Condoleezza Rice, the former US Secretary of State under George W. Bush, said that while she feels the #MeToo movement is “a good thing,” people need “to be a little bit careful” about their response to it.
“Let’s not turn women into snowflakes. Let’s not infantilize women,” she told CNN’s David Axelrod on “The Axe Files.”
Rice said she was concerned that we would “get to a place that men start to think, ‘Well, maybe it’s just better not to have women around.’”
“I’ve heard a little bit of that,” she said, “and it, it worries me.”
The #MeToo movement began after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s alleged proclivities for sexual harassment and assault came to light. After that, other women began sharing their own harassment and assault experiences using the hashtag #MeToo.
Condoleezza Rice was the first African-American woman to become Secretary of State and she was clear that she wasn’t trying to “belittle” women who share their stories “because we’re all different.”
When Axelrod asked her if she had ever been harassed, she said she’d “certainly had people say inappropriate things.”
Rice went on to say, “I’ve certainly had people suggest that maybe we should just go out — and you know — and situations in which it was somebody more senior than I.”
“I’ve never had anyone do anything that I would consider assault. But I don’t know a woman alive who hasn’t had somebody say or do something that was inappropriate at best and aggressive at worst,” she added.
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Rice said that she is not interested in becoming president herself because she prefers policy to politics.
“You know there’s a funny thing that happens when you’re Secretary of State, or you’re a celebrity, you’re out there representing the world,” she said.
“Everybody gets to make a blank page of what they think you would look like as the president. And they only focus on those characteristics that they want to see in the president. Now you’re running for office, and all of a sudden, you’re not that person who’s just a blank sheet of paper.
“But I would just say, if you’re contemplating running for office, just recognize that we put people through a brutal process. And they don’t come out quite the same,” she stated.
What do you think of Condoleezza’s comments on the #MeToo movement?