If you’re not already aware, Mac McClelland wrote a stunning personal essay recently published in GOOD in which she described her experience with PTSD as a human rights reporter, and how violent sex helped her to cope with the effects of trauma. I found the essay to be beautifully and bravely written, and while I haven’t had McClelland’s experiences, I related to them in a million different ways.
Over the course of the past week, however, critics have responded to the piece on the one hand by lambasting McClelland for being (as McClelland puts it) an “insane racist narcissist” for her portrayal of Haiti in the essay. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that McClelland’s stated desire for violent sex will convince rapists that women want to be raped. (NO COMMENT.)
Roxane Gay, per usual, sums up my feelings almost perfectly:
It is already known that female journalists are hesitant to discuss the personal experiences they have with sexual violence while on the job. The disheartening responses to McClelland’s essay only work to further silence these women. These responses tell female journalists that they are right to keep quiet because they will be judged, harshly, for telling their truths. It is such a shame. ….
Just as there cannot be a single story about any country, there cannot be a single story about women and desire and sexual violence and how those things knot themselves together. One woman saying she wants or needs violent sex does not negate another woman’s disgust at the idea of violent sex but it is damaging to try and silence either of those perspectives. It is damaging to try and silence the many, complex stories rising out of Haiti. It is damaging to see demons where there are none. No one is obligated to like or agree with what McClelland wrote but there are better ways to express dissent than public shaming, cries of racism, and scarlet letters.
Ms. also published an interview with Mac McClelland in which she talks about the intense reaction to her piece, and how she’s taking it:
This won’t be the last thing that I write about this particular issue. It’s going to take more than Slate putting my face on their front page, connected to an article that says I’m a whiny racist narcissist, to deter me from writing about this, because I think it’s important. The fact that people are having that response just proves even more how important it is.
More thought-provoking commentary on the brouhaha can be found here, here, and here.
Update: It appears the story is now spreading through various mainstream media outlets — ABC, the UK’s Daily Mail, the Huffington Post, among others — with a headline indicated that McClelland “staged her own rape.” These headlines (92, by our count) are manipulative, false, and sensationalistic. Consensual sex — even violent consensual sex — is, by definition, not rape. Inserting “rape” in a headline to garner views is nothing if not grotesque, and it’s a shame that a personal essay about one journalist’s struggle with PTSD is being so distorted.
(ed. note: To briefly expound on Gay’s “one story” argument, one of the things I found most troubling about the open letter published on Jezebel was its assumption that there can be one authentic story about Haiti (or about sexual violence, for that matter.) Instead of engaging with the piece, the authors attempted to outmaneuver it and lay claim to a “more authentic” narrative about Haiti, largely by making coded (though not very subtle) accusations about McClelland’s background. Elspeth Reeve, in her excellent piece about the controversy, does a superb job of summarizing this tactic in a “translation” of the open letter: “McClelland thinks she’s special because she’s white. Not only is she white, but she has a big blue American passport, like a pampered American. She can leave at any time, and thus cannot fully understand rape, poverty, or real suffering, because she can always go back to the suburbs. Also: rapes happen in America, too, okay?” All of this reminds me of Nitsuh Abebe’s piercing essay about “whiteness” and authenticity in music criticism, “The Rules of the Game.” That essay is about Vampire Weekend, but I think it’s very relevant to this discussion. — Alex Shephard)
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