The #MeToo Pulitzers make me happy. Without the reporting of @jodikantor & @mega2e & @RonanFarrow, I can't imagine the rest of us coming forward. I will forever be grateful to them and the women who spoke to them on and off the record for starting this seismic shift.
I wonder if the Weinstein victims and accusers feel a sense of resolution. I don't.
So many possible similes: a scab that won't heal, one that's mostly itchy but sometimes opens up. An ugly old shirt I'd dumped in the back of my closet and forgotten I had, and now that I've shaken it out and shown it to the world, I can't stop wearing it. Or choose not to.
I'm not sure what I wanted back in October, but here's something I want now: for there to be a way to continue to share #MeToo stories without women having to sacrifice their privacy and emotional safety. Without having to drain a few pints of blood for public consumption.
Because even all that doesn't guarantee they will be met with compassion or belief.
To be clear: I'm not talking about myself. I was met with overwhelming love and support from friends and family and strangers online.
The timing of my story (way before the backlash), its lack of violent details, the documentation, the fact that I was 17 when it happened and felt no rancor when I wrote it (as opposed to the white-hot rage I feel now) - I was as lucky as it gets in terms of reception.
Once others came forward, similarities emerged. (Every predator has his fucking fetishes.) As a group, we were harder to ignore; there was clearly a pattern. He started being included in the list of famous abusers. A friend said, "You put him in the rogue's gallery."
So why can't I just drop it and move on?
Because - Pulitzers aside - "drop it and move on" seems to be the public mood these days. The world appears ready for rehabilitation stories, stories of how outed predators are now leading lives of sadness and bewilderment.
Meanwhile, I'm still hearing the horrors of what some of them did.
The other day I spent 3.5 hours with a woman I'd never spoken to before as she told me her story. It's not mine to tell, but the harrowing details will be with me forever. What her life might have been without this experience, what her career might have been, we'll never know.
I'm so sick of the what-ifs, the what-might-have-beens. Yeah, Carrie Fisher said, Take your broken heart and make it into art, but what if it's your life that was broken, your career, your entire sense of self? (Again, not talking about me.)
Why the fuck should that person have to rebuild what she can while her rapist is still out taking strolls with his family?
And why should the whole satellite of enablers - this story that's not mine to tell could never have happened and been kept quiet without the help of many others - continue to reap the benefits of their successful careers?
I don't want to be cagey here, I want to name names, I want this story plastered all over the Internet. But I want all of that without this woman having to share her own name, show her face, or go on TV.
She's not going to do any of those things, and NO ONE should expect her to. She has been through hell and this would only make it much, much worse.
To every man who's sent me a DM passing along some story he knew about a woman who was traumatized, saying, "She really needs to come forward," fuck you. You come forward, asshole.
You get together enough of your former coworkers to tell the stories of women you watched getting abused. Gather so many witnesses that a reporter has all the verification they need without the victim going on the record. Quit making the women this happened to do all the work.
Otherwise, spare us the bullshit of how great you think #MeToo is, how important it is that stories of abuse are finally coming to light. If you really want the world to change, lift a fucking finger to make it happen.
