Yesterday, I posted #MeToo along with thousands of other women. This was a simple choice insofar as it was true to my experience, an act of feminist solidarity, and an expression of support for the stated aim of showing the "magnitude of the problem". But it was also a complicated choice, fraught with questions of difference. These questions are political, reaching far beyond me. But they are also painfully close.
First, there is the doubt that comes when we make ourselves the centre of protest. What about my relative silence when it comes to other people, other battles? Have I listened? Am I doing enough? And of course, the answer to the latter is always no. Minimally, and in the interest of intersectionality, we have to acknowledge that fact. And as a white historian of race and urban history, I feel an added responsibility here. I should note, for example, that the "Me Too" idea is not new. It dates back ten years to a grassroots project launched by a black woman, Tarana Burke. Burke's initiative reached out to sexual assault survivors in communities where, as she told Ebony Magazine this week, "rape crisis centers and sexual assault workers weren't going... It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible."
Secondly, and on a more personal level, there are questions of difference between myself and a small number of close friends who have suffered extreme sexual violence, and in two cases, attacks that put their lives at risk. This did not happen to me. I worried that my friends' life-threatening experiences, their difference and voices, might be drowned by this particular social media wave. So I post, but I want to acknowledge these friends, what happened to them, and their survival and courage.
Finally, I encounter a difference within myself, one that for decades I have preferred to leave untouched. This is the difference between what I might call everyday memories of harassment and an incident that lives in a box of its own. How is this difference made manifest? Very simply, in speech and silence.
Speech. At 63, I am learning about our culture's erasure of older women - our bodies and minds. But I can still speak, without difficulty, of a lifetime's accumulation of harassment. I remember a primary school teacher who paddled the girls for good grades. A school photographer who touched my breasts. I recall remarks made on the street, at work, social gatherings. I can speak of feeling physically crowded or diminished by men in both private and public places. I remember men who did not treat my body or desires with interest or respect. I can talk about the times I've been flashed on the street or felt afraid walking home at night. All of these moments and memories are part of the wear-and-tear on womanhood. They are not special. Every woman I know possesses her own catalogue of incidents, an accumulated history that shapes all of us in the present.
Silence. This brings me to my one exception, the unspeakable incident I have kept locked away for so long. One afternoon many years ago, as a young undergraduate, I was followed into the women's toilet of our hall of residence by four fellow students, men I believed were friends, one of whom I had dated. They blocked me in one of the stalls for two hours, laughing and telling me I could not leave unless I took off all my clothes. Anger and outrage carried me through the first hour. By the end of the second hour, I was pounding on the door of the stall and beginning to cry. Physically trapped and outnumbered, I was frightened, utterly humiliated, a person without agency or value. I had no idea how it would end. Finally, another male student arrived and talked them down. I heard his voice on the other side of the stall door, calm but unforgiving of their actions, and unwavering in his demand that they stop. He made it possible for me to leave the stall in safety and he achieved this by standing up to other men. Wherever he is today, I extend my gratitude to him.
My silence about this incident has lasted decades. But I think about it more often than I care to admit. The terror and rage produced by physical restraint, the memory of having no power, a burn of humiliation - these return each time, along with a deep hurt that still brings tears.
From silence to speech. I post #MeToo for our shared experiences, but for our differences too. And if in doing so, I begin to heal my own difference within, then I am grateful to all the other women who have posted alongside me.