I’m glad I did -- for two reasons.
First, it’s a good read. Someone once said that journalism is the first draft of history, so books like She Said -- books based on journalism -- must be only a kind of second draft, but they represent important records for our posterity. Like my experience in reading The Enemy of the People by Jim Acosta, there is so much that is so quickly forgotten in our modern news cycle, that journalistic books seem a great opportunity not just to document, but to remember What Actually Happened.
And in that regard, She Said delivers in spades. If you’re not familiar with the subject matter of the book, here’s the longish-blurb from the dust jacket.
For many years, reporters had tried to get to the truth about Harvey Weinstein’s treatment of women. Rumors of wrongdoing had long circulated. But in 2017, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey began their investigation into the prominent Hollywood producer for the New York Times, his name was still synonymous with power. During months of confidential interviews with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, many disturbing and long-buried allegations were unearthed, and a web of onerous secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements were revealed. These shadowy settlements had long been used to hide sexual harassment and abuse, but with a breakthrough reporting technique Kantor and Twohey helped to expose it. But Weinstein had evaded scrutiny in the past, and he was not going down without a fight; he employed a team of high-profile lawyers, private investigators, and other allies to thwart the investigation. When Kantor and Twohey were finally able to convince some sources to go on the record, a dramatic final showdown between Weinstein and the New York Times was set in motion.
That’s a good summary, and probably enough for any book of this type, but it is, really, only half of the story.
Nothing could have prepared Kantor and Twohey for what followed the publication of their initial Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora’s box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened. Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change -- or not enough? Those questions hung in the air months later as Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford came forward to testify that he had assaulted her decades earlier. Kantor and Twohey, who had unique access to Ford and her team, bring to light the odyssey that led her to come forward, the overwhelming forces that came to bear on her, and what happened after she shared her allegation with the world.
And it’s this second story, the story of Christine Blasey Ford and her decision to come forward, which makes up the second reason why I’m glad I read this book. The women who were victimized by Harvey Weinstein -- some famous and some not -- and those with similar accusations against Donald Trump; previously unknown to me, these women came together to form a community of support around Ford. They helped her -- as only they could -- through her decision process, and Ford, in turn, helped some of them through their trauma and their grief.
Here’s just one example:
After Rachel Crooks came forward about Trump in 2016, she suffered from crippling anxiety and self-consciousness, she said as she sat facing the others with her long legs tucked beneath her. She was the only one present who lived in a rural, conservative area -- “more of a #himtoo community,” as she called it.
After she got through a few television appearances and a press conference about the accusation, she received an unexpected invitation. Local Democrats wanted her to run for a seat in the state legislature -- a terrible idea, she thought. Critics had already accused her of telling her Trump story for political ends. “It’s confirming what everyone thought, that I was doing this for some sort of agenda,” she explained.
But she cared about education and health care. As for the incumbent, he was “a rubber stamp for the Republican party,” she told the group. Maybe she could use her new profile in a positive way, she thought. “Right or wrong, I would have more fund-raising potential because I now had this national voice,” she said. So Crooks ran for public office, learning to lead rallies and make speeches, she said. She had joined an unprecedented wave of female candidates across the country, campaigning to seize more political power than women had ever held in United States history.
The night she lost her race, she said, she didn’t even cry or feel self-pity: Democrats had, for the most part, lost across Ohio. But months later, she was struggling with the way the campaign had solidified the tendency of others to view her only through her Trump story. On television, she was sometimes just labeled “Trump Accuser” at the bottom of the screen, a phrase her mother hated. “This has become your identity,” a male friend told her recently.
“It has opened doors and provided this new path, but it also ties me to this awful human being,” she said.
The group silently considered her dilemma. Crooks was living out one of the most common fears about coming forward: It could label you forever. Ford listened particularly closely. Her current fears matched what Crooks described having faced two years before, right down to a specific detail about avoiding local stores. Sitting on the couch, with her red glasses pushed up on her head, she began quizzing Crooks, as if she held a map to what lay ahead.
“I was wondering how long that lasted before you just sort of normally jump into your car and go to a restaurant without people looking at you and wondering if that’s really you,” Ford said. She was also struggling online, including with fake social media profiles of her saying, “I recant my whole story.”
“I’m, like, ‘That’s not true!’” Ford said. “But I’m not brave enough to get into that with them. And there’s just too many of them, so … the social media piece … I don’t do well with that,” she said.
“Sometimes I write the replies, and I just never post them,” Crooks told her. “It’s very cathartic.”
The reaction wasn’t all negative, Ford acknowledged. She had been offered prizes, invitations, book and movie contracts. The mail for her was still accumulating, including many private stories of violence -- “175,000 letters in Palo Alto,” [Debra] Katz interjected. Those were only the paper letters. There were many more electronic missives. In those, and everywhere else, the reactions to what she had done were so extreme.
For hours, the others had mostly been nodding and asking polite follow-up questions. Now they spoke up with purpose. [Gwyneth] Paltrow offered a football analogy of her own. “They only tackle you when you’ve got the ball,” she said, explaining that she had once heard the phrase from the country singer Tim McGraw.
She and [Ashley] Judd -- longtime experts in fielding public scrutiny and criticism -- began to coach everyone else in how to deal with other people’s judgments. Judd was direct: Stop reading about yourself online, she instructed Ford.
“If an alcoholic can stay away from a drink one day at a time, I can stay away from the comment section one day at a time,” Judd said. “I’m participating in my own self-harm when I expose myself to that material,” she continued.
“Do you just not really go on the internet much?” Ford asked Judd, incredulous.
“I’m completely abstinent from all media about myself and have been for probably almost twenty years,” Judd said. She posted pictures and links on social media but tried not to read anything written about herself: that was part of why she had disappeared to the woods after the first Weinstein article had been published.
As she spoke, she was curled in a pink upholstered chair facing the group. She had sat there all day, absorbing what others had to say, speaking relatively little. She seemed like the one participant who had not really been transformed. She had always wanted to be an activist, and when she went on the record about Weinstein, the world affirmed her instincts.
“I have to know the hill on which I’m willing to die,” she told the group. “The equality of the sexes is that hill for me.”
There are so many facets to this powerful tale, it is remarkable that Kantor and Twohey were able to document some of these conversations and interactions. Little else can begin to peel apart the impossible choices these women face and the boxes that society forces them into.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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