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You know, not everyone needs to write a memoir.
In 2017, six women came forward to detail actor Dustin Hoffman’s alleged behavior, ranging from sexual harassment to assault to indecent exposure to a minor.
Freely admitting that he “made some women uncomfortable,” he now likens the #MeToo movement to McCarthyism.
“The whole thing was so crazy,” Hoffman complains.
‘There was no innocent until proven guilty’
In his newly released memoir, Look At Me, the two-time Oscar winner admits that “it’s true that in my life, especially forty years ago, I made some women uncomfortable.”
Hoffman clarifies: “But ‘uncomfortable’ is a subjective emotional state.” He then notes that some might laugh at or feel more comfortable around what some find “crass and offensive.”
He stresses: “That’s not the same thing as pressuring someone to do something they didn’t want to do.”
Repeatedly, as he discusses the #MeToo movement, Hoffman seeks to draw a distinction from what he feels were merely off-color remarks and the more harrowing allegations.
It’s true that #MeToo covered many topics, including things that were not crimes — bad dates and shocking remarks — alongside stories of abuse of power and serial rapes. But Hoffman’s allegations go
“When a reckoning started making its way around the internet, and tearing through Hollywood, I thought it was a very good thing,” Hoffman recalls. “I knew by then that plenty of women had put up with way too much for way too long in my industry.”
He writes: “Not for a second did I worry that anything negative would be said about me, because the idea of taking something from someone sexually that they didn’t want to give … it’s just not something I’ve ever done.”
Hoffman says that his “entire life changed” when six women came forward to describe their experiences with him.
He likens the experience to the McCarthy era, in which the federal government led a hunt against suspected communists and communism sympathizers in the 1950s.
“There was no innocent until proven guilty,” Hoffman laments of #MeToo. “There was no ‘proving’ anything at all.”
‘I’m not a person who gets off on having power’
“The whole thing was so crazy, I was sort of bewildered by how to defend myself… or if I should even try,” Hoffman complains.
“I didn’t want to be fighting against something that I thought was important,” he very reasonably states. “I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of my own values.”
Hoffman then claims: “The only problem was that things were being said about me that just weren’t true.”
He credits Lisa, his wife since 1980, for teaching him that sometimes, what he calls his bawdy sense of humor could be perceived in different situations.
Hoffman insists: “I’m not a person who gets off on having power, or pressuring people to do things. To be perfectly honest, I never thought of myself as a person with power in the first place.”
“Is it possible that I’ve been guilty of insufficient empathy? That I was too self-involved to correctly perceive what the people around me were feeling all the time?” Hoffman asks. “Sure. Of course.”
There was a wide spectrum of reactions to #MeToo allegations, from soul-searching to vicious denial to fleeing the country to quietly admitting to wrongdoing to simply vanishing from the industry, grateful to avoid criminal charges due to deeply unjust statutes of limitations.
Hoffman’s reaction here is not the worst but it is also far from the best. And that’s true even if, as he claims, any accusation of physical wrongdoing or abuse of power is false.
He admits that he did not see himself as someone with power. This is understandable, but short-sighted for someone who spent decades as a big name in the entertainment industry. It is on each of us to understand the power that we wield and who might fear to object or speak up as a result.
Hoffman also laments how #MeToo was not “innocent until proven guilty.” That is because it was not a trial. Though a small number of these cases did make it to court — in cases like Weinstein and Cosby, for example — this was a public discussion of mostly women sharing their traumatic experiences in the industry.
Innocent until proven guilty is a legal philosophy that guides how courts are to treat people. That does not mean that people must empanel a jury before determining if they, as private citizens, believe a group of women.
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