Review / She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Both a pacey homage to investigative journalism and a sanguine look at the #MeToo movement, She Said is the thrilling story behind the story of Harvey Weinstein’s serial sexual assaults written by the New York Times journalists who broke the case. The first two thirds of the book is a character study of one of Hollywood’s most vile men through Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s evidence-gathering process and gradual discovery of the depth of Weinstein’s transgressions. The final third, in which some momentum is lost, but some broader questions begin to surface, moves through the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, during which the #MeToo reaches a fever pitch.

Though Kantor and Twohey never take a position on where they feel the movement went too far, they are very explicit about the depth and rigour that accompanied accusations against Weinstein, and the importance of getting names on record. At the height of #MeToo, I remember thinking that there was a desperate need for language to colour the greyscale of sexual offenses. If you compare the bald-faced and malicious evil of Weinstein’s repeated harassment to the one-off accusations against other celebrities (RIP Aziz Ansari), it seems particularly unfortunate that these instances were all tarred by the same brush. Reading this book, I found myself again wondering how we might design a system where the punishment better fits the crime, and craving stronger definition for more moderate offenses. Surely such a toolset would also help to give shape and nuance to the varied experiences of those on the receiving end. Growing more comfortable with applying language to events that are often written off as “unspeakable” must strengthen our ability to understand, protect, and legislate.

You cannot help but sense that, behind their professionalism, Kantor and Twohey mourned the treatment of Christine Blasey Ford, particularly by the #MeToo advocates who began to pressure survivors to go public with their story. Such bullying is stark against the nuance and balance with which the journalists tried to draw their sources towards making a public statement while always leaving room for them to back out, to own their own stories. Kantor and Twohey write openly about how difficult and conflicting it felt to toe the line between encouraging women to feel right about going public, but always acknowledging that it was their choice. One of their Weinstein sources, Rowena Chiu had a particularly long and difficult journey towards going public, before deciding that she wanted to write her own story, and clearly the NYT gave her space to control her own narrative.

And so, the stress placed on Ford feels like the point at which the movement loses its way. A huge part of #MeToo’s success as an online movement was in allowing women to share to the extent that they wanted to share, whether it was just the hashtag, or a longer post about their experiences, or taking to the streets. Individuals could acknowledge an experience of sexual harassment or assault without revealing details or specific accusations. This created a broad movement, a general feeling of sisterhood and shared experience, and a sense that women owned their own stories.

The book’s coda is a small group interview with women from the top to the bottom of the food chain (Gwyneth Paltrow down to Kim Lawson, a former McDonalds employee), all of whom are bearing out the consequences of their actions in different ways. The message: though harassment is a universal female experience, its consequences are not. The reality is that women in powerful positions were disproportionately compensated for their experiences, both through sky-high settlements and later through public approbation for their narratives. Neither the early pay-outs nor the hero status were available to women like Lawson, whose means of accessing power structures and ultimately whose options have always been more meaningfully limited.