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A review by wombatjenni
Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World by Jessica Valenti
5.0
Believe Me is an intense read. All of its essays, written by a wide variety of authors, illustrate issues that touch everyone when we don't trust women, from advancements in health care to the pipeline from domestic abuse/sexual harassment to school shootings. Much of it is sad in hindsight: we can look back at reports and political movements by women, and go, "oh, I guess they were right back then..." It's an investigation into what it means to be believed, and who gets to be believed, in the United States particularly. As much as there is a backlash against "cancel culture," one of the authors reminds us that it took over 80 women until anyone took accusations against Harvey Weinstein seriously enough, whereas his word against the women was enough for a long time.
What I found remarkable was how such a short book has all these essays civilly debate among each other: as an example, one author addresses the issue of how white men are often voted in to leadership roles in anti-harassment and anti-rape organization, and the well-intentioned approaches often focus not on preventing harassment or rape by incentivizing good bystander ("see something, say something") behavior and building a safe environment, instead focusing on how the victim can more easily report issues after the fact. This essay is followed by a man writing about his experiences doing anti-sexual-harassment work, and how it absolutely sucks that often, the only way to make people believe women is to have a white man say the same thing.
Likewise, the book contains criticism of white feminism, which often forgets to take into account dangerous sexism combined with racism that Black women face, such as that resulting in devastating numbers of Black women not being treated appropriately by doctors - studies show, that medical professionals believe (note: believe, not "have evidence of") that Black women can handle pain better than White women, and that they also exaggerate their symptoms more. This is a deadly combination. Samantha Irby's essay on finally getting diagnosed with Crohn's disease is both heartbreaking and in her usual style, humorous: Irby, with no history of drug abuse, was asked by her doctor whether she was just exaggerating her symptoms to get pain killers, only to sheepishly attend to her once the MRI showed that she truly had a problem.
A very illuminating, engaging read.
What I found remarkable was how such a short book has all these essays civilly debate among each other: as an example, one author addresses the issue of how white men are often voted in to leadership roles in anti-harassment and anti-rape organization, and the well-intentioned approaches often focus not on preventing harassment or rape by incentivizing good bystander ("see something, say something") behavior and building a safe environment, instead focusing on how the victim can more easily report issues after the fact. This essay is followed by a man writing about his experiences doing anti-sexual-harassment work, and how it absolutely sucks that often, the only way to make people believe women is to have a white man say the same thing.
Likewise, the book contains criticism of white feminism, which often forgets to take into account dangerous sexism combined with racism that Black women face, such as that resulting in devastating numbers of Black women not being treated appropriately by doctors - studies show, that medical professionals believe (note: believe, not "have evidence of") that Black women can handle pain better than White women, and that they also exaggerate their symptoms more. This is a deadly combination. Samantha Irby's essay on finally getting diagnosed with Crohn's disease is both heartbreaking and in her usual style, humorous: Irby, with no history of drug abuse, was asked by her doctor whether she was just exaggerating her symptoms to get pain killers, only to sheepishly attend to her once the MRI showed that she truly had a problem.
A very illuminating, engaging read.