Amy Poehler: Me Too has forced me to examine my institutionalised misogyny

Amy Poehler has said the Me Too era has forced her to examine her own internalised misogyny.

The Parks And Recreation star admitted she has been grappling with the assumptions she made about sexual politics before the reckoning about sexual harassment and gender equality took hold.

She told US trade publication The Hollywood Reporter: “I’ve been trying to unpack my own deep institutionalised misogyny.

“Our generation of women, Gen Xer women, we de-sexualised ourselves. And that stuff gets really ingrained.

“I grew up in a time where trying to sympathise or empathise with the male experience was how I was able to be included in the experience.”

She added: “Women are constantly criticised for being too emotional. Can we be allowed to be as messy, as all over the place, as inconsistent and as mediocre as men?

“Do we have to always be patient, special, nurturing, adaptable?”

Poehler, who will make her directorial debut with Netflix movie Wine Country, admitted that during filming on the comedy Broad City, on which she was a producer, her instinct was sometimes to invalidate the actresses’ overt sexuality.

She said: “They’d be doing a scene where they would be cleaning an apartment in their underwear. And I’d be like, ‘You know you guys don’t have to be in your underwear.’

“And they’d be like, ‘We wrote this’.

“My generation was like, ‘Wear baggy clothes when you improvise, be one of the guys, don’t use your sexuality.’ And women younger than me are like, ‘Uh, my sexuality is my own, I can use it however I want. It’s one of the many things about me. And I’m in control of it.’

“And it’s like, right, right, right, right, right.”