Amber Tamblyn is tired of double standards in her workplace and around America.
“A crew member had kept showing up to my apartment after work unannounced, going into my trailer while I wasn’t in it, and staring daggers at me from across the set,” she writes in an op-ed for The New York Times.
“I liked him at first,” she continues. “He was very sweet and kind in the beginning. We flirted a bit on set. But I was in a relationship. And liking someone certainly didn’t merit the kind of behaviour he was exhibiting, which was making me feel unsafe.”
So Tamblyn did what anyone feeling unsafe in the work environment should have a right to do, she told her boss. Tamblyn was 21 at the time and starring on a “very successful and beloved” television show. The conversation did not go as well as the actress would have liked.
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“My hands were freezing and I balled my wardrobe skirt up around my fists as I spoke. It was all caught in my throat — my embarrassment that it had gotten to this point. The producer listened. Then he said, ‘Well, there are two sides to every story.'”
“For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem,” Tamblyn argues. “Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate.”
Tamblyn is reminded of a recent incident which made headlines. A conversation about her friend Armie Hammer’s forthcoming film — “in which a 24-year-old and 17-year-old have a relationship — escalated, as things can on Twitter.”
Actor James Woods spoke critically of the story depicted in the film and Tamblyn had her issues with Woods’ statements: “Mr. Woods spoke critically, if flippantly, of the story depicted in the film. Mr. Woods has been known to date much younger women, so Armie pointed out the hypocrisy.”
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It reminded Tamblyn “of a memory from when I was 16. Mr. Woods attempted to pick me and a friend up when we were at Mel’s diner in Hollywood, seeing if we wanted to go to Las Vegas with him that very night.”
“I informed him of my age, to which he said, ‘Even better.’ I told this story publicly as a way to back up the claim that Mr. Woods was, indeed, a hypocrite. Mr. Woods called my account a lie.”
The “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants” actress, now 34, is tired of the status quo’s inequalities.
“The women I know, myself included, are done, though, playing the credentials game,” she concludes. “We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir. And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.”
