Film

Meryl Streep Wears Hideously Tone-Deaf Promo T-Shirt For ‘Suffragette’; Declares She Is A ‘Humanist’, Not A Feminist

Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan were pictured wearing them in Time Out London. But 'rebel' and 'slave' carry different connotations for an American audience.

by Steph Harmon  6 October 2015

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Somebody in Suffragette‘s publicity team is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

It started innocently enough.

What you see there are photos from Time Out London, in which Streep and her co-stars Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff and Romola Garai donned t-shirts printed to promote Sarah Gavron’s upcoming film. Suffragette tells the story of Emmeline Pankhurst: the British activist who was instrumental in women winning the right to vote. In 1913, Pankhurst gave a speech that included the following sentences: “Know that women, once convinced that they are doing what is right, that their rebellion is just, will go on, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers, so long as there is a woman alive to hold up the flag of rebellion. I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”

A powerful sentiment, to be sure. But taken out of context for an American audience, during the feminist movement’s current push for intersectionality, words like “rebel” and “slave” carry with them a whole different meaning. During the American Civil War from 1861-65, it was the “rebels” or Confederates from the Southern slave states who pushed for secession from the United States, and fought for their right to own slaves.

In that context, the t-shirt technically means “I’d rather be a slave-owner than a slave”. Which, sure?

No doubt compounding the public relations face-palm, the controversy surfaced only a week after Meryl Streep joined the perplexing pantheon of seemingly intelligent, strong and famous women to publicly distance themselves from the word ‘feminism’: “I am a humanist, I am for nice easy balance,” she told Time Out London, in a series of Q&As published to accompany the photos last week. (Carey Mulligan’s answer to “Are you a feminist?” was much better: “Yes.“)

Of course, this is the same Meryl Streep who sent letters to every member of Congress demanding they pass the Equal Rights Amendment; the same Meryl Streep who set up the Writers Lab fund for women screenwriters over 40; the same Meryl Streep who referred to Emma Thompson as “a rabid, man-eating feminist like I am” in a speech at the National Board of Review Awards last year; and the same Meryl Streep who — when responding to Patricia Arquette’s Oscar’s acceptance speech, which she used to draw attention to pay inequality in Hollywood — responded like this:

Meryl Streep is pretty much a feminist whether she likes it or not. But her reluctance to own it has made this week a sad and confusing one for women’s sites everywhere.