Ivanka Trump wants the world to know that she supports the Time’s Up movement, an entertainment-led effort to end sexual harassment and assault. However, the rest of the internet isn’t so sure she’s completely on board with the notion of ousting men accused of such serial behavior—her father, included.
During Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards, female actors and activists wore black, and male actors wore pins, signaling solidarity with survivors of sexual harassment and abuse. The evening acted as a culmination of the three-months-long #MeToo movement that ousted tens of powerful men who abused their positions, with actors, mostly women, speaking up through the nomination and award presentations.
Accepting her 2018 Cecil B. de Mille award, Oprah Winfrey moved audiences, saying, “I want all of the girls watching here now to know, that a new day is on the horizon.” Even Ivanka, the daughter of and advisor to President Donald Trump, was emboldened to share Winfrey’s message in a tweet the following evening.
“Just saw @Oprah’s empowering & inspiring speech at last night’s #GoldenGlobes. Let’s all come together, women & men, & say #TIMESUP! #United,” she wrote, quoting a tweet of Oprah’s speech shared by the official Golden Globes Awards account.
Just saw @Oprah‘s empowering & inspiring speech at last night’s #GoldenGlobes. Let’s all come together, women & men, & say #TIMESUP! #United https://t.co/vpxUBJnCl7
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) January 9, 2018
Ivanka’s tweet, much like the rest of her online presence, signals her insistence to be seen as an advocate for women despite all evidence to the contrary. Though she promoted her and the father’s dedication to paid maternity leave during his campaign, the president’s advisor was busy skiing while her father tried to gut maternity leave from the Obamacare replacement bill.
Ivanka continued to promote this pro-woman image for equal pay after her father revoked pay transparency for federal contractors, and again when he cut funding for developing countries under the Office of Global Women’s Issues. The pay gap in the White House has more than tripled while under President Trump’s control, despite his daughter’s reassured commitment to equal pay.
Ivanka’s stance toward “Time’s Up,” the movement and accompanying legal defense fund for women who have experienced sexual harassment, has once again come off as performative to feminists and activists—an easy gesture to highlight the differences between her and her father while taking no action. However, this time, her hypocrisy seems more astounding, considering at least 19 women say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted by her father, while she (among many Trump personnel) has remained silent, and the White House has maintained that all Trump’s accusers are lying.
While it’s fair to question just how complicit Ivanka has actually been in her father’s policy choices regarding women’s health and compensation, as well as how “fair” it is to blame and make a woman answer for the actions of her father, Ivanka’s call for her followers to help end sexual abuse and harassment rang flat to critics. For her to issue such a call to action, without following this call herself, was a bit much.
“Ew, go away,” Chrissy Teigen responded.
ew go away
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) January 9, 2018
“Great! You can make a lofty donation to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund that is available to support your father’s accusers,” Alyssa Milano, who helped to promote Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement, wrote in reply.
Great! You can make a lofty donation to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund that is available to support your father’s accusers.https://t.co/A8HCVa715v
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) January 9, 2018
Others reminded Ivanka about the women who have said her father abused his power against them.
Ninni Laaksonen
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) January 9, 2018
Jessica Drake
Karena Virginia
Cathy Heller
Summer Zervos
Kristin Anderson
Jessica Leeds
Rachel Crooks
Mindy McGillivray
Natasha Stoynoff
Jennifer Murphy
Cassandra Searles
Temple Taggart McDowell
Jill Harth https://t.co/KyL6kwK7Mj
And some simply just pointed to the confusion her hypocrisy stirred.
https://twitter.com/YNB/status/950735373860192256
Ok, who’s going to tell her? https://t.co/MUhkcquJNW
— Julie Oliver (@JulieOliverTX) January 9, 2018
you tweeted this as if your father isn’t a sexual abuser… times up for his presidency. https://t.co/LhMXILmbDl
— antonio (@antoniodelotero) January 9, 2018
https://twitter.com/gettinnoticedmo/status/950595448644911104
https://twitter.com/MarinaOLoughlin/status/950711412824903680
People were indeed moved to call out Ivanka: As of this posting, the “tweet ratio” showed more than 22,000 replies growing against her tweet, in comparison to its 14,000 likes and 3,100 retweets.
It’s not for nothing that Ivanka has shared the “Time’s Up” movement with her followers—she previously denounced former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore‘s behavior after women come forward saying Moore dated them when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Ivanka could, perhaps, be attempting to make her position about her father’s accusers known without driving an unforgivable, retribution-filled wedge between herself, her father, and the rest of her family. That “perhaps” is extremely skeptical, however, given Ivanka’s previous history as an “influential” advisor toward the president’s decisions, and would be an extremely weak attempt, at that.
But that’s the thing about speaking truth to power—to say nothing, or in Ivanka’s case, to do nothing, is to by default enable and choose the side of the oppressor, a man who is said to have sexually harassed or assaulted tens of women. Telling others to eradicate sexual harassment is nothing more than a pandering gesture if Ivanka does not take the steps to do so herself.
