Alice Munro doesn't get to tell this story

Within hours of The Toronto Star publishing Andrea Skinner’s op-ed in the Sunday edition, phones lit up across the United States. Entitled “My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him,” the piece chronicles Skinner’s horrific experience of sexual abuse, parental betrayal and the collusion to silence her story. Many have been asking what will become of Munro’s legacy.

Too few are asking what this piece means for Skinner, for the legacy she is creating, and for the millions of survivors who read it. Yes, there are millions of us. All over the world. From all ethnicities, races, genders, social strata. We are still here and we are still telling our stories.

We tell them in letters like the one Andrea Skinner wrote to her mother. We tell them in op-eds like the one published by Michele Goodwin. We tell them in memoirs like the ones Dorothy Alison published, or Roxane Gay or Grace Talusan. We tell them on stages like V  (formerly Eve Ensler) did and on TV like Tig Notaro.

We tell them in international movements like the one Tarana Burke founded when she started #metoo in attempts of helping other young Black girls suffering childhood sexual abuse.

We also tell them in private, in every space where we exist: bedrooms, kitchens, prison cells, basements, classrooms, fast food restaurants, bars, gas stations. We tell them in poems and novels, in the streets at rallies, in therapists’ offices and psychiatric wards. We tell them in the most sacred of places and in the most profane.

Each time, the world is shocked.

I am not shocked.

I am on fire.

I want to give Andrea Skinner the biggest award that doesn’t exist: the award for crafting a life out of the horrors of sexual abuse and familial betrayal.

I want to gather all the victims and survivors in a single place and I want to give all of us, one by one, a standing ovation. For showing up. For refusing to shut up, even if the only person we tell is ourselves. For refusing to have good manners, to make other people comfortable, or to protect our abusers who are so often our parents or guardians.

I want to applaud every victim and survivor who refuses the lie that sexual violence didn’t happen, or that we caused it, or that it happened but we shouldn’t talk about it  -- at least not here, in front of these people, or at work, or in public, or in a biography of a famous writer, or anywhere people might listen to us.

We do not only tell our stories once, or twice. Like Andrea Skinner, we tell people about the worst thing that happened to us over and over.

A 2013 white paper reviewing studies about the prevalence of child sexual abuse in the United States estimates “the child sexual abuse prevalence rate for girls is 10.7% to 17.4% and the rate for boys is 3.8% to 4.6%. These six studies suggest an overall full-childhood sexual abuse prevalence rate of 7.5% to 11.7%." (The studies do not report sexual abuse rates for transchildren as a distinct group.)

Survivors are not rare. We are here, in your midst. We are on the text chain, in the subway car, at the grocery store ringing up your purchases as you complain about cancel culture and another great author being brought down.

We do not only tell our stories once, or twice. Like Andrea Skinner, we tell people about the worst thing that happened to us over and over. Families don’t believe us, abusers threaten us, many blame us. In Skinner’s case, even after a guilty plea from her stepfather, her mother’s biographer Robert Thacker refused to publish the truth because “it wasn’t that kind of book.”

So, I want more. I want us, the victims and survivors, to begin to draft legislation that will serve us. Then I want us to pass it.

I want survivors to buy media conglomerates and serve as editors.

I want survivors to own social media empires and to moderate them.

I want survivors to overturn statutes of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse. I want survivors to reform the Supreme Court of the United States.

I want us on the Supreme Court of the United States.

I want survivors to share this piece and tell us what you want. Tell us what laws you would change, how much money you need to pay for your abortion or your rent. Tell us who did what to you. And, be as graphic or vague as you like. You don’t owe anybody any part of your story.

Doing what Andrea Skinner did this week is not without cost. It does not come without pain and loss and years of work to recover from the horrendous violence she suffered and from her mother’s horrifying betrayal.

What it does come with is courage.

Let us meet it with the respect and honor it deserves, with the respect and honor that Andrea Skinner deserves.

Forget Alice Munro’s Nobel. Give Andrea Skinner the award.

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