Content warning: this post discusses sexual violence, rape culture, and some specific high-profile cases
And so, we’re here again. Russell Brand has been sentenced to more than ten years for rape and sexual assault. Allegations of David Walliams’s grooming and abuse of teenage girls are finally no longer subject to injunction. An open conversation is occurring about sexual violence and the culture which enables it. We are asking the important questions: how could this happen? What can we do to stop it happening? Who else knew, and who else should be held accountable? The hose is on. It sprays the flames.
We’ve been here before.
And that’s the thing. We’ve been here before. And we know how this goes.
The Epstein files. The Jimmy Savile case and subsequent investigation. The #MeToo movement. #ElevatorGate. The defiant courage of Gisèle Pelicot. There’s a crack in the systems of power. And that’s how the light gets in. We start to have the conversations that we need to have.
And then nothing happens. It springs back to business as usual.
I call it The Reckoning Phase. Because it’s just that. It’s just a phase in a cycle. The wheel then turns away from the reckoning, and back into protecting the interests of power.
Sometimes there’s a vocal backlash. Tarana Burke, who initiated the #MeToo movement said “Those of us who do this work know that backlash is inevitable.” But that isn’t true. Sometimes the columnists don’t even need to bother bloviating about cancel culture. Sometimes the conversation just peters out.
And then we’re all supposed to act shocked when another round of allegations emerges in yet another industry.
It’s not like there’s a grand conspiracy to keep The Reckoning Phase as just that – a phase. I don’t doubt that somewhere at the BBC there is a meeting going on to try to figure out how Russell Brand is the fault of the transgender community to get the conversation they’d prefer back on track, but it’s not a conspiracy.
It’s just that every time The Reckoning Phase happens, we see the straight road ahead. We all see it. And the direction of travel here: this shit is systemic. It’s everywhere. We inhabit a culture wherein a man’s hurt feelings hold far more weight than sexual violence. The only way of actually addressing the problem is to set the entire thing on fire and rebuild something different, better, and utterly unlike what preceded it.
This is a terrifying proposition for the beneficiaries of the current structures of capitalist patriarchy: the ones with the seat at the table and everything to lose. So they do what they can to make sure that this fire is contained.
But it’s also very hard on those of us who are determined to do what we can.
Do you know where I’ve been for the last few years? Fucking exhausted. It is uniquely draining to be constantly up against something so unfathomably huge. To speak out. To take action. To do the work. I wish I was a vampire, like I and others were accused of being when speaking out against Russell Brand twelve years ago. The occasional taste of blood would have provided sustenance. Something to keep my body and mind from packing up in the face of such a monumental task. But sadly, my fangs and the blood they drew are strictly metaphorical, and metaphors with a dose of righteous action are simply incapable of providing sufficient energy to fight the good fight.
I have been so occupied by staring at Scylla that Charybdis sucked me down.
And don’t get me wrong. This is incredibly common. I am in no way the only one. I am merely another burned out husk of a feminist. We disengage because we have to. We disengage or die.
It’s just so big. And we raise our voices and howl into the void. We howl until our lungs give out and we can howl no more.
And that’s where The Reckoning Phase ends, and the world returns to our regularly scheduled programme of quietly warning the nineteen year old intern that she should never be on her own with [redacted].
So here’s what I need you to do. Howl when you can. Stagger the howls. Howl on someone else’s behalf. Share the struggle. Keep it going like a relay baton. Don’t let it just be a phase.
I remain a perpetually-disappointed optimist. I think that there are more of us who see the problem than those who wish to maintain the problem because they personally benefit from it. So howl.
I’ll do what I can, too, but I’m fucking tired. And none of us can do it on our own.
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