SHOUTING INTO THE VOID
YOU CANNOT SEE MARIA GALLAGHER AT FIRST. ALL YOU hear are her words, spoken quickly, each one sounding as if it had taken the long way out of her—drenched in the deepest parts of her rage and pain. What you can see is the man, Senator Jeff Flake, looking down, looking away, looking anywhere but at Gallagher.
“I was sexually assaulted, and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you are going to ignore them,” Gallagher says to Flake, while she stands outside the elevator and he stands inside.
You can see Gallagher’s head now. “Don’t look away from me,” she says, desperation in her voice.
Elevators are liminal, in-between places of transition. This one is stopped by two women, Gallagher and Ana Maria Archila, as they force a U.S. Senator to hear the truth about their bodies. I watched the clip, over and over, in my bedroom. Watching felt like a scream. It felt like all of us screaming.
The day before, one year ago this September, Flake had heard the sworn testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. Now, confronted with two more stories of assault, Flake nods but remains largely silent.
A week later, he voted to confirm Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on our nation’s highest court.
Women have long been compelled to share their most private moments in order to convince others of their humanity. But in recent years, as we’ve peered into an uncertain future and need only pull
