Last week, I saw a lot of shocked men. They were shocked about the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment allegations. They were shocked that fellow liberal men in journalism were colluding with Nazi Milo Yiannopoulos to trash women. They were shocked that there was yet another case of sexual harassment and abuse in science.
You know who wasn’t shocked? Women. We looked at each other and went, “yep, sounds about right.” We traded stories. We, collectively, our whisper networks in our various fields, we knew about Harvey, we knew about Sunderland and Lyons, we knew about Marchant. And if we didn’t know them personally, we knew someone like them, someone who pulled the same tactics. They are all so exhaustingly familiar.
When I was four or five years old, my parents took me on the Bluenose ferry, which traveled a narrow stretch of the Atlantic between Maine and Nova Scotia. I was enthralled at first, taking in the warm sun, the brisk wind, the sparkle on each wave as it rose. But that lasted only until my dad and I descended to the dark lower deck where passengers parked their cars. I couldn’t see the sky anymore, and my brain clunked into panic mode as the floor heaved and rolled beneath me. I felt as if my stomach contents might eject any second. 
October 2-6, 2017
I was walking up the street the other day when a woman cruised by me on a motorcycle, slowed down and pulled over. Some quick calculations went through my mind: she’s wearing yoga pants because she’s a Pilates teacher, I only have one girlfriend in town who rides a motorcycle regularly, she’s about the right height, those are the kind of shoes she would wear, she’s stopping to talk to me.
