The Cost To Women of NOT Speaking Out

A guest post by someone who didn't

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because it’s a topic that I am interested in. You may have watched the live

Suzanne Moore

and I did on it last Friday, if not, you can find it here:

Is there a cost for women for speaking out?

I’m interested in this idea of women speaking out because I have been writing my whole career in a public sphere, I have also been ‘brave’ (although I’d question the way that word has come to be used) and spoken out about someone’s bad behaviour, and about topics I think we should throw more light onto. As a result my inbox is often flooded with women saying things like: “I agree with you, but I’m too afraid to speak out.”

That’s always a shame to me, all those women self-censoring, unable to talk about their own lives or the things that matter to them.

The reason I speak up is because I agree with that Maya Angelou quote: ‘Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it, possibly without claiming it, she stands up for all women.’ And because I’m happy to start the conversation off. But sometimes a woman speaks out because she sees some wrong that needs to be righted, worse still, she might see someone in danger and believe they have the right to certain information that may protect them better.

Back in 2021, I spoke out about the behaviour of my ex-husband who has some level of ‘fame’. When I did, I heard from many other women, some who were married to men in the public eye, many who wanted to speak out yet saw the abuse I received for doing so and decided against it. Yes, that’s right, all those people, fans of the band who trolled me, managed to dissuade other women from speaking out about abuse.

One of the women who decided not to speak out you will hear from today in this guest essay because I think it’s good to explore whether there is a cost for the women who stay silent, too. This guest author was also married to a man with some level of ‘fame’, she also wanted to speak out to warn others, but decided against it for reasons she will explain to you below.

There are lots of names for women who speak out, all designed to make them shut up again or make people disbelieve them — the attention seeker, the golddigger, the bitter woman, the crazy ex, the liar. Look out for these cliches. But the number of women who don’t speak out far outnumber those who do, there are more women who keep quiet precisely because of this name-calling, and all that serves is the man and his bad behaviour, all that results in is other women continuing to be harmed.

But what of these women who keep it all to themselves, do they continue to drink the poison? Is there a cost to them, or do they get on with their life happily and peacefully because they kept quiet?

Have a read of the piece below and then let me know what you think in the comments:

How It Feels to NOT Speak Out When You've Been Abused by a Famous Man

I want to preface this by saying that I'm not much of a canceller. What I mean by that is that when someone in the public eye is ‘cancelled’, whether or not it is deserved, a not insignificant amount of people use it as an excuse to go online and post frivolous things like: ‘I never liked his music anyway’ or ‘his movies sucked’ or any number of statements that have nothing to do with the issue being discussed. There's a perverse self-centered glee in bragging, solely for likes and retweets, about how much you ‘hated his books’ that lends nothing to the conversation and in no way comforts the women who were abused at the hands of the man. It's like those people who stand in front of an accused murderer's house holding up signs condemning them (we've seen it in every recent true crime documentary) — like, yes, technically, you're on the ‘good side,’ but what you're doing is actually kind of weird and does nothing to further the cause of justice. Just my opinion. I don't like that kind of stuff.

So I would never speak out about someone solely to facilitate that kind of behaviour, just for the sport of seeing them cancelled — but by not speaking out at all, I feel I have paid a price anyway.

I am the victim of years of abuse at the hands of a ‘famous’ man. He was in a pretty successful band, he's been on Top of the Pops. He has plenty of obsessed fans, still to this day and he still earns money as a result of his time in the public eye. I have not ‘exposed’ him or said his name publicly or online since we separated. I want to, but I haven't, for many reasons which I will try to outline.

I wish the first reason was more noble, but if I'm truly honest, it isn't: it's self-preservation. The process of getting away from this person took years, mountains of paperwork, and all of my money. All of it. He attempted every legal trick in the book and although I ‘won’ them all, it cost me my entire life savings to do so. It also gave me a very clear view of his bottomless thirst for revenge, no matter the cost and inconvenience to himself, so if I were to outright name him or go to the media, even though I have the truth and a significant amount of evidence on my side, he would still put me through years of legal hell that my bank account and my mental health simply cannot afford.

Another reason, I know that he lies all the time and thinks nothing of it. He lied to his lawyers, he lied to my lawyers, he lied to a judge, he lied on court forms, and when he gets caught lying, he doubles down. You can't reason with a person like that, a person who doesn't abide by the same social contract as the rest of us, and there's a fear that should you publicly call out such a person, they will have no qualms about publicly retaliating by claiming they saw you take a chainsaw to a litter of kittens every night and, these men are such good liars, that some people will even believe that.

If he's able to ruin my credibility with lies, it weakens my ability to help other women. I want to make it so that if a woman is thinking of dating him, she could find out about his pattern of abuse (because I know I am not the only woman he has done this to) and avoid making the mistake of getting involved with him. That is why I want to — and wish I could — name him outright. I believe that is the main reason most women out their abuser — to prevent him from being able to harm someone again. But I don't know how to throw life preservers out to other women without going down with the ship. I don't know how to get the word out without it prolonging the trauma I have already had to deal with for years, both in and out of the relationship.

It is suffocating to not be able to freely tell every detail of my own story — my own story! This happened to me! — without fear of repercussions. I've had to tip-toe around it online, even when someone has asked me point-blank what happened on social media, I cannot reply to them openly about my own life.

I get a knot in my stomach when I see other women praising him or communicating with him online. His preferred method for hitting on women is sliding into their DMs; that is how we met and how he met women before and after me. Two women he dated after I left eventually got in touch with me of their own volition to share harrowing details of their (thankfully brief) experiences with him. I was overcome with guilt because I already knew he dated both of them; he bragged about it on his social media, and I came very close to getting in touch with them at the time but stopped myself out of fear that he'd either figure out some way to retaliate using the legal system or he'd tell them I was his ‘crazy bitch’ ex and they wouldn't believe me. After hearing the particularly grim story of one of the women, I made a vow to myself that the next time I found out who he was dating, I would contact her directly. I would try my best, despite the risks, to at least warn her one-on-one since I was unable to shout it from the rooftops.

I wrote an anonymous piece once about my ordeal and shared the link to it with friends. I had disappeared from social media almost entirely during my marriage due to his controlling nature and I wanted to let people know what happened and where I'd been. After a few months, I felt more comfortable posting the link in other places, with the aim of spreading awareness of coercive control tactics. My writing did not include any identifying details — no names, no dates, just a recounting of the abuse — and even with relative anonymity, I've seen the link get shared along with comments like, ‘she's lying for attention.’

Hey, guess what? This kind of ‘attention’ actually sucks!

The irony of this accusation is that another (selfish) reason I haven't explicitly named him is because I don't want to be ‘the victim of _______’ for the rest of my life! I have my own achievements! I have my own career and digital footprint, and I don't want Google to forever include his name in the autofill when someone types in mine. Naming him publicly or in the media inadvertently ties me to him forever, when in actuality, I wish I never had to hear his name again.

This reason might make me sound like Pollyanna, but it's true, and it’s this: It's not fun to be the person who tells everyone their hero is a dick. I'm sure outsiders think that someone delivering such news is rubbing their hands together and licking their lips in anticipation of the glorious public downfall, but it's actually a huge bummer. I know what it's like to be a superfan of many people and bands and artists, and I know how heartbreaking it is to find out that someone you admired and held in high esteem is an abusive maniac. I have friends who loved this guy's band (I did too at one point!) and I genuinely dreaded telling them the truth.

Knowing a lot of alarming things about a famous man who has created a public persona that is a million miles away from who he truly is in private and knowing his pattern of abuse has continued his entire adult life, feels awful. The guilt of not sharing it eats at me most days. It actually starts to feel like I'm helping him abuse more people by keeping his secret for him — the thought that I am in some way colluding with my abuser sickens me. And that's the perverse upside-down nature of this because it's not my job to warn everybody about his abuse, it's his job to not abuse people in the first place. But I feel that burden, and I want to say something, and then I see the entire internet descend on another woman who has spoken out and almost in unison call her ‘crazy’ and ‘jealous,’ and I retreat. The takes can vary so wildly; if you say something, you're ‘lying for attention,’ but if you don't say anything (or if you don't do something in the legal arena like have your abuser arrested or sue him), ‘he must be innocent.’

Women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t — when do the abusers get damned? And what’s the 'correct' way to assure their damnation?

I've had to come to terms with the cold fact that I might not ever be brave enough to come forward, not resilient enough to endure the aftermath of exposing a truly terrible person to an audience who might not want to hear it. I'm caught between a hard place and the hardest place, and it just feels like whether I speak or I don't speak, he still has control. And I can hardly bear that overwhelming injustice.