It was the speech everyone was talking about. And then Patricia Arquette went into the press room.
And everyone’s a little bit confused.
Yesterday, there was a part of the (very long) Oscars ceremony that audiences were sure would go down in history. We even predicted it would.
That moment was when Patricia Arquette, the 2015 Oscars winner of Best Supporting Actress for her role in Boyhood, used her time on stage to deliver a political statement.
She addressed the gender pay gap for women and called for women’s equality across America (we hope she meant everywhere).
In case you missed it, you can watch her speech below. Post continues after video.
But when the 46-year-old actress tried to follow up her Oscars speech with another in the press room, she ended up … kind of ruining it.
Read more: The Oscars Red Carpet is happening right now.
It started off fine..
“It’s time for women. Equal means equal. The truth is the older women get, the less money they make. The highest percentage of children living in poverty are in female-headed households. It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t.”
But gradually got worse.
“One of those superior court justices said two years ago in a law speech at a university that we don’t have equal rights for women in America and we don’t because when they wrote Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women. So the truth is even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America right under the surface there are huge issues at play that really do affect women.”
Until she delivered the final blow.
“It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”
As many (many, many) people have pointed out on social media, like feminist and writer Roxane Gay, the feminist movement, LGBTQ movement and the civil rights movement are not completely unrelated but actually equality calls for… well, equality. For everyone.
And it’s statements like these that shut feminism off to people wanting to take part in the important movement, because they feel it’s an exclusive party they didn’t get invited to. Not unlike the Oscars themselves.
You can watch Patricia undoing a brilliant acceptance speech below.
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Top Comments
She didn't say "I think I should paid more equally" she said that women need to be paid equally, so her actual wealth is not the point here, she is making the point that many women are not paid equally, though I imagine as a Hollywood actress she is also not paid as much as her fellow actors, so the disparity is unfair in her case also, but in any case she was talking generally about women.
I think what she said both during her speech and afterwards were fair points. I do feel as a woman that there does seem to be a lot of emphasis on other's rights yet not so much on ours.
For instance I watched Selma, which was a great movie, but I noticed how nearly all the African American leaders were men, of course this is set many years ago, but I think the men would still outweigh the women now in lead positions. Of course the white leaders are nearly all men also, but it is just ironic to me that African Americans fighting for equal rights wouldn't see the irony in the fact that hardly any women are represented in lead positions. This is not to have a go at African Americans they have been treated terribly in America and deserve to be treated better, but I am just using them as an example that when we talk about treating people equally it seems that women are always at the back of the bus.
Another example I can use is that some years ago I protested against the war in Iraq, and was also involved in refugee rights, yet of the many men of Middle Eastern origin there, I never heard one speak out or do anything about the appalling treatment of women in the Middle East, I then thought why am I wasting time supporting these people who don't get involved in organisations/protests etc to help women. There were lots of feminist lefty women at these events, yet these men never reciprocated the support when these women worked on feminist issues or held meetings etc on these issues. It just made me feel that we women were all being taken for fools.
Therefore I feel Patricia Arquette makes a valid point, it seems that other people's rights get put ahead of we women all the time, and those people rarely reciprocate that support, and I think this was the point she was making.
Well said!