#ARMeToo – Is It Still Happening?
Image by Anete Lusina, Pexels
Are we supposed to believe the stories? Have we moved on? Should we move on? What does moving on even look like?
I have edited this blog more than any other blog I’ve written. And the editing has not been the traditional type of editing where we move sentences, rework statements, and correct our grammar and punctuation.
The kind of editing I did was substantive, and concerning, and heart-wrenching. It was based on feedback from women whom I asked to read earlier drafts of what I had written. It was editing that I had to do as more information was shared with me through that process.
My original version of this blog started with a few statements about hopefulness. It included my sharing that I was not aware of any new #ARMeToo issues, that I felt that we might be coming together again, and that I was actually aware of several organizations engaging in tangible efforts to centre respectfulness at work.
When I shared that first version with a trusted friend, she wrote back saying that she was indeed aware of recent #ARMeToo issues, several in fact.
Another blog reviewer shared with me her experience of bringing a difficult situation to the attention of a conference organizer that she was involved with who “. . . did nothing about an overt racist speaker” on the speaker list.
Another shared that she felt that we still have a big #ARMeToo problem. She further shared that one organization she is involved with who purports to care about all forms of justice is still problematic. “It's heartbreaking and deeply discouraging. It's why I avoided working in the movement for so long.”
And another told me of an #ARMeToo situation that occurred at the AVA Conference.
Clearly, we still have a very long way to go. So, let’s dig in a bit more deeply.
With the help of some friends who have been gracious to share their own thoughts and ideas with me, I am going to do my best to answer some of the questions that have been posed to me.
I would, however, like to ask all of you to please share your own thoughts and suggestions. This is about what is right for our entire community – and the answers should be community centric.
Who are these #ARMeToo perpetrators?
Sadly, the list is long and growing. And even more sadly, most of them from the past are still walking amongst us, and are thriving. Other names are new, and importantly, not all of them are men.
Starting with the publicised list, there are the accused who have found themselves the subject of major media publications in the United States including The Washington Post and Politico. There are those who have been named in publications like the Nonprofit Chronicles as well as the accused who have been called out on Facebook, blogs, guest blogs, Twitter, YouTube, websites, and other social media platforms. The information seems endless, you just need to google “ARMeToo”.
Then there are the ones that we talk about less, the ones who seem to be unscathed. The ones whose names don’t generally appear in the press. These are the ones who might actually be more dangerous because they hide in plain sight. These are the ones who empowered the perpetrators, who turned the other way when they should have stepped up and stepped in, the ones who continue to empower the accused. These are the ones who had and continue to have the power and responsibility to speak up and who chose to remain silent.
What continues to astound me about these folks is that as animal activists we hold firm to the many quotes from social justice leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Eli Wiesel, Paulo Freire, and Martin Luther King who all talk about the fact that silence empowers the oppressor. That neutrality is not an option. That there is no such thing as being nonpartisan. Yet, for these men and women who chose to do nothing, these quotes seem to only be relevant when dealing with the oppression of animals, not humans.
What is our obligation to new people in the movement to understand our history?
I think that most people agree that understanding history helps us to understand the present and plan for the future. History is a fundamental part of learning and improving. We simply cannot move forward without first looking back.
The question then is ‘how’ we look back, and ‘how’ we do so in a way that is safe and effective.
One of the most powerful ways that we can understand the past is through oral traditions. Through the telling of stories from one to another and to another, and for those stories to be shared in a way that values the lived experience.
We must speak up if we can. It is our obligation, especially for those of us who are the women who lived through the painful years of 2017, 2018, and 2019 – to tell our stories, to name names.
It was my story that spurred me to complete my doctoral research, and it is my story that continues to compel me to write about and work within this space of doing what I can to support healthy workplaces.
For further inspiration, I turn to the work of Black, lesbian, academic, orator and poet, Audre Lorde, whose 1978 poem, A Litany for Survival, is as follows:
“if we speak we are afraid
that our words will be used
against us
And if we do not speak
we are still afraid
So, it is better to speak
knowing we were never meant
to survive (pp. 31-32).” 1
Lorde wrote extensively on the importance of language as a tool to bring about social change, despite any inherent risk in doing so. Lorde (1977) 2 noted that “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood” (p. 73). Lorde also passionately spoke and wrote that failing to assume the risk of naming names was a form of complicity with oppression and with the oppressor (Olson, 1997) 3. Instead, feminist researchers are called to raise awareness about the problems of silence, since silence thrives “in an environment in which power, privilege, and historical inequities operate invisibly without being named, acknowledged, or addressed” (Shpungin et al, 2012, p. 44) 4.
I also chose to name names in my dissertation. I felt called to name names so that the stories of the women who were abused were not left unheard. I also feel a deep responsibility to the women who will follow, and as such, I could not shrink in response to any personal risk which, in the words of Audra Lorde, may “seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty: we must be quite serious about the choice of this topic and the angers entwined within it, because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us and of what we are trying to do here” (Lorde, 1981, p. 281) 5.
Do we ever forgive them?
This is a very tough question, it is a matter of restorative justice. Restorative justice is about those who have harmed others taking responsibility for the harm they did by communicating about that harm in a meaningful way – more than just through a quip on social media, and taking appropriate restorative actions. These actions can include genuine personal apologies, engaging with a third party to facilitate the process if needed, ensuring that the work done is contextual and considers the unique needs of the individuals harmed and of the community, and that it always centres compassion and safety. Based on what I currently know, no alleged #ARMeToo harasser or enabler has done this.
Do we ever forgive the organizations that empowered them?
This question is much more straight forward from my perspective, in part because employment law, organizational accountability, and organizational health has been at the heart of my professional career since 1990, and in many cases, it is the law.
Organizations in most (if not all) countries are accountable for any inappropriate activities, and those that wilfully fail to act when made aware or witness wrongdoing are liable and responsible for the wrongdoing. Organizations that fail to act swiftly and appropriately are not only in violation of the law in most regards, but are also in violation of their moral, ethical, and fiduciary duties. In addition, when those organizations fail to act and allow wrongdoers to remain in a position of power, that organization can never be healthy.
In contrast, organizations that take accountability, that remove the wrongdoers and those that protected them, and then genuinely engage in restorative justice should be welcomed back with open arms.
These are all just allegations, there is no proof right?
Several women shared their first-hand accounts of sexual harassment and assault in the movement with me both personally and as part of my doctoral research. Some of the women who shared their stories with me reported directly to me in my previous role as a vice president at Mercy For Animals. I believed every single one of these women.
That said, even if I did not have this first-hand experience, it would not matter.
For those of you reading this blog who call yourselves rationalists, who rely exclusively on reason and empirical evidence in order to believe, I will share a story with you, a story of the impact of trauma, a story about smoke stacks.
Dr. Dori Laub
Holocaust survivor and psychologist Dori Laub established the Holocaust Survivors Film Project. This project began in 1981 and laid the groundwork for a video archive for Holocaust Testimonies. During several of the interviews led by Professor Laub and a colleague, they found that many survivor memories did not appear historically accurate. One example was of a survivor who described how, during the Auschwitz rebellion, four of the gas chamber chimneys had exploded, when in fact, according to the historian, it was only one chimney.
The historian sought to discredit the survivor’s interview. Laub disagreed. For Laub, the woman’s truth mattered because the truth is more important than the facts.
The number of smoke stacks were not what mattered. What mattered was her experience, what her experience did to her, how she was changed, and how she changed how she navigated the world.
This story was brought to my attention from one of my mentors, Dr. Gay Bradshaw, founder of The Kerulos Centre of Nonviolence, who noted in an email to me that:
“The historian’s zealotry to uphold collective reality neatly clips the thread connecting present to past and in so doing, liberates the historian, and society, from moral obligation to the woman, and the atrocities that she witnessed. The historian’s reaction to the camp survivor illustrates the fundamental ethical tear intrinsic to modern culture.”
Now what?
My heart breaks every single day for the people that the animals lost due to #ARMeToo, and for those of us who survived and still commit our lives to working on behalf of the animals.
It is up to us, to all of us, no matter what our role, to each do what we can to prioritize activist safety. The AVA Summit organizers tried to do this, and there are many organizations that I work with who are committing to Respect in the Workplace programs. That said, this work needs to be happening every day by everyone in whatever way that they can.
So I leave each of you to answer this question for yourself. What will you do now? Will you name names? Will you share your own story? Will you commit to speaking up when you see wrongdoing? Will you look inside of yourself and ask if you have turned the other way when you should have spoken up? What will you do now to remedy that? It’s not too late.
I would hope that we, as a community, can come together to find ways to make our movement more inclusive, to make it such that everyone feels safe and welcome, and to understand that how we treat one another directly impacts our work for animals.
1 Lorde, A. (1978). A litany for survival. The black unicorn, 31-32. The poem is included as it was originally written keeping true to line spacing, capitalizations, and punctuation.
2 Lorde, A. (1977). The transformation of silence into language and action. Identity politics in the women’s movement, 81-84.
3 Olson, L. C. (1997). On the margins of rhetoric: Audre Lorde transforming silence into language and action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 83(1), 49-70.
4 Shpungin, E., Allen, N., Loomis, C., & DelloStritto, M. E. (2012). Keeping the spirit alive: Using feminist methodology to address silencing. Journal of Community Psychology, 40(1), 44-61.
5 Lorde, A. (1981). The uses of anger. Women's Studies Quarterly. City University of New York.
This blog is provided for general information purposes only. It is not intended to provide legal advice or opinions of any kind. No one should act, or refrain from acting, based solely upon the materials provided on this website, any hypertext links or other general information without first seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice.
The intention of this blog is to promote the longevity and engagement level of the activist community within the Animal Advocacy Movement (AAM). The majority of the advice will be geared towards employees within the AAM in Canada and the United States, but may be applicable to other countries.
Krista is the Executive Director of For The Greater Good where she consults with animal protection organizations on matters of organizational development, strategic planning, and board governance. Krista serves on several boards including One Protest, The Rancher Advocacy Program, Egg-Truth, and Dairy-Truth. Krista previously served as the VP of Mercy For Animals in Canada, and the President of the Board for Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary.
Krista holds a doctorate in social sciences where her research focused on the employment experiences of animal rights activists in Canada and the United States. She also holds five additional degrees in human resources, including a master’s degree in organizational development and leadership. Krista is Associate Faculty for her alma matter, Royal Roads University, where she supervises master’s students and teaches. Krista is also a peer reviewer for the Journal of Critical Animal Studies.
Formerly, Krista founded a boutique employment and labour law firm in Toronto, and before that she spent fifteen years in HR including as the vice president of HR for one of the largest software companies in the world.