Essay 4: Writing that MeToo Story

This is "Deep Thoughts #2" for 2018. I have taken Vanessa Martir's 52 Essay Challenge, and tweaked it a bit for this year. Instead of an essay a week, I'm just going to write some so-called deep thoughts. :)

There is a writing contest being run by Memoir Magazine. This is not unusual for a literary journal to hold a contest. Writers and poets submit their best work, an editorial staff reads it, a judge –usually one of established reputation—makes the final decision on a winner. We’re not going to get into the complications and problems of writing contests here – that’s for another post. What I want to talk about is Memoir Magazine’s contest. They’re calling for submissions of MeToo stories.

Now.

I’m all for women speaking out about their experiences with sexual violence and sexual harassment. I’m all for each person to tell their story. These stories matter. We need to hear them and we need to see each person for who they are, for the experiences they had to endure. We need to believe them and to support them. We need to think more critically about how to work towards changing our cultural norms, about what’s okay and what’s not. (Don’t get me started on the whole "Grace" & Aziz Ansari crap and how people are trying to define what happened. You weren’t there so shut up. I have thoughts about this but I am too exhausted to put energy into writing about it. Plenty of people have already expressed my same sentiments. Here is one example.)

Now.

Is it me, or does it feel weird to enter a contest with your most personal, traumatic story about something like sexual violence? I feel like I’m pimping out my trauma for some cash and recognition. While Memoir Magazine does its best to state that they “love Truth” and they believe that “your story matters”, why does this feel icky? Is it just me? It’s already difficult enough to tell our stories, to have to relive our traumas in the writing and telling of our stories. But then to have it “compete” against other stories in which the authors have likely been re-traumatized in the retelling? It feels vicious.  Yes, our stories matter. Yes, it’s important to tell them. Yes, it’s important to hear them. But in a contest? I don’t know.

And then imagine winning that contest. “Hey everyone! Great news! I was just won a contest where I trotted out my worst personal trauma for all the world to see. How cool is that?!”

Uh, yeah. No.

I understand that Memoir Magazine is trying to honor the voices of those who choose to speak up and speak out about sexual violence, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. The Rumpus is a good example of what is helpful. They have a new weekly column called “Enough” that appears every Tuesday in which they feature a handful of MeToo stories to spotlight just how rampant rape culture is. Each person is given a place to speak. And importantly, not in competition with another’s story.

I just read Alison B. Hart’s “How to Write a MeToo Story” in LitHub. It hits the mark.

I’ve been thinking about writing my story for some time now. I’ve written about it for the last twenty years –mostly in poems, mostly through really obtuse metaphors. I’ve never written about it in prose, in a straight up “this is what happened” story. A couple of years ago, Roxane Gay put out a call for submissions for her new anthology, Not That Bad (which is coming out in May. Yes!!), asking for stories that relate to rape culture. This was well before MeToo. I took that as an opportunity to write down my story. It was fucking hard. On all levels. You want talk about re-traumatized? Damn. But I did it. I wrote it. Kinda. It was framed as a cautionary tale to my young undergraduate women students. Not quite the bald-faced “this happened to me” story, but it was a start. No, the story did not get accepted by Roxane, but that’s okay – the writing needed a lot more work. What I was grateful for was the push to write the story in the first place. That helped start the ball rolling for true healing. And so much has happened since. Good and difficult things.

So while I will not be submitting my story to Memoir Magazine, I will write it down and share it as I see fit. We need to ask ourselves if what we share will help us in our healing or if it will hinder us. After all, look at what happened to "Grace". We need to choose actions that will benefit, nor harm, us. And if that means telling our stories to our best friend and no one else, then so be it. As long as our silence is not held within.

Sending love to my fellow survivors--