The Lucky Ones

 Zara sweater (similar)
Grlfrnd jeans (c/o REVOLVE)
Maison Martin Margiela boots
Celine clutch (similar)
Anine Bing sunglasses
Madewell rings

I have talked a lot about fashion in recent weeks – clothes are my default subject when I don’t know what else to say. November was a hard month for everyone, I think; quite frankly, I think we can all agree that it seems a bit like we’ve lost the plot this year. A lot of things have felt very close to the surface for me, things that haven’t crossed my mind for years, and I haven’t known where to start with explaining. But this is me, and so, like always, it starts with a story…

I’ve told you all so often that writing, and particularly, writing novels, is all I’ve ever really wanted to do with my life. The my desire to write fiction was so strong that, at nineteen, I decided to abandon the traditional university degree I had been pursuing in favour of applying to take a fine arts degree in creative writing. It meant moving across the country, but I was glad to do it. That was, until the day I received my acceptance letter, stating that I had been chosen to study poetry, literary translation and screenwriting. The selection process was rigourous and the group competitive; teachers hand-selected students, and I hadn’t made the cut for Fiction 320. There are no words in the English language to describe the depth of my disappointment. I was gutted. My faith in my abilities as a writer was profoundly shaken. I didn’t know, at the time – no one could have – that not being chosen for that course was, quite possibly, the best thing that could have happened to me.

The following year, I summoned all of my courage and submitted an application for the Fiction 420 class; it was a long shot, I thought, knowing that most of the students who had taken Fiction 320 would make up the twelve-person class, with only one or two openings for new pupils. But I had nothing to lose, I told myself, and I made my submission. Something odd happened that year, something I could not explain at the time and remain at a loss to explain even now, though recent events have raised all kinds of new questions about that fall. A large number of fourth year students, all of them female, were accepted into Fiction 320 for a second year with the same professor. A former professor returning from sabbatical chose an almost entirely new group of students for Fiction 420, myself among them. The first month of school that year was uncomfortable, as students who were ostensibly repeating the third year course complained, rightly, while those of us who had been accepted into the fourth year course quietly questioned our right to be there while, of course, stating categorically that we were entitled to our places if asked out loud.

I graduated from university in 2007 with my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I have worked as a writer in some capacity ever since, though I am hardly what anyone might call a recognised Canadian writer. This year, while on vacation in San Francisco, I learned that the teacher of Fiction 320, who is without a doubt a member of the Canadian literary elite, had been dismissed from his position. There was, at the time, no mention of the reason for his termination, but I knew instantly what it must be – this was a man with whom even eye contact rapidly became uncomfortable; a man I had avoided speaking to, even passing in the halls if at all possible. In the months since, my instinctive reaction has proven to be spot on. Writing this, even now, I don’t know what to say. I have lived with the feeling of not being good enough at the thing I love most, writing fiction, for so many years now, a feeling that, like a heavy cloak, I haven’t been able to shake off despite so much evidence to contradict it. But suddenly, that terrible feeling is preferable to what might have been – to the trauma I might have endured as a result of enrolling in Fiction 320. I have been a victim of sexual harassment myself, more than once; on the worst occasion, before crossing the country to study writing, I registered a sexual harassment complaint against another student at my university and went through the process of shakily sharing my story, repeatedly highlighting the parts of it I felt I was to blame for, because I believed it was somehow my fault, in front of official after official. It was emotionally draining, and I have done my best never to think back on whether it was worth the heartache, because I know it wasn’t; in the end all that was asked of the perpetrator was that he write a hollow apology letter and keep his distance from me. I still struggle with untangling the events that lead to that complaint in my head, trying to work out if there was anything I did that “made him” take the actions he took. I will never work it out. I remind myself often that there is nothing to work out, that I am not to blame, because the idea that men cannot control their actions and that therefore women, by virtue of our clothing, mannerisms or behaviours, are responsible for the actions they take against us, is inherently fallacious. But at least the officials I spoke to believed me. I was lucky that no one asked me to provide proof, because I had nothing tangible to hold up to show that the individual in question had locked me in his apartment after I drove him home, refusing to let me leave. The fact that there is no tangible evidence does not mean the events of that night did not occur, but there are people who would claim that; the story of the professor of Fiction 320 has been all over the news, particularly in the month of November, as many notable Canadian authors, a large percentage of them women, stood up to defend him, going so far as to accuse his victims, women my age, some of whom I surely knew when I was at school, of lying.

All of November, and now every day of December, I have reminded myself that statistically, I am among the lucky ones – no one called me a liar, no one asked me what I had done to “deserve” what happened to me. But that thought is always followed by the question; why do we still live in a culture where sexual crimes against women are so prevalent, so ingrained, like indelible stains on the fabric of our collective existence, that we are considered lucky not if we are not survivors, because becoming one seems almost inevitable, but if those around us believe us when we speak up about what we lived through?