SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
New books reveal obstacles #MeToo is overcoming — and why it’s not over
A recent book talk became a trending news story: A sold-out crowd heckled the moderator, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward. “Let her finish!” shouted one audience member in the auditorium after Woodward repeatedly interrupted Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, whose appropriately titled book She Said recounts how they broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct story in The New York Times.
More reprimands came after Woodward seemed not to grasp that Weinstein’s behaviour was more about power than sex.
The #MeToo movement has hit its book stage, igniting intense rounds of discussion showing just how combustible the public conversation over sexual assault and harassment still is. The day before the She Said talk, a smaller group had gathered at a Washington bookstore to hear Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly discuss their book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh — two weeks after their New York Times essay adapted from the book had courted controversy and a clarifying “editor’s note” was added. Ronan Farrow has spent the past couple of weeks battling with NBC over claims in his new book, Catch and Kill, that executives at the network covered up his reporting on Weinstein before he eventually took the story to The New Yorker.
Together, the new books out this fall are a semester’s worth of reading. The only way I could make sense of this fascinating but dizzying collection was to read as many of them as I could and talk to those who were showing up to discuss them. What stand out are all the reasons the #MeToo movement was not at all inevitable — the obstacles and intimidation that survivors and reporters faced while telling these stories. And even though they helped spark mass social change, a sense of closure remains elusive.
To some extent, these books show how momentum toward #MeToo had been building before Weinstein. In 2014, women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault started coming forward, leading to his conviction last year. Kantor and Twohey write about how the Cosby revelations made Weinstein’s co-workers more willing to expose him — including Weinstein’s accountant, Irwin Reiter, and former Miramax executive Amy Israel. (Weinstein has denied the allegations.)
But generally, in the mid2010s, attitudes on sexual assault were behind where they are today. Much of the media conversation focused on how rampant it was on college campuses and, often, how slow these institutions were to respond. One case that captured attention: Brock Turner, a star Stanford athlete, got a mere six-month sentence for sexually assaulting a 23-yearold woman, sparking national outrage.
In 2016, BuzzFeed News published a statement the woman read to Turner at his sentencing. It reached more than 15 million people and inspired other survivors to come forward.
As #MeToo unfolded, the woman, Chanel Miller, felt emboldened to make her name public with a searing memoir that came out in September and quickly became a bestseller. Know My Name is remarkable for how Miller, who had blacked out from drinking, refuses to blame herself for what Turner had done to her. In a recent podcast conversation, Oprah Winfrey told Miller this mindset was a big change from how Winfrey and other survivors of her generation frequently blamed themselves for being assaulted, perhaps because of how they dressed or how much they had to drink. Miller said shame was “festering inside me, unmonitored, but as soon as I released the statement, then it was able to breathe, and as soon as you open it up and let it out a little, it loses so much power.”
The authors and survivors struggle not only with internal emotions but also with what effect their stories will actually have.
Every one of these books mentions the 2005 Access Hollywood video that came out shortly before the 2016 U.S. election, in which Donald Trump brags to TV host Billy Bush about groping and kissing women — and the fact that Trump was still elected U.S. president. Twohey, who had written pre-election stories about women who accused Trump of assault, wondered whether her and Kantor’s Weinstein reporting would make much of a difference.
The reporters working on these stories also knew their sources’ trauma made them feel a loss of control. Kantor and Twohey were careful not to pressure people into speaking up. They would give an opening but it had to be the survivor’s decision.
The She Said news cycle is even sparking new revelations. Kantor tweeted that a woman broke her nondisclosure agreement at a She Said book talk in Los Angeles. Rowena Chiu, one of Weinstein’s former assistants silenced by nondisclosure agreement for 21 years, broke that contract the day She Said was published with a New York Times essay. Meeting other Weinstein victims and Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, who lives near Chiu in Palo Alto, Calif., “created a seismic shift within me,” she said.
Just as Ford paid attention to Miller’s case, Miller was following Ford’s. When she drove by a Palo Alto candlelight vigil shortly before Ford’s testimony in Washington, Miller writes, she sat in her car, weeping, feeling fortified by that outpouring from neighbours and strangers. “I listened to the night air full of honking, incessant, blaring horns, the beautiful rage, the support of my hometown, people packing the sidewalks I grew up on,” Miller writes, later continuing: “A younger version of myself had been hungry to see this for a long time.”
Miller said in an interview that each #MeToo revelation was a “nudge forward” toward revealing her name — but seeing Ford testify was that final push.
However empowering, telling one’s story does not guarantee it will feel resolved. Pogrebin and Kelly show how the 2018 FBI investigation into Kavanaugh was rushed and limited. Though they fill in many of the blanks, the country remains divided over his confirmation, and Ford is still receiving death threats.