Why it’s so important to hear Dylan Farrow
It’s not just her, anymore.
I’ve been reading the articles as they come out. The she said; he said. That one is crazy. That one is mistaken. These are the facts.
Bottom line. What happened between Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen in 1992 is all story now. The details play out in the media, and quite frankly, we ultimately choose who we want to believe and who we don’t.
This is important because it echoes an all too familiar dialogue. Someone is molested or raped. She or he is not believed. Family, friends, police, teachers all want some kind of incontrovertible truth to show them what really happened.
How can we ever know what happened between a 7 year old and an adult male behind closed doors? It’s too easy to dismiss the testimony of a seven year old. It’s just as easy, it seems, to dismiss the adult retelling of the same story as conjured out of anger and smoke.
Where is the support system for this kind of discussion. Rape and sexual assault happen in families. They happen between college students. They happen, and too often it’s easier for those surrounding the event to silence it, sometimes even for good reason. Who among us wants to drag a young child through a court case that will ultimately harm more than help?
Drawing down gender lines
As new stories appear, you can guarantee who wrote them — man or woman — based on the viewpoint. Those who side with and support Dylan Farrow are almost across the board women. With Woody Allen? Men. Nicholas Kristof is the only exception.
We like to believe that we live in a free society in which women have rights and abilities that they did not have 50 or 100 years ago. We pretend we have greater freedoms than, say Africa or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
I cannot help but think of Kakenya Ntaiya’s TED talk in which she had to receive permission not only from her father but from the male head of her village in order to attend school. After all, the village had to support her in order for her to raise money to attend an American university.
Do women still need a man’s voice to legitimize their complaints of rape and assault? Or perhaps men need to join in the discussion and set those boundaries with women not only to legitimize women’s complaints, but to set a human standard.
Don’t look away
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,” says Eleanor Roosevelt.
There is great power in telling the story of a rape or assault that has happened to you.
I remember my first Take Back the Night at Barnard College. Hundreds of women spoke for hours and hours until night went into day and still the stories kept coming. It is painful, but no more painful than stemming the tide of that story for years.
I refused a third date with some guy because when I told him of a woman who spoke at our first year orientation describing how she’d been raped twice, he replied “Twice? It was obviously her fault.”
I taught a young woman in a first year English class who wrote in her journal and papers things that sounded very strange and ambivalent about her relationship with her father. Her father, too, was a leader in his community, someone people greatly admired.
She confided in me enough for me to suggest she try therapy but not enough for me to ever know or do anything conclusively.
I read stories of honor killings and women raped in buses and rape as a punishment for falling in love, and I’m horrified.
Then there’s Steubenville, Glen Ridge, Torrington High School. Rehtaeh Parsons. Audrie Pott. Maryville.
The stories continue. Do you truly believe they’re all lies, fabrications, the machinations of confused angry minds?
Don’t look away. Ask the questions. Listen to the stories. Decide what can be done and do what you can do to change it.
http://www.mencanstoprape.org/Resources/resources-for-male-survivors.html
http://msigler4.hubpages.com/hub/10-Helpful-Online-Resources-For-Rape-Victims — includes resources for men, women and children who have been
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