Former Stranger writer Megan Seling reflects on her friendship with Matt Hickey, the Seattle-area tech journalist, accused sexual predator and alleged rapist who Sydney Brownstone and several local women exposed:
He was my friend. He was trusted and loved by some of my dearest pals. I still have his number in my cellphone, and I often consider how amazing it would feel to call him and scream into his ear until his brain starts to bleed. Other days I drown in guilt, because when the news broke via an extremely well-reported article in Seattleâs alt-weekly newspaper The Stranger (âThe Audition,â June 8), I didnât gasp in horror and mentally run through every single one of our past interactions while wondering how the hell this couldâve happened. Instead, I laughed. I was horrified â of course I was horrified â but I laughed due to pure shock of my own lack of surprise. The signs and accusations were there, but I did nothing.
Seling says Hickey bragged all the time about his exploits.
Which begs the question: What do all the male friends and associates of Hickey think and feel, now that he's been exposed? What are they doing differently, now?
Seling again:
I understand wanting to take personal responsibility for not saying something sooner. I understand the impulse to cop to one's own participation in rape culture.Theyâre standing next to us at rock shows and sitting behind us in math class. Theyâre not only taking advantage of our friendship and trust, theyâre also taking advantage of a culture that works desperately to silence the women these people are preying on. And as long as I exist in the comfort that comes with staying out of the gossip â scared to rock the boat, worried Iâd lose friends if I said what they didnât want to hear â Iâm participating in that culture, too. So I wonât anymore. I donât want to live in a world where itâs not surprising that a friend might just be a serial rapist right under my nose.
We need to hear this from more men.
But, also, and at the risk of mansplaining, I think it's worth keeping in mind that individuals speaking up more won't be enough to combat rape culture. It won't be enough to expose the Hickeys of the world or to hold them accountable.
We have to have robust institutions and laws, too. That's a big piece of how you change cultureâthe "the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time." Part of what made Sydney's original story so powerful, to me anyway, is that she showed how woefully inadequate the system is to handle cases like Hickey's, and on a wider scale, to deal with and undo rape culture.
Hickey is alleged to have defrauded, sexually assaulted, or raped at least six women. But, as Sydney reported, "three of the women have gone to local police, but they don't feel they're being taken seriously." Washington laws don't consider obtaining consent for sex under false pretenses to be rape. For one of the alleged victims, Liz Shearer:
The idea that what happened to her wouldn't be considered sexual assault may be the most devastating part. She feels like the police aren't on her side, that they insinuated "my rape wasn't really a rape." She doesn't want to go through that experience again by reporting what happened to the Seattle police.
In the United Kingdom, male police officers themselves abused women by sleeping with them under false pretenses. In the United States, forty percent of police families are victims of domestic violence, according to the The National Center for Women and Policingâa rate more than twice that of the general population.
Of course, it's one thing for menâfifty percent of the population in liberal Seattleâ to take in all of this and then proclaim themselves to be feminists or allies of women. (Sometimes, though, this can be a cover or misdirection.) To speak up and speak out when people they know act in harmful and misogynistic ways. And to stop manspreading, mansplaining, and doing all the stupid shit that men do.
It would be another for menâespecially men in positions of influence and political leadershipâto organize in concrete ways around creating a "public safety" apparatus worthy of the name, one that could be relied upon to make the other half of the population feel safe.
Seling says she's drowning in guilt. That's not fair. This doesn't fall on her shoulders alone.