Poets & Writers – September 2019

and patriarchy is, on both a personal
and systemic level, and part of that
is hearing the multitude of voices. I
don’t know if we’re getting better, per
se, about inclusivity. For instance I
think trans issues are often talked
about separately from the #MeToo
movement, but I think it’s impos-
sible to talk about #MeToo and not
think about the deadly consequences
trans folk face due to patriarchy and
misogyny. Race and class, of course,
also affect everything. Last year I
moderated a roundtable with sev-
eral Asian American writers, and
one of the things that came up was
how painful it was when assault hap-
pened within the community. People
often felt conflicted, in part wanting
to protect their powerful, influential
men; the fight for visibility in a white-
dominated world is a difficult one, and
taking down someone with a foothold
in that world can feel like hurting your
community. These nuances compli-
cate the conversation; acknowledging

the different intersections is essential

to making the environment safe for

discussion. I do hope we are moving

in that direction.

Melnick: I also really appreciate

Kaitlyn’s thoughts on processing,

because it’s crucial to remember we

are all going to do so differently, and

I worry that gets forgotten. With

my own work, I’m mostly writing

about experiences that happened to

me two decades ago and which took

me a very long to write about because

I needed all that time to process. I

am often asked at Q&As about my

own survival, and I think it’s impor-

tant for me in situations like that to

continually point out the amount of

privilege I have as a white, middle-

class, straight-presenting ciswoman

in regards to going through various

systems as a victim of violence. I get

frustrated by certain white women

acting as spokespeople for survi-

vors. Alyssa Milano? Come on! But

also in the literary community, if we

give victims any attention at all, we

seem to favor our victims—listen to

them, champion them—when they

are young, cis, able-bodied, white,

and “conventionally” attractive. We

need to keep thinking about who

we believe and why. As Karissa sug-

gests, these conversations around

rape culture are complicated and

nuanced, and we don’t even know all

the questions let alone the answers.

This shit is hard but, like Karissa, I

have hope we are headed in the right

direction.

The introduction to this conversation was

adapted from the foreword to Indelible

in the Hippocampus: Writings From

the Me Too Movement (McSweeney’s

Publishing, 2019).

47 POETS & WRITERS^

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Read an expanded version of this

conversation.