Sharon Stone was invited to the Torino Film Festival this week. They gave her a Stella della Mole lifetime achievement award (just like Angelina Jolie). Sharon goes to these kinds of film festivals and international film events all the time – she shows up to the opening of an envelope, especially if that envelope is in Europe. As part of her award, Sharon did a press conference at the festival, and she was asked specifically about the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I repeat: she was not asked directly about Donald Trump, she was asked specifically about violence against women. It just so happens that Trump is an adjudicated rapist and that a half-dozen of his cabinet-level nominees are predators, rapists, degenerates and whatever Matt Gaetz is. As you can imagine, Sharon’s thoughts on the issue of “violence against women” are influenced by the realities of the incoming Trump administration.

“This question about the question of violence against women is– is a big one. And I think we have to really stop and think about things. And we have to stop and think about who we choose for government. And if, in fact, we are actually choosing our government or if the government is choosing itself.

You know, Italy has seen fascism. Italy has seen these things. You guys. And you understand what happens. You have seen this before. My country is in the midst of adolescence. Adolescence is very arrogant. Adolescence thinks it knows everything. Adolescence is naive and ignorant and arrogant. And we are in our ignorant, arrogant adolescence.

We haven’t seen this before in our country. So Americans who don’t travel, who 80% don’t have a passport, who are uneducated, are in their extraordinary naivete. What I would say is that the only way that we can help with these issues is to help each other.

Now, we can’t just say women should help women because that’s the only way we have survived so far. We must say that good men must help good men and those good men must be very aware that a lot of their friends are not good men. And we can’t continue to pretend that your friends are good men when they’re not good men. And you must be very clear minded and understand that your friends who are not not good men are dangerous violent men. And you have to keep them away from your daughters, your wives and your girlfriends, because this is the time when we can no longer look away, when bad men are bad.

I was watching a comedian the other night and he said, I asked a woman to dinner and she said yes. And it was such a brave thing for her to do because the only real thing, the number one killer of. In the world today is men. For men, the number one killer is heart disease. The number one killer for women is men! It is very important to remember that. It’s very important to remember that. Thank you.

[From Mediaite]

On a scale of zero to Dixie Chicks, this is pretty middle-of-the-road to me? She doesn’t even say Trump’s name, but yeah, she makes not-so-oblique references to the arrogance and ignorance of millions of Americans who voted for Trump. MAGAts are crying because they think Sharon called them dumb, uneducated losers who never travel. But… she’s right? One of the big postmortems on the election was the dumbest people in America voted for Trump and they all cited some of the dumbest reasons why they voted that way.

The whole section about “good men have to look out for women”… men had their chance to look out for women and they voted for Trump in large numbers. The majority of white women also chose this violent fascism. So it is what it is. What’s also interesting is that in 2022, Stone made some interesting comments post-Dobbs, in which she basically said that Trump, Dobbs, and the sort of new cultural acceptance of violent misogyny was all a backlash to Me Too. I don’t believe that, but I think her 2022 comments were more interesting than whatever this was.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.