The tipping point — ‘until it’s not’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2017 (2348 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shortly after noon, Anya Kelman glides into an office on the second and uppermost floor of Klinic, threading the familiar warren of hallways that surrounds the non-profit’s Portage Avenue heart. She settles into a chair to talk.

It was a busy morning, she says with a nod. There was a hospital call. For Kelman, a volunteer counsellor with Klinic’s sexual assault crisis program, that meant racing to another tangle of hallways, this one clinical, to sit and comfort a victim.

She stayed until her shift was over, when another volunteer arrived to relieve her. By now, just eight months into her volunteer work at Klinic, that gentle dance is familiar; they will stay at a bedside for as long as the victim needs them.

Sometimes, that can be just 30 minutes. Other times, counsellors stay for up to eight hours. After their shifts are over, they pause to write reports and decompress: Kelman likes to go for long runs, to release her own anger and sadness.

“It’s hard,” Kelman says. “There’s some really, really sad stories. But my dad always says, ‘You help just one person, you’re doing a good job.’ And I feel like I am. I’ve helped quite a few and right now is a good time to be a part of this.”

This work fits Kelman well, she’s discovered. She is elegant and soft-spoken, with calm and careful speech. It is part of what makes her a good counsellor: even as she speaks about trauma and anger, she radiates a sense of peace.

Yet in a way, this work is still new for her. When she arrived at Klinic, she had no background in counselling or feminist volunteering; for years, she lived a quiet sort of life as a stay-at-home mother to two children, now aged 17 and 12.

Last year, she read something that drove her to rise up and get involved. It started with Brock Turner.

In 2015, Turner was a student athlete at California’s Stanford University, who sexually assaulted a young woman behind a dumpster. She was unconscious. When confronted by two Swedish students who happened upon the scene, Turner attempted to flee.

His flight was cut short when he was tackled by the intercessors. When police arrived, one of the Swedish students began to cry, because he was so disturbed by what he had seen. Turner later claimed the contact was consensual.

The jury didn’t buy it. In March 2016, Turner was convicted on three counts of felony sexual assault, which carried a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Prosecutors sought six years, arguing that he acted as a predator seeking prey.

What is notable about the Turner case is that it might have only briefly flitted through national media — just another campus sexual assault — were it not for the statement the victim read during a June 2016 sentencing hearing.

“You don’t know me,” Jane Doe began, “but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.”

The statement went viral online; within four days, it had been read more than 11 million times. It is, in form and essence, a searing rebuke of sexual violence. In it, the victim is wounded but not silenced; her wit glows as bright as her anger.

Even after this, the judge sentenced Turner to just six months in a county jail followed by three years of probation. Turner was released from custody after just three months, though he will remain on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life.

To Kelman, 3,000 kilometres away from the courthouse where Turner’s fate was decided, the victim’s statement — and the sentence that followed — was more than just another headline. It was a call to arms: enough was enough.

“I just felt I needed to do something,” she says. “It wasn’t fair, it’s not right, and it needed to change.”

She started researching ways to help in Winnipeg. She found Klinic’s sexual assault crisis program and applied to become a counsellor. That was something she could do; she had both the time and capability to be there for victims.

“I kind of feel like it was something I was meant to do,” she says.

Terrible things happen, all over the world. It’s easy to feel helpless. But action always starts at home.

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In the headlines they fell, one after the other, toppled like towers sculpted from sheer hubris and capital. Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey are arguably the most famous, but there are others: writers, comedians, politicians.

They fell so swiftly. That is what’s so surprising: the pace of the revelations, breaking for over six weeks now and still unrelenting. The usual metaphors seem so obvious — a tsunami, a dam breaking — but there is no way around them.

Journalist Rebecca Traister, writing for The Cut, said “the anger window” was open. Unlike more cultivated forms of modern feminism, she wrote, “This is ’70s-style, organic, mass, radical rage, exploding in unpredictable directions.”

There is truth in those words, to be sure. When a reporter asked Uma Thurman about the Weinstein allegations — his company produced her breakout vehicle, Pulp Fiction — her eyes seemed alight with incandescent, righteous rage.

“I’m not a child and I’ve learned that when I’ve spoken in anger I usually regret the way I express myself,” she said, sharpening each word. “So I’ve been waiting to feel less angry. And when I’m ready, I’ll say what I have to say.”

A tipping point: that’s what everyone settled on calling it. Ashley Judd, who spoke of her own harassment by Weinstein, used that phrase, as did Annette Bening. So did a United Kingdom politician and countless media outlets.

At National Public Radio: “Why ‘The Weinstein Effect’ Seems Like A Tipping Point.”

In the Dallas News: “The sexual harassment tipping point: How we got here and what it means.”

It is easy for writers to speak in terms of tipping points, of swells of irreversible change, of great climacterics. Almost all of us do it. To some, it smacks of sensationalism; but it is more a natural effect of the way we live these moments.

The tides of news media rise and fall in breathless cycles. We are borne by the waves of what matters today and, as those waves crest, one may look out across the sea splayed beneath, and conclude none have ever been higher.

Yet perhaps there really is something different about this crashing wave, something that demands we take notice.

Close to the ground where the work was always happening, something is changing. In Newfoundland, a sexual assault crisis centre received 748 crisis-related calls in the first 10 months of the year, up from 587 in all of 2016.

Last month, the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre told CBC it was “flooded” by calls in the wake of the great Hollywood purging. Many clients said they had been driven to seek support by the headlines and the viral #MeToo campaign.

‘I’ve been waiting and praying for this, for finally something change to happen Because we need it, we deserve it…so it makes me hopeful. I hope more women come out and tell their stories, if they choose.’– Anya Kelman, volunteer counsellor with Klinic’s sexual assault crisis program

These surges are not universally distributed; Klinic, which fields about 200 calls each month to its sexual assault crisis line, has not seen any notable rise in contacts. Even as headlines swirl, their daily work remains the same.

“It’s hard to categorize it in a general way,” says Jerra Fraser, a staff counsellor. “Is there a shift in culture? It would be great if that was happening, and people were being held responsible in a different way, and becoming a new norm.

“But it’s hard to look at that broad environment when we’re meeting with individuals one-on-one.”

It’s Thursday afternoon, and Fraser is chatting in her Klinic office; she will see a client here soon, but she has time to talk. It’s a cozy room, overlooking Vimy Ridge Park, brightened by the sunlight that streams through broad windows.

On the other side of the small space, fellow staff counsellor Megan Mann nods along, as we talk.

“It’s really hard for me to judge,” Mann says, on the question of change. “We always joke about this being the Klinic bubble. Being around like-minded people all the time, it feels that way (like a tipping point). But it’s so hard to say.”

Mann has tempered her thoughts by listening to other experienced perspectives. Recently, she found herself deep in a conversation about the unfolding news with an older colleague, who has decades of experience as an advocate.

“She said, ‘Every now and then, something comes along and it feels like a tipping point, until it’s not,’” Mann says. “It feels like a tipping point, until everyone forgets about it… so I struggle with feeling hopeful, but not being overly so.

“We can’t ignore the fact that, when you think about the celebrities coming forward, these are people with power and privilege,” she continues. “They’re maybe going to be believed a little differently than an average Joe off the street.”

What Fraser and Mann do see, more intimately than any reporter, is how sexual assault survivors are experiencing this moment. In the safety of their sessions, clients talk about the stories they see swirling over social media and TV.

Some find it empowering to see other victims speaking out. Others find the headlines exhausting, triggering painful memories and forcing them to relive their trauma. There is no escaping the discussion, and that can be a problem.

“I’ve had some folks feeling, ‘OK, this gives me a platform,’ and then use social media to spread awareness,” Mann says. “Others feel, ‘Is this expected of me? Is this something I should be doing? Do I have to speak up?’”

Part of the job then, she adds, becomes helping her clients understand that it’s OK not to bare their own pain for the whole world to see. Just because others find it healing, it’s not the right path for everyone; it’s not their responsibility.

Of Mann’s clients who have chosen to speak out, most have found it a positive experience and have been met with support. And many at Klinic have noticed there does seem to be an increased public capacity to believe people who speak out.

“Because so many people have come forward, or the number of allegations against an individual is so prevalent, there’s power in that,” says Rosemarie Gjerek, Klinic’s director of counselling services. “That’s a good thing.

“The flip side is, what number is the tipping point?” she continues. “What has happened with people coming forward is it’s created that threshold, or that ability to identify you’re not alone, there are others that have experienced this.

“But I worry about (the numbers) — does it have to be 50? Is five good enough? Is one good enough?”

This curls back to something worth noting: how voices are rising. Of the more than 100 women who have come forward about Weinstein’s abuse, only one had reported him to police at the time. (At least two others have since done so.)

The dearth of police reports against Weinstein isn’t unusual; experts widely agree sexual assault is a particularly under-reported crime. Recent Canadian studies have found more than eight in 10 assaults are not reported to police.

There are many reasons victims choose not to report, which is a whole topic in and of itself.

For now, the bigger picture is this: something about this point in history makes it safer for many survivors to tell their story to thousands or millions of people on Facebook or Twitter, than to one police officer, one judge, or one jury.

Perhaps there’s a lesson to be taken from that, as we search for ways to keep moving forward. Because the thing about tipping points is they still require action. Barriers don’t topple on their own; they need the force of public will.

“Keep the conversation going, even when it feels bogged down,” Mann says. “Those tipping points that came before, they went away because people stopped talking about them, and something else came into our awareness.”

That’s the next step now, Mann and Fraser say. If people read the headlines and feel angry, there are things they can do: Talking to friends and family. Ensuring their workplace has updated sexual harassment policies. Volunteering.

“It’s great to talk about it, and it’s great to have education,” Fraser says. “What is the action part? This (Klinic) building, this is the action part. And that’s maybe a little bit behind the scenes… but what’s within your control?

“For me, that action is ‘how do we help empower individuals?’”

Those actions can change lives. Because once, a soft-spoken Winnipeg mother read what a Jane Doe had to say about the Stanford student who raped her, and was so moved that she stepped forward to help other victims.

Call it an avalanche of voices, a tsunami, a dam breaking. Call it a tipping point, if it feels right. Whatever you call it, something is happening — and for those on the front lines, the conversation shines in the heart of a long darkness.

“I like that,” Kelman says. “There has to be a tipping point, somewhere, hopefully anyways. I’ve been waiting and praying for this, for finally some change to happen. Because we need it, we deserve it… so it makes me hopeful.

“I hope more women come out and tell their stories, if they choose.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca