Charlize Theron recently compared the media's intrusion into her private life to "being raped," a comment that didn't go down too well with many critics.
Agreed being a celebrity is not easy with the media constantly trying to intrude into your private life, but is it as bad as being raped? Charlize Theron thinks so. In a recent interview with Sky News, when asked if she ever Googled herself, the actress said that the constant media attention her private life gets feels like "being raped."
"I don't do that, so that's my saving grace," Theron said, according to NY Daily News. "When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start feeling raped."
This comment didn't go down to well with many, who are of the opinion that by making such a comparison, Theron "diluted" the severity of the crime.
According to sexual assault survivor and journalist Carly Milne, Theron may feel violated by the press intrusion into her life but she should have used a different word to describe her feelings.
"When you use the word rape to describe something that is not rape it dilutes the word and turns it into something that has less meaning," Milne told CBSN News.
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) also didn't approve of Theron's comment and issued a statement about the remark.
"We wish Charlize Theron had used a more appropriate metaphor to describe the experience of being a celebrity in the era of digital media," Katherine Hull Fliflet from RAINN told Yahoo News. "The horror of being raped should never be compared to the 'unpleasantness' someone could experience by Googling themselves."
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center also issued a statement, calling Theron's comment a "teachable moment" and saying that using the word rape lightly "dilutes the seriousness of the crime, and downplays the trauma that victims experience."
Linda Fairstein, the former chief of the Manhattan district attorney's sex crimes unit who spent 40 years hunting rapists, said the word Theron should have used was "violated."
"Rape has a legal definition, a physical assault on the body and a very traumatic one," she said, according to Daily Mail. "But violation refers to something less than rape. Personally, I would not compare it to being a rape victim."
Theron is not the first celebrity to have made such a comparison. In 2010, actress Kristen Stewart compared looking at paparazzi photos of herself to seeing images of rape; and in 2011 Johnny Depp said that having paparazzi pictures taken of himself made him "feel like you're being raped."
Both celebrities apologized for their statement immediately but Theron has taken no such action yet.
