The power of Women Talking

By JoAnne Young

 

If you are someone who tries to watch all the Oscar nominated films each year, you’ve probably seen “Women Talking.” I confess I’ve seen only two of 10 of those deemed Oscar worthy: “Women Talking” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” 

 

“Women Talking” had the most punch-you-in-the-gut force. It's still there, bouncing around in my head. I can't shake it loose. It's telling me, we shouldn't be just talking. We should be shouting, bellowing, crying out. 

I followed up my first viewing with a podcast on “We Can Do Hard Things” with the director/screenwriter/political activist Sarah Polley … four women talking about sexual assault and “hope, survival, imagination and revolution,” about burning down the world order and building from the ashes. The podcast ended and a torrent of feelings rained down. Knowing I had some hours left on my rental, I watched the movie again. I had to stop every so often to absorb and let the emotions die down before continuing. 

 

It’s based on a true story of a Mennonite colony in rural Bolivia in which, between 2005 and 2009 more than 140 women and girls, ages 3 to 65, were raped by their cousins, brothers, uncles, nephews ages 19 to 43, according to reporter Jean Friedman-Rudovsky. For five years they would sneak into homes in the black of night and spray their victims with an animal anesthetic made from the belladonna plant. When they awakened, bruised and inflamed, with blood and semen stains on their sheets, serious headaches and no recollection of what took place, they are told it was wild female imagination or ghosts or Satan, punishing them for their sins. Or they were accused of lying for attention or to cover up adultery. The assaults resulted in pregnancies and deep psychological wounds.

 

Nine men from the colony were eventually found out and accused after one was caught and confessed the names of the others. They were taken to a nearby town and jailed, for their own safety. The rest of the men in the colony then went to town to bail them out. 

 

In the imagined book and movie, the women claim for themselves the power to decide how they would react to those rapes. 

 

The women, who were never taught to read or write, were told they had two days to forgive the men or be banished from the colony and thus, from God. As women of faith, that was not acceptable. They voted, instead, on three other choices: Do nothing, stay and fight, or leave together. While the men were away, three families of women came together in a barn to decide how to proceed, while the other women tended to the many chores. (Not doing so, they said, would result in mayhem.)

 

I was fascinated with their discussion, to watch the process that led finally to the consensus of what to do, for the wellbeing of their bodies, their children, their faith. 

 

During that talking, there emerged a fourth option: Ask the men to leave. They look stricken. One of older women says: “None of us have ever asked the men for anything. Not a single thing. Not even for the salt to be passed, or to take the washing in, or to open the curtain, to go easy on the small yearlings, or to put your hand on the small of my back while I try again for the 12^th or 13^th time to push a baby out of my body.”

 

Isn’t it interesting, she continues, that the one and only request we would have of the men would be for them to leave? The women bust out laughing. 

 

In the podcast discussion, which is another version of women talking, Polley describes the movie as a fable about all of us, about all the conversations we are having in our families, our friend groups, our churches, our states and our countries. It’s about what harms have been done to women, how women are taught to behave, either directly or through the lessons of what other women experience, how we learn to forgive ourselves and each other. 

 

How do we reimagine a different world for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, one in which we don’t have to solve the problems of sexual harassment or assault, domestic violence or subtle or overt discrimination, through legislation or courts or education? One in which telling men simply to stop these acts is not shocking or laughable. 

 

We are in the barn, too, talking. 

 

The movie and book, and the true story of these women in Bolivia, have given me a new view of the individual and groups of women I meet with and our conversations. I never walk away without at least some insight into my life, into theirs. 

 

Sarah Polley has talked and written about her own sexual assault as a teenager, how her assailant was nearly twice her age, and how she responded by not reporting it, by treating it for years as a funny party story about her worst date ever, by being deferential to her attacker when she would see him. In reality, it was a “traumatic, violent encounter” and she was terrified and hurt. 

 

It made me think of my own #metoo encounter at age 9, one I have thought of as probably not serious enough to count as a #metoo experience because it was not a first-degree sexual assault. Even so, it has affected me to this day in ways I seldom talk about. 

 

This story of women talking is about us all, about domestic violence, date rape, verbal assaults in person and via social media. Name calling and threats. 

 

“It’s about looking at all of us and all of the conversations we’re having,” Polley says.

 

“Women Talking” has been Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay. My guess is it won’t win Best Picture. But it will be the most profound in the hearts and minds of many of us who saw it. 

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