Paul Rudd Fondles Eva Mendes for Laughs; Rosario Dawson Fondles Paul Rudd for Feminism

“And would that bit have been considered if Rudd was onstage with a white woman? I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of when white women have had their chest area exposed or groped for entertainment value on an award show stage, and I am coming up short. Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson back in 2004 at the Superbowl and Diana Ross reached out and touched Lil’ Kim at the 1999 VMAs, but that’s about all that comes to mind.”

I need to point out that yes, it happened. Scarlett Johanasson had her boobs fondled by Isaac Mizrahi, a gay fashion designer (I think that’s his name), and there was an uproar over it. I believe this happened 3 or 4 years ago at the Oscars or Golden Globes. Isaac Mizrahi then apologized for touching her boobs and acknowledged that it’s not OK for a gay man to touch a woman’s boobs without her consent.

but I just wanna say, Rosario Dawson is so AWESOME and BADASS! Love, love, LOVE her.

And, really great article, Latoya!

Issac Mizrahi fondled Scarlett Johansson’s breasts while he was interviewing her on the red carpet a year ago I think. There’s some intersections with gender and sexual orientation going on there. Is it okay for homosexual men to grope women?

My opinion on that is a decided “no”, because as gay men they still have access to (white) male privilege, which diminishes the selves and autonomy of those around them if they are not careful. When I was 8 months pregnant with my first child I went to a Christmas party, and a man and his partner approached me and both started fondling my extremely prominent abdomen without asking and without even introducing themselves. When I gently admonished them, I was told “Oh it’s ok, we’re gay!” as though lack of sexual intent made it perfectly ok to treat me and my desires as secondary to my body and their wish to handle it.

DAMN, that was a sexy kiss (between Halle Berry and Jamie Foxx, obvs). And it IS a fact that brown women’s bodies are considered ‘up for grabs’ sexually–remember how Regis stepped out of line with Nicki Minaj and wasn’t reprimanded for it at ALL? I kind of wish she or someone else had reached out to grab *him*, to put him in place.

And I co-sign, Rosario Dawson is all kinds of badass, and I love her.

Sexual assault is not and never will be a feminist act. It’s disturbing and triggering as hell how many people are spinning this as empowerment instead of more proof of how insidious rape culture is, even in attempts to fight it. This post says it all.

Rosario Dawson: you are SO AWESOME

The better question is would this have happened if it were a black man grabbing a breast of white women(especially an A or B list actress). The answer is hell no…

Yes, sexual assault is about power. But if Judd would argue that his actions where for the sake of show, why can’t Dawsons actions be considered likewise. When we make jokes just because we know everyone will laugh at them, like Mendes prefaced we forget the side of them that can be hurtful, offensive, and that perpetuate systematic oppression. In my opinion Dawson’s crotch grabbing actions just brought those realities to the forefront, and asked a question that needs to be asked. “Are we really still playing this game?” and if so, yes. I believe there have to be new rules. Welcome to the New Rules. Sometime people advocating for what they know is right is not pretty.

According to People, he did issue an apology:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20037090,00.html

But the same article points out that he also brushed off criticism by saying in an interview, “There is a very small, right-wing, very conservative political party in India, and they are the moral police in India and they do this kind of thing [demonstrations and legal complaints] quite often.”

So his apology wasn’t really about admitting his mistake in grabbing and kissing Ms. Shetty without her permission — it was about appeasing a certain conservative population in India. And even that wasn’t sincere.

She should have kneed him in the groin. That would have actually been funny.

Having survived a rape and molestation myself, the reason why I applaud Dawson for what she did is because she was able to quickly crystallize for Rudd–and for everyone else–exactly why his continuing to grab Mendez’s breast after the joke was long over was absolutely not okay. It wasn’t the *perfect* thing to do, but it was, in my book, a *good* thing to do because it made him stop and, hopefully, stop to think in that “walk a mile in my shoes” sort of way. He just may think twice about groping another woman.

I think of Dawson’s re/action in similar terms of what happened in my old hometown: a racist group wanted to march in a working-class, racially mixed part of the city. (The area leaned towards white–come to find out it was a white person who called the white supremacist group because some of the Black people threatened him and his employees) . The mayor, who was Black, allowed the group to come. Word got out about the group’s arrival and the mayor’s complicity. Suffice to say, it didn’t sit too well with the citizens. There was a mixed-race counterdemonstration…then the young Black “gangbangers” arrived on the scene. The mayor, wanting to stave off “trouble” as well as do some PR moves around his stupidity (frankly speaking), drove over and tried to quell the unrest. By that point, nobody’s was listening to him because he lost all credibility. Those young men–some even had weapons–were the ones who told the white-supremacist group to get out of the city and never return. The group quietly left, and the leader of the group sent an apology to the mayor.

I’m sure what those young men did brought up a whole bunch of ideas around “violent Black men” in the heads and hearts of those white supremacists (and even a few of the Black people, too, who’ve been victims of some of their crimes), but that day–and ever since–those young men, using the threat of violence against a group of people with a history of violence against Black people, were/are seen as folk heroes. Not the *perfect* thing to do, but a *good* thing to do.

Let’s just say I haven’t heard of too many white supremacists trying to visit the city since that incident.

To add to your post – Cameron Diaz and Chris Issac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHIAQvxc5qs

I remember Cameron being pissed off when this happened. He basically forces the kiss on her, during the clip you can see that she’s pretty upset.

That was horrifying — I’d never seen/heard about this before. “I knew you’d come around”?? I guess to Chris Isaak “no” means “eventually, if I put enough pressure on her in a public setting”.

Gross. What a sad excuse for a man.

For me it doesn’t matter whether she was married or not. But that fact that she was married, and a married black woman at that, reminds me of the times when white men would just walk into black people’s houses and rape any of the women they saw fit to have. So, that only makes Adrian’s disrespectful act even worse in my opinion.