“I was a real dick,” Jameela Jamil said during her appearance on Red Table Talk. The Good Place star joined Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris (aka “Gammy”) for the Nov. 13, episode. When the topic of “judging people” came up, Jameela, 34, owned up to being a “misogynist” online. “There is documented proof of me slut-shaming loads of female celebrities, like Miley [Cyrus], Beyoncé,Rihanna, like Kim [Kardashian], all of these different people – Iggy Azalea – and I was doing it because I was in pain. I was a troll.”
“I thought I was ‘doing feminism,’” said Jameela. She explained that she had this long-simmering trauma from being sexually assaulted when she was 22. “So I’m sexually assaulted, I’m too afraid to confront my rapist, and so, instead, I get angry at all women who sexualize themselves because I blame them for why men have always sexualized me since I was a child. So, I’m like ‘it’s your fault because you make them think they have permission to my body,’ which is never the case. And I was afraid deep down, and that was how I projected my pain.”
Jameela also explained that she had additional “pain” because earlier in her life, she was “bullied at school by girls, and I didn’t always have great relationships with all of the women in my family and so I didn’t have a good vibe about women growing up. I would speak disparagingly about women and I thought women were always in drama. I had all this rage and I would project it at women, at the nearest, easiest target… was this slut-shaming, woman-hating a–hole.”
From there, Red Table Talk provided the receipts, showing Jameela’s tweets from 2013: “Not to be outdone by Beyonce, Miley Cyrus fingers herself in low budget video for her now (not very good single), Adore You *rolls eyes*” and “Miley Cyrus giving all of Liam’s clothes to Charity was clever. Maybe that’s where all her clothes went too…?” Red Table Talk also showed the Company OpEd Jameela wrote in 2013, in which she attacked Rihanna and Beyoncé for “post[ing] pictures of yourself naked on social- networking sites.”
Jameela, after reflecting on her past behavior, said she’s “changed” and has learned from her mistakes. “It’s why I haven’t removed myself from society, in spite of being asked, too many times, by people on Twitter, and I understand. The reason I don’t is that I would like to be that proof that human beings can redeem themselves.”
“I’m still so ashamed,” added Jameela. “Even though I understand why I did it, I think it’s important to be accountable and to hold yourself responsible for the fact that, whatever happens to you, it might explain what you did, but it doesn’t excuse it.”