‘Whisper networks’ warn of predators
But when going public is too risky, some are left behind
When women can’t speak out, they whisper.
Perhaps it’s a warning from a friend about a questionably flirty teacher. Or a story from a coworker about a colleague who gets handsy after-hours. Or a passed-down tale of an acquaintance who preys on women half his age.
As allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein continue to emerge, the concept of “whisper networks” is being used to explain how women in Hollywood may have known about the producer’s reported history of harassment, and how they helped shield one another from unwanted advances.
Whisper networks are the informal channels of communication people use to warn one another about predatory behavior from other figures around them in environments where they’re not able, or empowered, to speak up and defend themselves.
“Although people may not be aware of the term, it’s definitely an idea that most of us have seen in practice,” says Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. “It’s a way of informal information sharing where you’re confiding in someone in your circle because you don’t necessarily feel the information is safe for you to make public.”
These conversations happen in person, over messaging apps, in Twitter DMs and private Facebook threads. But, as the phrase indicates, whisper networks are private by design, used when going public is too risky.
“Every workplace is different, they may have a private social media group or account, they may have a code word that they use, (or) a spreadsheet or blacklist of people they know to stay Ashley Judd says women have known “for a long time.” Jessica Chastain was “warned from the beginning.” clear from,” according to Danielle Forshee, a licensed clinical social worker. “For those involved in the Harvey Weinstein situation, the whisper network may have functioned within a very small, tightly knit group of actors and actresses, which likely made it easier to trust each other and to know that they’re unlikely to receive negative reactions.”
Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain tweeted that she was “warned from the beginning ” of Weinstein’s behavior, saying “The stories were everywhere. To deny that is to create an environment for it to happen again.”
“Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves
for a long time,” Ashley Judd told The New York Times.
Yet, as important as whisper networks can be in protecting participants, their inherently exclusive nature means information about predators may not reach other potential victims in time.
“A downside could be that there are other survivors that don’t have access to the informal whisper network, and how would they know about it if they didn’t know who to trust?” Forshee says.
Also, whisper networks are a function of dangerous environments, not necessarily a solution to them. And while these networks can keep people safe in toxic situations, the burden of responsibility is placed on the whisperers to protect one another, and not on the broader culture at large.
“If you’re a person who receives information through a whisper network, it can be something that makes you feel safe or validated, but that isn’t an adequate way to address harass- ment,” Palumbo says. “Because it doesn’t ever bring in the many other people, the bystanders who could be proactively supporting targets of harassment, as well as the organization’s leadership, in saying, ‘Hey, this is an issue, and why don’t we do something to change the fact that this is happening, rather than just sweeping it under the rug.’ ”
Stigma may still follow partici-
A whisper network “doesn’t ever bring in the many other people, the bystanders who could be proactively supporting targets of harassment, as well as the organization’s leadership, in saying, ‘Hey, this is an issue.’ ”
Laura Palumbo of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center
pants in whisper networks. This week, a private spreadsheet listing predatory men in the media industry began circulating. The list attracted hundreds of entries before Buzzfeed published an article questioning its ethics and it disappeared from the Internet.
In a tweet, author Amy Rose Spiegel argued that the Buzzfeed story “undermined a resource meant to warn about harassers,” and shared her own account of the power of whisper networks to eventually go public about a predatory man.
“When I was in college, I worked anonymously with other women to get the chair of my department, a harasser for decades, removed by posting accounts of his behavior where people could see it,” she wrote.
“When we talk about, ‘Oh, maybe this isn’t the way for women to make their stories known; maybe we should go through official channels’ — if the official channels worked (instead of so often perpetuating the problem), why would the list need to exist?”