#METOO
PHOTOS WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, WHY WE MARCH BOOK
I’m at a spoken word night in an underground bar in east London and women are taking to the stage to tell their #MeToo stories. It’s brutal. They’ve been persecuted, assaulted, gang-raped. I’m trying not to cry. We are all trying not to cry. Few of us are succeeding. I ask those who’ve been up if they’re glad they did and every one of them says “yes”. “It was cathartic.” “It made me feel lighter.” I share my own experiences, of being sexually harassed for years by a male boss who knew I was gay, of being grabbed and groped and called a “whore” and a “slut”, of running home clutching my heels in my hands to escape a man who wouldn’t accept the word “no”. I don’t feel lighter. I feel a crushing despair. I am overwhelmed by the weight of our combined agony. We are the walking wounded. We bleed onstage and on social media in the desperate hope that society will give a shit. Why must we, as women, repeatedly bear our souls and offer up our scars? Haven’t we been through enough trauma? Yes, there is power in voicing our pain, but that night I’m left wondering what else it will take for society to fundamentally change.