Actor and investor Ashton Kutcher took to Twitter to announce he will hold a “live open dialog” on Facebook on July 10, with the aim of discussing gender equality. In his Twitter post, he talked about a few questions that he would like to answer.
Here are the questions:
Not only did this post go viral in a matter of hours, it also received a lot of criticism since his ‘mansplaining’ of gender equality was not accepted by many.
Paradigm CEO Joelle Emereson said, “Yikes. These are definitely not the right questions. Most rely on flawed assumptions and perpetuate problematic myths.”
Another user chimed in to say, “Ashton, you embarrass yourself for a very good reason. Your questions tell me more (again) about how you perceive women, not how women are! Please pull together the correct questions, and a dialogue that deals with the issue, instead of reiterating the sexist view in the workplace will begin to heal us.”
Twitter user @PandoDaily called Ashton ‘tone deaf on tech sexism,’ and another Twitter user quoted Emereson’s tweet, writing: “Find it hard to believe Ashton Kutcher, the Ashton Kutcher, who is now a Silicon Valley bigwig, would f*** up here.”
In response, Kutcher tweeted, “Thank you everyone for the feedback on the questions I posted on LinkedIn. Good and bad. Already a learning experience. Looking to host an open live conversation on Monday morning on my FB page about gender equality in the work place. I’ve already offended some folks by asking the wrong questions. I’m certain given the sensitivity of the topic I will say other things wrong. Hope we can find space to be wrong in the pursuit of getting it right. We have centuries of ground to make up in a short order & I don’t want the basics to be off limits. Some clearly don’t yet get the basics.”
Megha Shah for TechFunnel.com
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