BRAVE HEART

Life has been nothing short of brutal to Rose McGowan but she refuses to go down without a fight. LIADAN HYNES meets the activist and author in Dublin to talk #METOO, the power of the male gaze, and how and

where she seeks solace these days.

Long before she met Harvey Weinstein at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997, in an encounter she describes as ending in a vicious sexual assault (something Weinstein, who is facing trial for the sexual assault of two women in New York City, denies), life had been brutal to Rose McGowan. Now 45, Rose was born in the Italian countryside, part of the Children of God, a cult which former members have described as “hell on earth”. Her father, who Rose deduces suffered from schizophrenia, decided to escape with his family when it began to seem likely his children would be sexually abused.

They went to America, where the message was, she recalls: “You’re different. We must crush the difference out of you.”

Her mother arrived several years later; Rose was reunited with her, and her series of abusive boyfriends. Aged 13, she was committed to a drug rehab programme after, she says, trying one hit of LSD. She escaped to live on the streets of Oregon.

Later, living with her father, Rose was the target of his intense rage. Working as an extra, she was sexually assaulted by an older man on set.

The job resulted in her move to Los Angeles aged 15. There, she fell into an abusive relationship, which led to her

developing an eating disorder. All this before she ever encountered the man she refers to throughout Brave, her book, which is part memoir, part manifesto, as the “Monster”, refusing to include Harvey Weinstein’s name.

In a way, the most extraordinary thing about McGowan’s story is that it did not crush her, as it so understandably could have.

But Rose McGowan is, by her own admission, not like most other people. Even as a four-year-old, when an older cult member would ask nightly whether she had allowed God into her life, the tiny Rose would refuse to agree, ignoring her sister’s pleas to do the easy thing, give in and avoid the subsequent beatings. This is not a woman who does the easy thing, who gives in.

Forget whatever preconceptions you may have about Rose McGowan. As she would tell you herself, they are probably inaccurate, informed by the male gaze so systemic in our interpretation of the world, it is impossible to avoid. In person, she’s gracious, articulate and hugely bright, a natural conversationalist. Self-described as intense, she’s actually very funny. Brave is full of wry observations; at one point, she notes: “I have never met a female method actor,” adding that a male colleague announcing he is a method actor is usually synonymous with “I’m going to be a fucking dick to everybody on set.”

“A lot of people think that I’m this angry firebrand,” she smiles. “And of course, I have anger like anybody else. I have a very Irish humour. I had a therapist who asked me to stop making fun of everything that was making me sad. What else are you supposed to do? Literally, in the last year and a half, it’s been so extra, and so absurd; I had spies in my life. You have to laugh, because it’s so ridiculous.”

It can’t be easy, always putting oneself out there, taking the flak in the front line. “It’s brutal,” she says with a soft smile, comparing it to the feeling of lying down on barbed wire. “But if not me, who? Who else was going to sign up for this job?”

Her work as an activist, though obviously worthwhile, is horribly triggering, she admits.

“I don’t think a lot of people make room for my being human. If I cry in an interview, they make fun of me, and if I don’t, then there’s something wrong with me.”

You get the impression of someone with a deep sense of purpose; speaking out in order that other women will not feel so isolated. Recently, she revealed on her Twitter feed that she had had an abortion.

“I was 15 years old,” she says now. “It was the first time I’d had sex. And there was no choice of being able to keep it. My father was going through a violent phase, and that would not have gone over well. I decided to share it because so many people make abortion out to be this thing, like it should permanently scar you. They try to paint abortion as if women are like ‘hmmm, at two o’clock I’ll get my nails done, three I’ll have the abortion, I can meet the girls for a drink at five fifteen,’” she says, adopting a light-hearted, sing song tone.

“It’s not like that at all. For many women, and men I’m sure who go through it with their partners, it’s very traumatic. It was certainly traumatic to be sitting there at just under 15 years of age, with my legs spread in stirrups. But that was my only real option at that point, and I am not ashamed of that option. Shame is such an enemy. It is another form of control. And how dare you? You didn’t live my life. You didn’t walk in my shoes. This scarlet letter’s not mine.”

More than anything, Brave is a story of a woman rejecting the versions of herself others attempted to foist upon her and in doing so, discovering who she really is. Now, she knows exactly who she is. Having that knowledge is, she smiles, a type of superpower.

McGowan has become widely associated with the #METOO campaign. “My movement, if we can say that, which I would attribute to myself, is raising social consciousness, and attempting to make people smarter. To try to break things down as to why they’re living their lives a certain way, and how they can do it differently. And I did write a guide book for that. Unfuck yourself,” she smiles, pleased with her summation of her book.

Does she ever consider retreating with her dogs and her partner, non-binary model Rain Dove, for a well-earned break?

“I would love to. I don’t know how to live a life for myself. We were raised to be of service. The youngest memory I have is performing in hospitals for sick and dying children, to bring them joy. I don’t know how to be any other way. I’m trying to figure that out, what it looks like to live a life for yourself.

“My partner brings a sense of safety and calm to my life,” she smiles. Resilience in women can be simultaneously their trump card and their Achilles heel, something Rose’s life illustrates comprehensively. “So many women just keep on. I did that for a long time. If you can tolerate a lot of adversity, it takes so much longer for the bell to ring on stuff that’s not okay. Because you can handle so much. And that’s what I wanted to put forth with my book. Just because we can handle a lot, doesn’t mean we have to. You don’t have to carry it all, suck it up, and just take it, because you’re a woman.”

Brave reads like a guide book on dealing with the things that, as a woman, you will inevitably come up against, to some degree. Life lessons. “Brave was my first chance to tell my own story, and not have that hijacked. It’s kind of a manual for how to get free.”

What is the biggest lesson she has herself learned? “I think that I can survive a hell of a lot, but that I didn’t need to. You start realising that things should hit the ding, ding, ding faster; before it gets out of hand. I’m a lot quicker to shut things down now.”

“If you can tolerate

adversity, it takes longer for the bell to ring on stuff that’s not okay. You don’t have to carry it all, suck it up, and just take it, because

you’re a woman.”