“I’m Done With Not Being Believed”: Actress Amber Tamblyn Has Spoken Out About Sexual Harassment

Amber Tamblyn has spoken out against sexual harassment in a powerful op-ed piece for The New York Times.

In an essay titled ‘I’m Done With Not Being Believed’, the actor and filmmaker, best known for her roles in Two and a Half Men and The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, recounts a time that she was blown off by a producer after she came forward to complain about the behaviour of a male co-star. It’s an incident that she says speaks to a wider cultural problem that sees women who come forward with stories about harassment and assault regularly dismissed, questioned or accused of being liars.

“Women do not get to have a side,” Tamblyn writes. “They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.”

“Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift. We have a diploma in risk consideration. Consider that skirt. Consider that dark alley. Consider questioning your boss. Consider what your daughter will think of you. Consider what your mother will think of what your daughter will think of you. Consider how it will be twisted and used against you in a court of law. Consider whether you did, perhaps, really ask for it.”

The essay comes days after Tamblyn’s much publicised Twitter confrontation with fellow actor James Woods, in which Tamblyn accused Woods of attempting to pick up her and a friend when she was just 16 years old. Woods has since called her claims “a lie”.

“Mr. Woods’s accusation that I was lying sent me back to that day in the producer’s office, and back to all the days I’ve spent in the offices of men; of feeling unsure, uneasy, questioned and disbelieved, no matter the conversation,” writes Tamblyn.

“I have been afraid of speaking out or asking things of men in positions of power for years.”

But Tamblyn also said that more and more women were now finding the courage to speak out.

“We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir,” she writes. “And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.”

You can read the full op-ed here.

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Feature image via Wikimedia.