No woman untouched by sexual misconduct
This past Monday morning was tougher than usual as people woke up to find their social media feeds flooded with an unsettling truth: virtually every woman they know has experienced some form of sexual harassment or sexual assault.
Coming to grips with her own silence around the Harvey Weinstein debacle, actress Alyssa Milano invited women to draw attention to the problem with the hashtag #metoo. The fine gold curtain that dangles between Hollywood and the outside world dissolved as we confronted the depressing regularity with which women are demeaned and manhandled, well beyond the casting couch.
Within 24 hours, Twitter counted half a million tweets tagged #metoo. A day later, it had appeared on Facebook 12 million times.
Some women posted details of painful encounters, as did a few men. Others focused on the way their accounts had been minimized or disbelieved. Many simply wrote “me too” without further context: a ripple in an ocean of victims speaking with one voice.
I expected the campaign to become a protracted confessional, with a smattering of mea culpas from sensitive men. What I did not expect was the way reading these accounts would split me open like overripe fruit, burdened with too much rain.
Testimony came from casual acquaintances, close friends and colleagues. Their power lies not only in their message but their magnitude. In many cases, their two-word posts contained multitudes of devastation: stories of rape; of assault under anaesthetic; of family predators and pedophile priests. The words that resonated loudest were those left unsaid.
Many men sent messages of support: I hear you; I believe you. At their best, they responded with a fearless moral inventory of their own complicity, vowing to end their silence.
At their worst, we heard the usual accusations of “witch hunt” from those who have the most to gain by perpetuating the tired old notion women’s testimony is overdramatized and hysterical.
The social media campaign inevitably fuelled division, like the tug of war between #NotAllMen and #YesAllWomen. This time, many of the cracks in solidarity have come from women themselves.
Some challenged the validity of lumping in sexual harassment with sexual assault — as one friend put it, comparing her bout of flu with her neighbour’s cancer. Some feminists began devouring their own, as when actress Mayim Bialik’s remarks about her own choices came across as victim-blaming. Others reminded us: Women don’t owe anyone their stories.
There is no industry untouched by the rot. Entertainment. Gymnastics. The tech sector. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights chimed in, sharing: “Even in the humanitarian industry, sexual abuse and harassment against female workers is widespread, and often committed with impunity.”
Just as men are vowing to speak up, many women are re-examining how they speak.
Anti-sexism activist Jackson Katz describes our persistent reliance on the passive tense when it comes to tabulating incidents involving women. We report how many women were raped in a given year, not how many men raped women; how many women were harassed; how many teenaged girls became pregnant, not how many males impregnated teenaged girls.
Passivity shifts the focus away from males and onto girls and women, Katz argues in a TED Talk. “Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It’s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence…. Men aren’t even a part of it.”
There are practical considerations for reporting statistics in the passive tense. We can’t infer numerical equivalency between rape victims and rapists — a serial perpetrator can do a lot of damage. But we can speak actively, and think differently, about our own experiences.