Chana Joffe-Walt
Act 6, "Kristen."
Kristen was 13 and she got a note. Well, she never actually saw the note, even though it was apparently written to her. It was intercepted by a teacher. But she knew what it said, because everyone in school knew. It was from the boys lacrosse team. Dear Kristen, you have nice boobs. You should use them.
Kristen remembers how absurd it seemed, and laughing with her friends at the note, and the boys.
Kristen
(MOCKING TONE) Use your boobs. We were, like, joking about it. Better put them to use. The boys lacrosse team needs them. Like, ooh, what do they want to do with them? Like, how could-- boys, how could you use my boobs on the lacrosse team? It was just stupid.
Chana Joffe-Walt
One of the boys who signed the note was Kristen's boyfriend, but the two never talked about it, because they never talked, because they we're in seventh grade, and that's what it meant to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
The guidance counselor came for Kristen in the middle of class. They walked to her office, and she asked Kristen what she thought of the note.
Kristen
And I was like, I don't know, I think they're just like being stupid boys. And she was like, you're a victim of sexual harassment. And I just remember being like, feeling really weird that she said that to me, because it sounded so serious. And I just, like-- just like, can we just let it go? You know, one of these guys is your boyfriend. What does he think, that this is cute? And I was like, I don't know. I don't even know him. Like, he's an idiot. Like, he's not going to be my boyfriend anymore. And then I thought she was angry with me, because I wasn't freaking out about this letter. But that's how I felt.
Chana Joffe-Walt
You were not performing victim of sexual harassment correctly.
Kristen
Yeah, I was just performing like child in a room. I'm 12, and you're an adult talking about my body, and boys, and it's so uncomfortable. I remember, I even zipped my hoodie up real, real tight, all the way to the top, because I thought that she would make a comment about my boobs showing or something.
Chana Joffe-Walt
It's not like Kristen couldn't imagine some girl being upset by that note. She could. And she could imagine some girl might enjoy that note. But she was the girl. She owned the boobs they we're talking about, that everyone was now talking about.
Kristen
And then there was a thing in the auditorium, and this girl who I didn't know at all sat down next to me and was like, I heard about the note. Are you OK? And all of that kind of shit was just making me so uncomfortable. I was just like, yeah, I'm fine.
I didn't care. What I remember caring about was the guidance counselor for not just letting it be a stupid kid thing, and making it into like an attempted rape or something.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Is that how it felt?
Kristen
It just felt like they wanted me to cry, and act like it was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I was so violated.
Chana Joffe-Walt
When Kristen was raped a few years later, it took her a while to use that word. He took advantage of me is what Kristen said at first. When that didn't feel right, she said, he's an asshole. But that didn't seem right either. She had no word to summarize the experience.
Kristen
Something that I didn't like that was wrong, but it wasn't what I imagined rape would be like, and it wasn't as scary as I thought that it would be.
Chana Joffe-Walt
She was at her friend's house for a party. It was late. People were going to sleep, and she climbed up to the top of a bunk bed to get away from an older guy who was creeping her out.
Kristen was drunk. She remembers her face felt numb. She remembers hearing someone banging on the door, which you later found out he had locked before he climbed up into the bunk bed and took her clothes off. She said no, but he had sex with her anyway. Sex-- that didn't feel like the right word, either.
Kristen noticed her friends doing the same thing, describing their experiences with boys in different tones, in different arrangements. And then there was the friend who wouldn't say anything at all about what happened, except she was upset and didn't want to talk about it. And eventually she did explain. He said, can I just put it in you for a second? Her friend said, no. He did anyway. That's when Kristen said she felt like she had an understanding to share.
Kristen
All those times when we were mad at those boys because of what they did to us. We were mad because they raped us, you know. And there was like, several of my friends where it took us a really long time to put the word to it.
Chana Joffe-Walt
When she added them up, all their experiences, Kristen felt like boys we're aiming their behavior so it would come in just under the line of something that had a name.
Kristen
Like they were playing a game to see what they can get away with, that's what I kind of realized from it, the way that a guy is going to screw you over most likely isn't going to be he's going to rape you in an alley. It's going to be something that people might doubt. And it's not going to look like the worst examples of things or the most clear cut. And it's intentional, and that's why it's scary. Like, they toe the-- actually, I think maybe they don't believe that what they did was wrong, because it doesn't look like what they consider rape.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Same as for you.
Kristen
Mm-hmm.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Rape. The word was congruent with the way she felt about it. That, she decided, was what mattered.
Kristen
And I think maybe after that, I was just ready. I don't know. I wasn't waiting anymore to call something what it was.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Four years later, Kristen met Don at a protest, graduated from college, and accepted a job at AlterNet. She was 21, AlterNet's youngest employee. Don loved to tell the story of how they met, how he'd found her on the sidewalk.
Kristen
He liked very much that he had discovered me. I definitely got the sense that he liked feeling like he was doing me this huge favor, and like I was his protege or something. And then it evolved from, oh, I found her on the sidewalk like it was this cute thing, to like, don't you dare publish anywhere else. And the amount of control that I realized he had over me was concerning, early.
Chana Joffe-Walt
When Don invited her to meet at his apartment, Kristen did not think, as Tana had, well, there's no New York office, so that makes a certain amount of sense. Kristen thought, I know what this is. I know why he wants me here. I know why he's ordering sushi, and offering me weed, and repeatedly asking me if I like his music.
Kristen
And he wanted me, too. He liked that I was young, and he thought I was, like, cool. He was hanging out with this young person who was having a good time with him. And I think a lot of the shameless way he would look at or talk about my body was a way for him to kind of force me to see him as a sexual being. Like, I'm not a 60-something-year-old man with no sexuality. And if you think so, I'm going to prove to you that I'm not by forcing you to realize that I do have sexual thoughts and urges, and also, they're about you.
Chana Joffe-Walt
A friend said to me recently, relating a different incident, she said, forcing someone to be part of your boner against their will is just a smarter way of forcing someone. I thought about Kristen when she said that, how alert Kristen was to a violation that was not definitively over the line. Kristen found it alarming how laid back Don was, how he behaved as if their interactions were completely normal. Like one day, she was supposed to meet with him in a coffee shop, Don, and some other colleagues. When Kristen walked in, Don was already there.
Kristen
I think I had pretty much just sat down. And he was like on his computer, you know, just real casual, like, oh, I saw someone on the internet. She looked just like you. Let me show you. And he's like, taking his time, pulling up this picture, and I'm like, oh, God, what is he going to show me? And he pulls up just a picture of a completely naked woman, like a porn star or something, with like, fake breasts and blond hair. And I was like, I can't even imagine what the look on my face must've been like. My response was, she looks nothing like me.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Kristen stood up, said, I'm going to go have a cigarette.
Kristen
And I was like oh, yeah, cool. So this-- you see, every blond chick in the porn you watch reminds you of me. Great.
Chana Joffe-Walt
This behavior had a name-- sexual harassment. Kristen did not doubt it.
Kristen
I always knew it was wrong. It wasn't like I ever thought, is this normal? Like, I knew, no, this is not normal, and it's bad.
Chana Joffe-Walt
But having a name for this behavior didn't solve anything for Kristen. It just made her angry, because it seemed like there was nothing she could do about it. She had no previous experience, no connections in the industry, and she needed the job.
Kristen
I used to always-- I don't even know if I should say this --I used to like to talk about fantasies of kidnapping him, and torturing him, and forcing him to transfer money into my bank account. But you know, I would just always joke about the things I would do to that man that would just make him feel uncomfortable and terrified. That's what I wanted to do more than anything.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Kristen's revenge fantasy is very similar to the plot of the movie 9 to 5, which Kristen has never seen, because it came out in 1980, before she was born. All of which is to say this is an old story.
Kristen's anger bled. It bed into her thoughts, her work. She remembers being at a conference and interviewing an older man, a guy in his 70s, about drug policy.
Kristen
And at the end, I said I was going to smoke a cigarette, and he said, you don't want to get cancer in those boobs, do you? And I was just like, ew, and just got up and went outside and smoked a cigarette, and told all the people at the conference, can you believe that this dinosaur man just said that to me?
And it was the same thing I felt with Don, like it was this older man who was just kind of like, I'm going to force the fact that I have a sexuality on you. I'm going to force you to reckon with it by making you the object of my sexual desire.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Later that day, Kristen was walking with her AlterNet colleague, Jan Frel. Not Don, Jan. Jan was, at various points, Don's second-in-command.
Kristen
And we were walking down the sidewalk, and he was on the left of me, and traffic was on the other side of him, and I told him what happened, and he said, oh, well, you must have taken it as a compliment, kind of, though, right? Or something like that. And I just had this image of pushing him into the street that was so vivid, it almost freaked me out. I was like, I came very close to maybe killing this person. But that's how full of rage I was by that point. I was just about to explode.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Jan does remember Kristen telling him about this, but does not recall responding in this way. Kristen started talking. She told a female coworker named Lauren about how Don was treating her. Lauren was a bit older, seemed together, but she didn't know what to do. She did have one idea of someone who could help, a woman Lauren actually had just met at a book party, a woman in her 30s who had worked with Don in the past. Her name was Deanna.
Lauren asked to talk to Deanna, Deanna remembers.
Deanna
She started telling me about the experiences this new staffer was having with him, this young woman.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Deanna hadn't been with Don for years at this point. Lauren didn't know they'd ever been together. But Lauren told Deanna, part of what's so hard about this is the new staffer is so young and inexperienced. Don met her when she was a student on the street at a protest.
Deanna
And I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. I was fucking there. I should have taken her by the wrist, pulled her away with me, and said, do not. I will find you another job, you know. And I felt such guilt over that.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Deanna began cycling through the moments, all the choices she had made, that she thought were just hers, choices she assumed would only affect her and her relationship with Don.
She thought specifically about a call she got years ago, just two months after she'd broken up with Don. It was a professional contact who said she wanted to ask Deanna about something serious. And then the woman on the phone said that her organization had put on an event with AlterNet, and a young staffer had just complained that Don sexually harassed her. The woman on the phone said to Deanna, you've worked with Don. Does that sound like him? Deanna paused to consider it before answering.
Deanna
I have a lot of shame, but my greatest shame was-- I can't picture him doing something unwanted, was what I said. And so I kind of-- I defended him. I didn't kind of defend him. Like, I didn't say, I believe this person.
Chana Joffe-Walt
But was true for you at the time that you couldn't imagine him doing that?
Deanna
(DRAGGING THE WORD OUT INTO A GROAN) No. Yeah, but I-- there was a tiny part of me that wondered if that could be true, and I just didn't want to deal with it, and nothing was ever done. It never went further.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Deanna and Kristen went out for drinks. Deanna listened, Kristen talked. Deanna said she wanted to help in whatever way she could, and Deanna prayed that Kristen would not ask her, what happened to you?
Deanna
Everything felt like it would blow up. Everyone would know that I was complicit, that I helped him. How could people want to be friends with me after that? How could people trust my professional expertise after knowing that about me? How could-- what would my mom think? They're all going to think I'm a fraud, that I'm not talented, that I'm not-- that these ideas aren't my own or something, and I would just have to shrink away.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Deanna helped connect Kristen with a lawyer. The lawyer told Kristin it would be very hard to win a lawsuit and keep her job. She also said she'd probably need more evidence. And that's when Kristen thought to ask Tana. She knew Don had been harassing her, too. Kristen doesn't remember Tana saying, this isn't news that this happens. She remembers Tana being kind, and saying she didn't want to betray Don. He'd given her a chance and a career when no one else would have.
Chana Joffe-Walt
So she said she didn't want to do it, and then what did you do?
Kristen
I just kind of gave up.
Chana Joffe-Walt
Kristen's apartment flooded, and she got a payout from her landlord. When the money came in, she quit AlterNet without ever using the words she believed to be true.
Kristen
When I left, I didn't say to him, I'm leaving because you sexually harassed me, and I hate you. I was too affected by the idea that he was giving you a chance. And it's true, he did give us a chance that no one else did. So I mean-- but I guess I felt like I had paid my dues, and the payoff was no longer fair.