Let me say it again for emphasis: You own your goddamned experiences.
You.
Nobody else.
They’re your memories and stories and experiences to share or keep private as you wish. Your feelings, your reactions, your emotions are yours to spread publicly or to cover up under a bushel basket.
There will be consequences and outcomes depending on whether or not you share your memories, experiences, emotions, and feelings. They’ll vary depending on whom you share them with, when you share them, and how you share them.
Those decisions are yours.
Do not let someone else steal those decisions away from you.
Someone may ask you to keep a confidence. I’ve asked it of others, and had it asked of me. There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you agree freely and willingly.
But when someone judges you because you tell others what happened to you, when someone threatens you because you tell others your own story, when someone judges you for years afterward because you dared – oh fucking dared – to share your story of personal weakness and how you overcame it…
…well, that person is trying to blackmail you with their influence, aren’t they?
And before you reply – and yes, I know exactly the sort of “you” I’m addressing here – make sure you’d feel comfortable making that same argument to the women who have come forward about Cosby, Patel, Chainmail Guy, Trump, Berganza, or so many many more men who have told them to keep quiet.