Rebecca Solnit Quote
One disturbing aspect of abuse and harassment is the idea that it’s not the crime that’s the betrayal but the testimony about the crime. You’re not supposed to tell. Abusers often assume this privilege that demands the silence of the abused, that a nonreciprocal protection be in place. Others often impose it as well, portraying the victims as choosing to ruin a career or a family, as though the assailant did not make that choice himself.
Rebecca Solnit
One disturbing aspect of abuse and harassment is the idea that it’s not the crime that’s the betrayal but the testimony about the crime. You’re not supposed to tell. Abusers often assume this privilege that demands the silence of the abused, that a nonreciprocal protection be in place. Others often impose it as well, portraying the victims as choosing to ruin a career or a family, as though the assailant did not make that choice himself.
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About Rebecca Solnit
Solnit is the author of seventeen books, including River of Shadows, which won the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism; A Paradise Built in Hell, from 2009, which charts community responses to disaster; The Faraway Nearby, a wide-ranging memoir published in 2013; and Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of essays on feminism and women's writing first published in 2014.