Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Genres: Non-fiction
Pub. date: Sep. 2019 (read Aug. 2020 on Audible)

I’m getting in a bad habit of not writing any reviews for a while and then doing them all at once, which definitely isn’t great for remembering the details. I’ll do my best, but it’s been about a month since I read this one.

I jumped right into She Said pretty much immediately after finishing Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill about the same topic. It was a lot of reading to do about one sleezebag, but I think reading them back to back was a good call as I was already familiar with the large cast of characters that makes up the story.

While Farrow seemed to have more testimonies and evidence of criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey deserve a lot of credit for being the first to break the story. Journalists have been trying to break this story for decades and kept being stymied, so it definitely matters that these two women were finally able to do it and it really opened the door for others like Ronan Farrow to bring this man to task.

One of the most shocking and memorable parts of Farrow’s book for me was the extent that other people went to to cover up for Weinstein. In this book, it was more the silencing power of NDA’s and the strength in numbers that left the largest impression on me. Kantor and Twohey talked to so many women and it was almost impossible to get anyone to go on the record. The biggest factor was that most of the women had signed NDAs and no one was willing to break the silence without similar stories from other women to back them up.

Ashley Judd was one of the women who really helped break the story open and I found it meaningful that she was willing to finally open up about her experience to Jodi and Megan because it was the first time she’d been approached by female journalists. It was also meaningful that the journalists boss was also a woman and yet another reason why having women in leadership positions is so damn important. While NBC was running around like chickens trying to kill the story to protect Harvey, the women at the Times were actually doing something about it. Respect.

Overall the book covers a lot of the same things. If I have to hear one more story about Weinstein cornering a woman in his hotel room asking for a massage I’m going to puke. But I thought She Said did a way better job at exposing Lisa Bloom for being such a snake. Reading about her in Farrow’s book I was like, ‘oh wow Lisa, low blow’, but this book really goes into the depth of which she was involved in helping Weinstein and exposed how a woman who made her name supposedly standing up for women, was actually actively trying to discredit and slander them. In essence, she really sucks.

What I really liked about this book was that it didn’t just focus on Weinstein. There’s a good part of the book dedicated to how disgusting Matt Lauer is and an even larger part about Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh. A lot of reviewers felt this was a bit of a tangent, but I’m actually so appreciative to the authors for choosing to include this. I followed Kavanaugh’s hearing pretty closely at the time and I had no idea how reluctant Blasey Ford was to actually come forward. She tried to back out of it so many times, but ultimately gave up her anonymity to speak up for Americans because she just couldn’t justify not doing it.

Blasey Ford is recognized as one of the most reliable and best witnesses for a recount of sexual assault. She presented herself incredibly well at the hearing, speaking eloquently and specifically about what had happened to her. Almost everyone, even republics, agreed she was a good witness. Then Brett Kavanaugh got up and threw and hissy fit and was still confirmed to the highest court of justice in America. It’s repulsive.

Where Christine Blasey Ford failed was in being the only one. What all the women in the Weinstein case understood was that you can’t take someone down with only one story. You can’t even take them down with 2 or 3, you literally need dozens. What does it say about our society that we are so against believing women. Even if Blasey Ford’s testimony wasn’t true, do we really want a supreme court justice that we have to question in such a way? Much less one that is OBVIOUSLY not unbiased, highly driven by emotions, and threw a fucking temper tantrum at his hearing. If anything, he’s unfit to be a judge because of his temperament, no further evidence needed.

Finally, the book ends with a retreat with all the women that had come forward with allegations coming together to reflect on their stories, how it felt to come forward, and how we need to support and believe each other. It was really a beautiful part of the book and made me so much more appreciative to the two journalists for their work. While Farrow wanted to break the story and expose Weinstein, I felt these two women had compassion. They care and empathize for the very fact that they are women. Whether or not you have a story of rape or harassment like the women in this book, literally every woman has a story. It may seem small or as Roxane Gay would say, not that bad (also a great anthology, read it), but they all matter.