#MeToo movement about women’s stories

Re Freedom of expression in a #MeToo world, Sept. 24

Thomas Walkom suggests that Ian Buruma’s departure from the New York Review of Books after publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi is a blow to freedom of speech. A simpler explanation is that Mr. Buruma was almost comically bad at his job.

Interested in exploring the experience of men who face public scorn for sexual indiscretions despite being cleared by the court, Mr. Buruma settled on the case of Mr. Ghomeshi. This seems a poor editorial choice, and maybe a fireable offence.

#MeToo arose because North American legal systems cannot protect women from sexual assault on the streets or sexual harrassment in the workplace. As a result, millions of women have been sexually assaulted in Canada and the U.S., and millions of women’s careers have been damaged or ended. It is as much an indictment of the inability of our legal systems to protect women’s bodies and careers as it is of violence and sexual aggression toward women.

People used the #MeToo hashtag to finally tell these terrible stories, and to give witness and support to others telling their part of this story. How this affects others is for the courts to de- cide. Anyone fired inappropriately can seek redress in the judicial system.

Women are not responsible for how telling the truth affects others. To vilify victims of violence for telling their own stories is to wade into dangerous waters. The #MeToo movement is not, as Mr. Buruma and Mr. Walkom agree, a “corrective on male behaviour.” It is, and always has been, women telling their own stories.

That two such accomplished male storytellers seem to miss this simple fact is a bit on the nose. Catherine Murton Stoehr, North Bay The portion of Jian Ghomeshi’s essay dealing with why he was fired and why his reputation is in tatters is incomplete, misleading and selfserving. The NYRB should not have published that portion unless he agreed to make it more accurate.

Ian Buruma is an important and well-respected writer, and he will remain so.

It is unfortunate that a number of university presses threatened to withdraw their advertising from the NYRB. I hope the University of Toronto Press was not one of them. Bruce Couchman, Ottawa