20.01.16
Words by:

When I saw what Amber Coffman was doing on Twitter last night, I felt sick to my stomach.

She was recalling a night when Heathcliff Berru, a high-flying US music PR, had rubbed her ass and bitten her hair in front of her friends – and she’d named him.

A Rolodex of similarly unsavoury, spew-inducing incidents of my own began to spin in my mind, the ones I’ve never said anything about due to shame, or sadness, or resignation highlighted in vomit yellow. All the best girls I know in the world have stories like this too, and will have reacted in the same way. Almost all girls would.

But what happened next – in a domino effect similar to the outpouring set off by pornographic actress Stoya after she named her ex-partner James Deen as her rapist in late November last year – was that more women began to talk about their experiences with Berru too.

When it comes to sexual harassment and assault, it’s the gaps that exist between us that hurt the most. I saw a girl who must have been about fourteen being jeered at by a car full of boys in front of me as we both walked up a hill near my house recently. They spoke about her body, her clothes, what they wanted to do with her. Then they span off. When I was that age I was trailed home by a car full of boys inviting me to get into a car with them, too. I was too scared to say anything to anyone at the time. I knew that girl in front of me then, startled and embarrassed, was the same as me then and now. But what I wanted most was her not to be embarrassed in front of me, because girls know what being publicly humiliated is like. Much like Coffman’s reaction to her assault, the words caught in both mine and her throat. She might not wear what she wore that day again. She might avoid that hill. That makes me feel sick, too.

The ‘flight’ response that caught my tongue that day has been drilled into women from birth but it’s still one I find endless guilt to plumb from. People wonder why women don’t speak out, and I think it’s a conglomeration of things. Because it’s not okay for women to stand up for themselves. Because survivors of trauma deserve our compassion and empathy, but it’s well-documented that you might not be believed. Because you can’t stand the thought of being the subject of cruel gossip, or of people you love turning their backs on you. Because you never want to think, talk or type about it ever again. Because your abuser still exists and he is terrifying and he still might come for you again. Because you might lose your job. Because imagine telling someone the worst thing that has ever happened to you and it being thrown back in your face.

That’s why Coffman’s call-out is so rare and heart-rending. To find that courage and spit in the face of an abusive, powerful, well-connected man like Berru might only amount to a tiny nick in the tough armour of the patriarchal music industry but it has inspired so many others to tell their stories. The gaps between us become filled, and Twitter, usually reported as an instrument of anonymous and cold-hearted trolls, becomes full of real-life women with real-life stories who can support one another.

I’m not brave enough to name all the men that have hurt me right now, but women like Amber Coffman show me that maybe I’ll be strong enough to one day, and that people might believe me, too.