Portman wants action
Natalie Portman took a flamethrower to the patriarchy. George Clooney admonished the Trump “culture of fear”. Emma Gonzalez implored people to vote. Host Jenifer Lewis spared no one, from Melania Trump and Kanye West to Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.
Nothing was off the table at Variety magazine’s Power of Women luncheon in Beverly Hills yesterday, a year since the New York Times and the New Yorker published accounts from dozens of women alleging sexual misconduct by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, which he denies.
In a commanding 15-minute speech, Portman addressed the under-representation of women in all industries and laid out guidelines to incite change, such as donating to Time’s Up, opting against depicting violence against women in films and broader hiring of women.
She was being recognised for her humanitarian efforts in co-founding Time’s Up, a legal defence fund.
Portman said Weinstein was “still free” because “our culture protects the perpetrators of sexual violence, not its victims.”