Matt Damon really hasn't done himself any favours with his recent (really quite bad) take on sexual harassment and now his former co-star and ex-girlfriend Minnie Driver is calling him out for being "utterly tone deaf" and went on to say that men like him "simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level."
Damon previously spoke to ABC News in an interview about Harvey Weinstein and sexual harassment, saying "a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation" and, of Louis C.K., "I imagine the price that he’s paid at this point is so beyond anything...", statements which many, including Alyssa Milano, felt obligated to reply to.
And on Friday, Damon's ex and former 'Good Will Hunting' co-star Minnie Driver joined the crew.
God God, SERIOUSLY? https://t.co/NDZFrLDXil
— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) December 15, 2017
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)
— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) December 15, 2017
Speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Driver expanded her response, saying: "I felt I desperately needed to say something. I’ve realised that most men, good men, the men that I love, there is a cut-off in their ability to understand. They simply cannot understand what abuse is like on a daily level.
"I honestly think that until we get on the same page, you can’t tell a woman about their abuse. A man cannot do that. No one can. It is so individual and so personal, it’s galling when a powerful man steps up and starts dictating the terms, whether he intends it or not."
Regarding Damon's comments on Louis C.K., she said: "I don’t understand why Matt would defend Louis CK. It seems to me that he thinks that because he didn’t rape somebody – so far as we know – that what he did do wasn’t as bad.
"I felt that what Matt Damon was saying was an Orwellian idea, we are all equal except that some us are more equal than others. Put abuse in there … that all abuse is equal but some is worse.
"There is no hierarchy of abuse – that if a woman is raped [it] is much worse than if woman has a penis exposed to her that she didn’t want or ask for," she continued. "You cannot tell those women that one is supposed to feel worse than the other.
"How about: it’s all fucking wrong and it’s all bad, and until you start seeing it under one umbrella it’s not your job to compartmentalise or judge what is worse and what is not. Let women do the speaking up right now. The time right now is for men just to listen and not have an opinion about it for once."