Through the Whisper Network
March 2020
I heard it first through the whisper network. It was maybe 2009. He was a famous radio personality. He hosted a popular arts and culture show on CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster. He used to be in a quasi-famous band. He started every show with an earnest essay-like utterance, speaking in soft, mellifluous tones directly to the heart, to the truth, of some matter of daily importance. Always erudite, he was a feminist, or at least knew how to virtue signal enough to pass. He was as woke as anyone else in 2009. I heard it first through the whisper network. He was “shitty” to women. Women in arts, culture and media across the country knew this for a long time, told one another to watch out for him, not to go on dates with him, not to be alone with him, not to work for him. No one ever specified exactly why, but we all knew. When Jian Ghomeshi’s reckoning came none of us were surprised.
Why do we whisper? I’ve seen lists posted in the bathrooms of gigs. Been told about assaults in hushed tones while out at a club. Been warned about guys to avoid as recently as two weeks ago.
Ghomeshi’s fall came nearly two years before #metoo and #timesup. Canada’s own Harvey Weinstein. In autumn of 2015 he abruptly made a long and rambling Facebook post citing jealous ex girlfriends, consensual kink and BDSM culture trying desperately to get ahead of the news that followed moments later, that he, one of the crown jewels of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, had been unceremoniously fired. The truth became a slippery fish. Women came forward of course, but their truths were not precise. They couldn’t remember the colour of the car he drove on the date when he punched them in the face, or justify why they emailed him a few days after their assault. They liked it. They wanted it. Or if they didn’t they were, at a minimum, opportunistic. Their truths did not constitute evidence, and the courts eventually found him not guilty.
Why do we whisper? Why do we tell the truth only to each other in hushed tones? In private places, lips to ear.
Who wants to hear the truth about the truth-teller? That monolithic identity that implies some kind of impeachability. That denies the intersectionalities of our existence, or only recognizes a singular set of power relations.
What happens when truth transcends the individual, when it lies within our collective experience? When our truths are held not by one mind but across the stories of many? When we are socialized to not recognize the truth of a situation? To call assault a “bad date” or just “bad sex.” To try to forget that it ever happened. These truths form a pit, a hole, a void, an absent part. A lacuna.
Our truth lies here, in this empty space between us.