A years-old interview with Justin Baldoni is gaining traction on-line within the wake of Blake Full of life’s sexual harassment criticism in opposition to him.
Within the criticism, reportedly filed on Friday, Full of life accused Baldoni — who directed and co-starred in her 2024 movie “It Ends with Us” — of making a poisonous work atmosphere attributable to his “sexual comments” all through manufacturing, which allegedly included descriptions of his genitalia and remarks about his “pornography addiction” and Full of life’s weight.
Days after the criticism was filed, a 2021 episode of Sarah Grynberg’s podcast “A Life of Greatness,” wherein Baldoni bought candid about his habit to porn, started to attract renewed consideration.
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Within the episode, Grynberg stated she introduced up the topic as a result of Baldoni was so “open” in his 2021 guide, “Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity,” about how he used porn to deal with troublesome emotions.
“I was introduced to porn when I was 10 years old. Long before I ever, you know, could have an erection or even knew how I felt about anything,” Baldoni stated about 43 minutes into the episode. “And it became — you know, like any young boy who sees boobs for the first time — it’s exciting because our culture has shielded them from us, because they’re sexualized.”
Baldoni in contrast People’ comparatively puritanical views towards intercourse to these present in different cultures.
“You go to places like Africa and different tribes… and the breast is the breast, right? But we’ve sexualized this thing,” he stated. “So of course, it becomes fascinating and interesting, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, boobs.’ And then, you know, hormones start raging.”
The “Jane the Virgin” alum then started to debate how complicated it was for him to be uncovered to porn at such a younger age, and why it grew to become an habit.
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“I sought refuge in it when I felt alone or when I felt abandoned, or when I felt hurt… because it was a dopamine rush,” Baldoni stated. “At an early age, I trained my brain to deal with pain with the dopamine hit.”
“I found myself, over the course of my life, going back to looking at images and videos of naked women when I was feeling necessarily bad about myself,” he stated. “And I knew that it was an issue for me when I would tell myself, ‘Oh, don’t, you don’t want to do that,’ and you would find yourself doing it.”
“The fact that I look at it, and I don’t feel good when I do it, tells me that there’s an issue,” he stated later within the dialog. “What is the act of me craving this external thing really telling me? It’s telling me that I have unexpressed feelings in my body that need to come out.”
Baldoni additionally spoke about how navigating an urge to look at porn was “tricky” as a result of he believes a lot of it’s “very violent” towards girls, and that there’s “a link between rape culture and porn culture.”
“And because no one ever sits us down and teaches us about consent, we learn it through porn,” Baldoni stated. “So what do you have? You have an entire generation of boys who think that when a girl says ‘No’ or ‘Stop’ or ‘That hurts,’ that that means that’s good.”
Full of life obtained widespread backlash this summer season over the messy promotional tour for “It Ends with Us.” Throughout the press tour, Full of life tried to market the movie as a rom-com, though the film was about home violence. She additionally tried to tie in promotion of her hair care line with the rollout of her movie, which irked many followers.
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Full of life’s criticism provides a stark distinction to Baldoni’s public picture. Over the previous few years, he’s constructed a model for himself as a feminist who rejects poisonous masculinity. In a viral TED Discuss in 2017, he spoke about redefining masculinity, a topic he additionally explored in “Man Enough” and his 2022 guide “Boys Will Be Human.”
In a 2021 interview with the “Art of Power” podcast, he was requested how he felt about critics who dismissed his requires males to be extra susceptible as merely “performative.”
In response, Baldoni acknowledged the potential for some folks him and “being like, ‘This guy’s full of shit.’”
“And I can’t say anything to convince you otherwise,” he stated. “That’s on you. Your work is… wondering why that makes you feel that way. What about what I’m saying triggers you to the point where you need to then put me down? Is it to build yourself up?”
He continued: “If that’s the case… then I would argue that that’s the exact same thing we’ve been doing to each other as men from the beginning, and that’s why we’re here at this place at all.”
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