It’s been a week since Dylan Farrow’s open letter, in which she detailed her memories of Woody Allen sexually abusing her, was published in the New York Times. The Times is currently considering whether to publish a response from Allen, as per his request. (Update: Allen’s response is now here.)
While Woody Allen has responded to the allegations through a rep, his is almost the last voice to be heard on the matter. Among others, the Times journalist Nicholas Kristof (who published the letter in his column); the LA Times op-ed editor Sue Horton (who turned it down); Vanity Fair’s Maureen Orth (who wrote about the Allen/Farrow family in 1992 and again at the end of last year); The Daily Beast’s Robert B. Weide (who wrote a 5000-word piece in defense of Woody Allen, before Dylan’s letter was published); the Guardian media commentator Michael Wolff (who suspects the allegations are “spin” for the Farrow family); Slate’s Jessica Winter (who calls Weide’s piece “noxious”, and Wolff’s “unhinged”); actress Cate Blanchett; actor Alec Baldwin; GIRLS star Lena Dunham; a child abuse investigator; a media studies professor; Dylan’s mother Mia Farrow, and her brothers Ronan and Moses are among those to respond to the allegations.
Or, that is, respond to responses to the allegations. The extent to which every journalist, every blogger, every celebrity, and every teen with a Twitter account has weighed into the matter has thrown into sharp relief the language that is commonly used to discuss sexual assault, and the very real problems with it.
Sasha Weiss, writing for the New Yorker, made the point that certain accusations of rape “incites more fitful, ambivalent expressions of outrage”:
Many people writing about the case have essentially said, “We don’t know what really happened.” In qualifying the discussion, they are upholding the American right of innocent until proven guilty. But they are also upholding another difficult-to-combat belief: that what goes on within the confines of family life, especially a family life as messy and complex as the Farrow-Allen household’s, is essentially unknowable and private. ... The complexity and frequent pain of family life can be difficult to understand even for members of a family, who were there. How much more opaque must it remain for people outside the household, who can’t see what goes inside?
To those “hoping it’s not true”, this piece, published in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Al Gore in 2010, stands:
To draw from one of the few Lost principles applicable to sexual assault reporting: Whatever happened, happened. Either a sexual assault occurred, or it didn't. The only thing “hoping” can influence is whose account is supported after the fact.
And in the wake of so-called “Steubenville rape crisis”, Slate’s Roxane Gay wrote that the way that we talk about sexual assault is broken.
Closer to home, Wellington writer Giovanni Tiso wrote about the history of False Memory Syndrome with relation to Dylan Farrow’s letter for the literary journal Overland.