was up to no good. There’s no witnesses, there’s no pictures, there’s no braggadocio — that stuff happened secretly, because it was criminal and he knew it. So they don’t belong in the same category.”
When asked if he’d ever work with a man accused of assault, Damon said, “That always went into my thinking — I mean, I wouldn’t want to work with somebody who (was guilty of misconduct) — life’s too short for that. But the question of if somebody had allegations against them, you know, it would be a case- by- case basis. You go, ‘ What’s the story here?’”
Damon’s comments were quickly blasted on Twitter, with his former girlfriend and co- star Minnie Driver tweeting in response, “Gosh it’s so * interesting how men with all these opinions about women’s differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault and rape reveal themselves to be utterly tone deaf and as a result, systemically part of the problem( * profoundly unsurprising).”