#metoo

This is a deeply personal post full of deeply personal information, including a great deal about sexuality and abuse and lived experience. I write it because within the past 36 hours #metoo has mushroomed on the internet. In case you have not seen it, #metoo is a movement of women (and some men) posting something to the effect of “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” I found that specific text on Alyssa Milano’s Twitter.  You can see it from the image posted. In any event, I do not post for pity or to elicit any feelings from you about me; I write because silence indeed equals a kind of death, acquiesced to in a horrible way.

When I saw it, I quickly posted my own #metoo on Facebook, and I was pretty bowled over by the response. Within hours I noticed that a super significant portion of my Facebook friends had either commented or posted their own #metoo status. It was kind of stunning to see it all at once.

While a supporter of speaking up, a gift that I lacked when I was younger and victimized, I also have mixed feelings about the movement. That said, I’m going to try to offer a few posts about the topic starting with why I feel that way.

Why the mixed feelings?
Well, that goes back a day or two earlier to #womenboycotttwitter – that came from the actress Rose McGowan. In theory I agreed with her point, but I don’t use Twitter enough to make a difference. What struck me more powerfully was Ava DuVernay’s position on that movement.  She said, “Calling white women allies to recognize conflict of #WomenBoycottTwitter for women of color who haven’t received support on similar issues.”  She is absolutely correct as far as I am concerned. Along those lines, #metoo met with a surge of interest, and it makes me sad that issues that impact women of color do not come close with this kind of attention, or people of color in general. Which by the way illustrates the baseline problem, but that’s another topic for another day.  Let’s just say that I support #BLM and #takeaknee , and doing so does not mean in any way that I am anti-police, not at all. Moving on, hope to post more about that soon.

What happened?
Back to #metoo – mixed feelings aside, I felt a deep compulsion to be very clear about saying #metoo in regard to my own life. Challenges around boundaries

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Night falls

Reading Night has me considering just how night falls around us lately. Should I be embarrassed to admit that I had never read Elie Wiesel’s Night? It felt kind of shocking to me, as I am holocaust-obsessed person, not to mention a big reader. Frankly I’m not sure how I never did, but I never did read the book. Until now. Wiesel’s recent death propelled me down to our local library to find a copy.

When I think about this moral giant’s passing, and the confluence of current events I find myself feeling ill, wondering out loud – how did we get here? Again? Some among you may think I am being reactionary, or simply overreacting. Pardon me, but I will err on the side of caution here, many good Germans, Jews and non-Jews, felt like others were overreacting back then. By time they could do something it was too late, so the cautionary tale approach works just fine for me.

The slim volume is harrowing – there is no getting around that. As Wiesel chronicles elements of his Transylvanian childhood, he creates evocative scenes of daily Jewish life with his words. I’m not going to review the book for you here; many of you read it, and if you have not, I will simply say do not delay – read it now.

Maybe it is my own odd preoccupations with death,