Time magazine’s person of the year is “the silence breakers,” the women who spoke out about sexual harassment and assault on the job, whether that job be movie star or hotel housekeeper.
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n 1997, just before Ashley Judd's career took off, she was invited to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, head of the starmaking studio Miramax, at a Beverly Hills hotel. Astounded and offended by Weinstein's attempt to coerce her into bed, Judd managed to escape. But instead of keeping quiet about the kind of encounter that could easily shame a woman into silence, she began spreading the word. [...]
Juana Melara, who has worked as a hotel housekeeper for decades, says she and her fellow housekeepers didn't complain about guests who exposed themselves or masturbated in front of them for fear of losing the paycheck they needed to support their families. Melara recalls "feeling the pressure of someone's eyes" on her as she cleaned a guest's room. When she turned around, she remembers, a man was standing in the doorway, blocked by the cleaning cart, with his erect penis exposed. She yelled at the top of her lungs and scared him into leaving, then locked the door behind him. "Nothing happened to me that time, thank God," she recalls.
As for Donald Trump, who cares so much about being chosen that he was tweeting defensively about having turned it down weeks ago, he was runner up. So were Chinese President Xi Jinping, special counsel Robert Mueller, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, former NFL quarterback and movement leader Colin Kaepernick, and director Patty Jenkins. But hey, Trump was the first runner up, so he can brag about being number two.