Ashley Judd Recalls Losing a Job After She Quoted Trump’s 2005 Speech During the Women’s March

On Monday, at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Ashley Judd spoke on the need to end sexual abuse. Ashley who was one of the women who accused Harvey Weinstein in the 2017 New York Times expose, discussed the impact her testimony has had on her career. A vocal advocate for ending sexual assault against women, Judd is the UN Population Fund's worldwide goodwill ambassador. According to reports by The Daily Mail, she began her speech on Monday by detailing multiple instances of sexual violence she claimed to have experienced beginning at the age of seven. Ashley then talked about the role of the porn industry in increasing violence and the abuse she had to go through in her community as well as around the world. She said she had been called a "man hater" and threatened with murder and sexual assault on social media. 

Ashley said, "Male sexual violence is the up with which we will not put, and, for me, it’s just the hill on which I’m willing to die. I’ve seen too much agony, too many shattered souls, and too many women controlled and held back as farmers, as civil servants, as contributors to their community because they couldn’t plan and space the births of their children because when they introduce family planning they get beaten, or used for household labor and fetching water and cooking and cleaning while their sons eat more than they do." She recalled losing the job as she quoted Trump's 2005 speech during the Women's March, "This will be what it will be because we’re here to tell the truth. This is telling the truth about patriarchy. Just like when I lost a big job after the Women's March. I quoted the president. He said it, he got elected. I quoted him, I got fired and lost income that would've changed my life."

On January 21, 2017, during the Women's March, Judd, gave one of the many impassioned addresses. She often used the epithet "nasty woman" to allude to Donald Trump's description of Hillary Clinton at the third presidential debate. At the time she said, "I am unafraid to be nasty because I am nasty like Susan, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Amelia, Rosa, Gloria, Condoleezza, Sonia, Malala, Michelle, Hillary! And our p*****s ain’t for grabbing. There for reminding you that our walls are stronger than America's ever will be."

Judd continued in her Monday speech, "And still, some say boys will be boys, but we say here today that we love them and they will be held accountable for their actions, their attitudes, their sins of omission. And frankly, I'm fed up with the emphasis being on building resilience in girls and women because we've gotta look upstream and see from whence this need for resilience comes." Judd expressed a desire for a "solution for ending male entitlement to female bodies," citing more backing for female candidates in politics and equal educational opportunities for both sexes as possible elements of the plan.