Rose McGowan denies calling the #MeToo movement 'bulls**t'

Rose McGowan has denied calling the #MeToo movement ‘bulls**t’ and ‘a lie’.

Quotes from an interview in The Sunday Times appeared to find the actress, one of the first to throw her weight behind the campaign against sexual harassment, angrily denouncing it.

The article explains that she’s been shown a ‘lack of solidarity’ in Hollywood, and has been invited to ‘none’ of the #MeToo campaign events, with McGowan adding: “I don’t want to go, it’s all bulls***. It’s a lie. It’s a Band-Aid lie to make them feel better.

“I just think they’re douchebags. They’re not champions. I just think they’re losers. I don’t like them. How do I explain the fact that I got a GQ Man of the Year award and no women’s magazines and no women’s organizations have supported me?

“I know these people, I know they’re lily-livered, and as long as it looks good on the surface, to them, that’s enough. They’re not champions. I just think they’re losers.”

However, she’s now said that she did not mean #MeToo, but rather the Time’s Up movement, founded and championed by celebrities in Hollywood.

She tweeted:

#MeToo came to prominence a year ago, after the New York Times opened the flood gates with a report about producer Harvey Weinstein having a decades-long history of paying off women who had confronted him with sexual assault allegations.

McGowan then claimed that she had been raped by the producer, which was followed by accusations against him by dozens of other women, accusations he continues to deny.

The hashtag #MeToo then began to sweep social media, as women shared their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

It was first used by activist Tarana Burke in 2006.

Time’s Up was founded in January this year, and has raised $20 million towards a legal fund, and has brought in more than 200 volunteer lawyers to help those with legal harassment claims.

Later in the interview, McGowan goes on to say that it would be, in her opinion, ‘literally impossible’ for Meryl Streep, who had frequently worked with Weinstein, not to have known about his alleged behaviour.

McGowan accused Streep of knowing about Weinstein last year, saying that she ‘happily worked for The Pig Monster’.

“YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy,” McGowan tweeted.

But in a statement, Streep strongly denied McGowan’s claims.

“It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others,” she said in a statement.

“I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening.”

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