It’s a sad, and infuriating story that seems to play out—over and over.
There are rumors. Occasionally a victim will try to come forward, and people won’t believe her, so other victims remain silent, and the cycle of abuse continues. Women develop strategies and systems for protecting themselves and others, because it’s only a matter of time before they’re in the cross hairs. And the women who fight back, say ‘no,’ or make a stink about the incidents quickly learn that they’re on their own. Their careers are under threat. Their reputations are called into question.
And when the truth of the story surfaces, we all feign shock and surprise, but leading up to that moment, when hints of the truth trickle out, we all shrug our shoulders and declare that’s just the way it is in Hollywood, corporate America, politics, the music business—wherever.
But the reality? It’s not just any of those places. It’s in our schools, in our workplaces, on our streets, in public places, in our dating culture, and sometimes our homes. There is literally no place women go that is completely free of sexual harassment, misogyny, innuendo, assault or abuse.
We’re talking about it, again, because a slew of women in the entertainment industry have been subjected to all of these things by one powerful man. But that’s not the only reason. We’re also talking about it because this secret wasn’t really a secret. It was the saddest, and most infuriating common knowledge there is.
It was the knowledge that women were under attack, and had to accept it, because nobody would do anything about such a powerful individual’s actions. Not the men who knew about their significant others who dealt with these incidents. Not their colleagues. Not anyone in the industry. Because while women were the victims, both the power to kill careers, and the sense that this was just part of the deal kept everyone quiet.
And that’s one of the things that non-victims least understand about trauma and victimization. Men like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Roman Polanski, Brock Turner, my stepfather, a friend’s uncle—they don’t commit these acts because they’re aroused by sex. They commit these acts because they get off on the sense of power they feel. And most aren’t selective. It’s not about the way you look, how thin you are, whether you’re too friendly or not, or the way you are dressed. It’s about opportunity and access.
But every time the conversation about sexual misconduct on the part of men comes up, the conversation about what victims did, wore, said, or looked like quickly follows. It follows because men and society have taught us well. They have taught us that only we are responsible for what happens to us.
We are the ones who have to measure our shorts or skirt length before we go to school. We are the ones who have to make sure our shoulders aren’t bare, or our necklines aren’t too low when we go to algebra. We are the ones who can’t wear comfortable clothing to class. We are the ones who carry pepper spray when we jog alone. We are the ones who have a list of safety instructions emblazoned in our minds from the time we start going anywhere on our own.
And you cannot argue that boys have a list too. It’s not the same. There’s a huge difference between looking both ways before you cross the street, and the myriad of warnings girls and young women must heed. You can argue that “times have changed,” and even men and boys can be the targets of violent sex crimes, but the reality still is that the number of female victims far and away exceeds the number of male victims.
The other conversation that quickly follows these mass revelations of wrongdoing on the part of abusers is whether victims reported the incidents right away, or waited. What many non-victims continue to misunderstand is why victims don’t come forward and report sex crimes immediately. They don’t understand trauma, or the systems we have created that make reporting so difficult. And these slings and arrows come not only from men, but bafflingly, even from other women.
Trauma morphs into a infinite web of psychological symptoms in victims. We feel the initial harm. We feel confusion, uncertainty, guilt, powerlessness, fear of further violation, retaliation, social stigma, denial, anger, judgment, and loss. And that’s a short list that never ends for the rest of our lives.
And the systems we have created for reporting and dealing with sexual and/or violent crimes do only one thing extremely well: create further trauma, and often without achieving any justice. Because of the conversations that so quickly follow the revelation of such crimes, victims are frequently doubted, interrogated through multiple stages, forced to repeatedly relive events that are psychologically scrambled because of PTSD, and forced to allow their personal lives to be paraded for strangers to judge. We’re also very frequently forced to accept that our perpetrators’ lives are valued at a higher level than ours, and that they may face little in the way of consequences. If our perpetrators do pay a price, it will often be a slap on the wrist, and maybe registration as a sex offender.
What we face: lifelong PTSD, damaged relationships, self-esteem and confidence issues, loss of employment opportunities, loss of housing options, medical issues and bills, the cost of counseling if we seek it, physical damage, damaged interpersonal skills, and many other tangible issues. We live in a perpetual state of traumatization, because these kinds of crimes find a foothold in our subconscious, and wrap around our thought processes like metastatic cancer.
People are always suggesting forgiveness and putting the past in the past. Those are great suggestions. And some people are able to put these incidents behind them, and move onto be very successful and happy. I would argue that many of those people who do so still have bad moments. They still have flares of unexplainable fears, doubts and crippling thoughts that they don’t just “get over.” And I would argue that many of those “bad moments” probably tend to coincide with revelations like those in the Weinstein, Cosby, Brock Turner and Trump cases.
We can’t truly get away from any of it, because there’s always another victim or list of victims somewhere—just waiting to be revealed.
When we see it, the same questions always come up. Why does this keep happening? Why won’t anyone do something? And in our minds, the same answer keeps coming—nobody really cares, as long as it’s not them, or someone they love. Nobody cares, because women are not equally valued.
Why wouldn’t we think that, given the conversations that follow the revelations?
From the young girl getting ready for school and measuring the length of her dress, to the high school freshman who receives an unwanted photo or video from a male athlete, and knows that she will face more repercussions than her male counterpart—we teach both girls and boys that girls and women are responsible for everything that happens to them. From the first time a boy’s behavior is written off as “boys will be boys,” to the moment a judge says a young male athlete who rapes an unconscious woman shouldn’t have to face years in prison because of the harm it will cause him, we teach both girls and boys that boys and men deserve more from their lives than girls and women do.
In our complicit acceptance of women and girls being sexually victimized, everyone learns that it’s okay to look the other way, victim blame, victim shame, and move on from one well-publicized sexual misconduct scandal to the next. And we seem never to learn anything new, or truly meaningful. Hashtags come and go. Incidents make headlines and then fade away. There is only one constant.
Those of us who are part of the statistic, those of us who reported, those of us who couldn’t face the further traumatization—we are forever changed, even down to our DNA, and possibly our children’s DNA. For us, nothing is ever the same. There is no completely “safe” place. There is no way of avoiding all of the things that might trigger us.
No matter what may happen to the person who traumatized us, one of us will absolutely endure a life sentence. It will forever erase the person we were becoming, and it will forever influence who we are.
The “metoo”hashtag is a brief drawing aside of the black curtain. It reminds those of us who are “on the list” that we are not alone. Sometimes, it’s helpful to know who we are, so we can reach out to each other. But to be honest, knowing that someone else has been equally changed, and had their life equally shattered will never bring me comfort. The only comfort that I will ever have is that possibly unattainable moment when we all say “no more!”
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