As I read these stories of Harvey Weinstein’s assaults on women and the culture of complicity and intimidation that enabled a predator, my heart rejoices. Not because I am a sadist but because I can see the shift. The world will move on soon to the next salacious story, yes. But western civilization’s dialogue around abuse and systems of coercion and control, indeed the overall conversation has been and is continuing to shift, irrevocably, for the better.
Such cycles infect every aspect of society, but the focus on their direct effect on women is a crucial place to start. The old 1950’s-esque line “she’s emotional, irrational, hysterical,” is becoming more and more clear for what it is: victim-blaming and responsibility-shifting.
I know this world of destructive coercion all too well. I was raised in a cult that put women behind and beneath men in every way. Our futures were pre-ordained: no birth-control, constant child-rearing, endless reminders of our inferiority and God’s command to submit.
And then there was me: a square peg where there were only round holes. The negative narrative and character assassination started early. At the age of eight I was sat down for a meeting by concerned ‘Brothers’ and accused of being a flirt because I spoke loudly and made eye contact. As a teenager the cult openly referred to me as ‘a Jezebel’ and other teens were advised to avoid me. When I came home for a brief visit after I’d left the cult, a ‘Brother’ joked with me, in my parents’ kitchen, about my new job at the United Nations: “Maybe you can get those other countries to listen to us. It’s like talking to a woman: you never get anywhere!”
I wish I could share a more uplifting story of ‘life after the escape.’ But the cycles, unconfronted, continued to thrive and even grow. That’s why I tell my story here, now, because I must unearth and reveal their rotten morbidity: perhaps, my eternal optimism reminds me, the truth can exhume them, wash the stink away.
Throughout my twenties I struggled to survive alone while also helping my seven younger siblings when I could. I helped my brother closest in age, including giving him a place to live, but was dismayed and confused when he began to regularly and publicly accuse me of being ‘bipolar,’ ‘psycho’ and ‘manic.’ I am many things, but these are not some of them. Another brother threatened to kill me, and another regularly calls me a ‘witch’ (in the Puritan sense).
When I told my sisters they said, “But this doesn’t happen except when you’re around. It’s always been you. People just don’t like you.”
I tried to turn to my mother for support only to realize she wanted my family to think these things of me. It took the attention off her and our physically and emotionally abusive childhood. “You have so much work to do on yourself, Heidi,” she said, her eyes brimming over with pity so gooey it disguised the malice beneath to everyone but me. “Maybe it’s better if you just go away.”
So I tried to turn to my father. Always a ‘daddy’s girl,’ I’d done anything he ever wanted or needed to support our family and stand behind him. Now I realized he’d just been using me and that he couldn’t relate to, or even stand to be around a self-actualized, full-grown woman. He had nothing for me but criticisms of my character and vanilla platitudes from the Bible. All his advice rang empty at best — ‘things will get better!’ — and abuser-enabling at worst, with lines like Jesus’ ‘turn the other cheek.’
When I ran away from the cult in Connecticut, I drove across the country and lived in Los Angeles for the next ten years. All my jobs were in the entertainment industry. I have Weinstein-esque stories that could fill a full-length manuscript: many of them with celebrity names tagged on.
I have little hope for my situation with my own family. I know the cult, thriving today, will not hear or learn from my story. They will only label me bitter and attention-seeking, as they already do and have. But after this Weinstein expose I do have hope for a future of less character-assassination, more soul-survival. Story by story, ‘me too’ by ‘me too,’ the gender imbalances and cultures of complicity that enable abusers and predators are being shaken to their core.
The simple truth is that I, and other people with stories like me, have done nothing ‘to deserve this.’ We’ve only tried to survive in a world with cards stacked against us. In a world where the existing order thrives on power imbalances, a world where might or numbers makes right it’s just more convenient and time-saving to call the victim the bad guy.
Other little girls will not have to grow up like me, because the sheer ridiculousness of such upbringings are now more obvious than ever. Other young women like I was will have less chance of being challenged and shamed over their stories and very selves because the language of victim-blaming is now more recognizable. Abusers will not be able to deliver their character assassinations and soul-destroying designations as blithely as before.
Because now, it’s becoming safe to say something. And that, small step as it may be, is a huge leap for victims everywhere.
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