Jon Hamm Is A Feminist Who Advocates Male Role Models

Jon Hamm has always played sexist, misogynistic Don Draper too well if you ask me. Anyone who succinctly conveys that much resentment towards women surely approaches the character from a feminist perspective — either in his personal life or just professionally. And it turns out, I’m right. Jon Hamm is a feminist who laments the lack of male role models — or so he recently stated at a benefit for the Rape Treatment Center.

Before becoming an actor, Jon was a high school teacher and worked at a daycare. He told the attendees in Beverly Hills that he was inspired to go into such work because as the child of a single mother, he spent the majority of his life in summer camps, after school programs, and daycare centers. He commented that being in those places as a kid was always a “bummer” as there hardly ever any men:

“Having gone through what I had gone through as a child…there were no real male role models in any of these places. There were never any dudes.

“It was a bummer as a young man to, not only not have a father figure in my life, but no real male figures as teachers or as educators or as afterschool program leaders or anything,” he said.

He went on to discuss the importance of outreach programs to boys and young men about the impacts of rape:

“Children from grade school to high school to college are incredibly susceptible and incredibly malleable, as we all know. To get them early, to teach them about the facts and figures and other realities of rape is key. It is an important issue to me as not only a man, but as an educator, as a human being and as a person on this planet.”

These quotes by Jon are perfect in that they convey that rape isn’t just a women’s issue — but everyone’s issue. Including boys on the discussion of rape and consent is an effort that needs to begin sooner than later. Isolating the discussion between women and girls can only go so far as to keep kids — and adults for that matter — safe.

I’ll never look at Don Draper the same way.

(photo: WENN)

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