Bluesky

The morning of the press conference to announce my resignation from the New York City Department of Education, I inadvertently gave AM New York an exclusive interview in the ladies’ restroom. I knew little about how the media worked and naïvely assumed it was off the record when I told the reporter, as we both stood at sinks, washing our hands, that no one was willing to hire the woman that the news had dubbed the “hooker teacher.” Eight months after being removed from the classroom because the New York Post put on its front cover that I’d worked as a prostitute prior to becoming a public school teacher, I was unemployed and unemployable. I would never be allowed to work with kids or in the nonprofit sector again, I told her, a premonition that has more or less come true. I told the reporter I was broke and on the verge of losing my apartment, and so I’d made the difficult choice to move back in with my ex.

The next morning, when I awoke to discover that my unloading had become her story, I felt painfully exposed. Throughout my ordeal, I had tried to project an image of strength and invulnerability. When I stepped on stage at the press conference that day, I put on an air of confidence. I talked about how I’d have surely won a First Amendment case, had I brought it to trial, but that I’d never be welcomed back into the classroom and that “I [had] no interest in putting myself in places where I wasn’t welcome.” I tried to look cool and tough, unflappable and in control. I wanted to appear indestructible, but there it was: my raw, unvarnished truth.

I thought of this moment some weeks ago when former president Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts for his attempts to conceal $130,000 in hush money that was paid to Stormy Daniels over a sexual encounter between the two of them in 2006. Laura Bassett, at New York magazine’s The Cut, described the outcome as “poetic justice.” Speaking of both Daniels and journalist E. Jean Carroll, Bassett said “there’s an immense catharsis in watching these women claim victory against Trump in court.” Over the years, op-eds have described Daniels as “brave,” “courageous,” “resilient,” “indomitable,” “unapologetic,” “ballsy” and “tough.” We want to believe that, as The Guardian put it, “Stormy Daniels has never been cowed. And now she is vindicated.”

Mass-media humiliation wasn’t a term I was familiar with at the time that I endured it. According to media psychologist, author, speaker, educator, activist, and life story coach, Dr. Christine Marie, it is a uniquely traumatic experience that can have a profound and long-lasting effect on everything from one’s career and finances to their mental health. Often, it is a secondary violation, compounding the trauma endured from previous abuse.

Even before I was called a “prosti-teacher” and a “disgrace,” as a woman with experiences in the sex trade, I’d spent much of my adult life fighting for respect. The men who paid me were not that different from the men outside of work who saw little value in me beyond a potential sex partner. The truth is that no matter how hard we fight, and whether we are a politician, astronaut, accountant, or sex worker, some men will never see women as anything other than whores. And a lot of these men—including some very powerful ones—have no qualms about making their misogyny public. Just look at how some conservatives talk about our nation’s first Black female presidential nominee.

The fact that survivors of sexual violence are frequently disbelieved, slut-shamed, and blamed undoubtedly has an impact on all that are watching. To see Daniels branded an opportunist and a gold digger for accepting the payment, or called untrustworthy, unintelligent, and mentally unstable while being publicly taunted by her perpetrator and treated with contempt by those supposedly on her side, has an intended effect. Other women question whether it is worth it to come forward with their own complicated sexual experiences. Our children bear witness to a mother’s pain trivialized as a joke. Men who cause harm see themselves cast as the victim while the actual victim is blamed or mocked, as we witnessed most recently at the Democratic National Convention. Seeing Trump’s defense team slut-shame Daniels on the stand is par for the course. But even presumably sympathetic Democrats have accused Daniels of inadvertently helping Trump with her “humiliating” testimony and continue to refer to her derisively as a “porn star.”

To be clear, the encounter between Trump and Daniels was consensual—just as I consented, many years ago, to trading sex for cash. But even our most nonexploitative and pleasurable sexual encounters occur in the context of a culture in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence is normalized and excused.

When the CDC tells us that over nearly half of all women and 1 in 3 men have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, they are only counting the people that are willing and able to talk about it. These statistics exclude countless everyday examples that we’ve been groomed since girlhood to endure. Sexual violence extends beyond outright assault to include subtle violations and everyday degradations—everything from gropes and catcalls to the man working at the deli who won’t hand over your sandwich until you give him a smile. Nearly every woman I know has suffered come-ons from manipulative men in positions of power. Nearly every woman I know has survived sexual encounters that were, in Daniel’s words, “terrible, but [we] didn’t say no.” Having endured so much that remains unspoken, even in our own heads, we owe so much to those individuals brave enough to put these experiences into words.

I don’t regret speaking out in defense of women with experiences in the sex trades, even as it cost me my career and completely destabilized my life. I am not at all sorry for saying a simple truth: “people—not just prostitutes—have sex for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, for some of us, one reason is money.” The reporters eventually left me alone, and I built a new life as a freelance writer and writing instructor. Then the NY Post returned a year later to mock me with a follow up, and I survived that, too. I met a man that could see past the caricature the headlines had made me out to be; we got married and have two amazing kids. Two decades later, I have a new book out.

Call it “poetic justice.” Say I’m a survivor. At the same time, surviving leaves an indelible mark. Trauma, we know, warps your brain. You trust no one, or else you trust everyone. There’s a high risk of re-victimization. No matter how much I’ve worked at healing, I may always, on some level, be surviving. We praise Daniels for her performance on the stand, but survivors of sexual violence are not always or even typically so perfectly composed—nor should we have to be.

On the Daily Mail’s podcast series Everything I Know About Me, Daniels described the reality of her so-called vindication. She said she suffered a miscarriage after the indictment and that the verdict “physically destroyed [her].” Her family was compelled to relocate after the NY Post leaked her home address. Before this, she says, her mailbox was blown up. Her horses have been shot twice. The death threats, she says, are “darker” than ever.

Daniels says, “I will never be normal. I will never be happy. It will never be over.”

We owe her, and ourselves, a better outcome, and so we must continue to fight for a world where the denigration of women is no longer normalized. A world that, instead, treats women like Daniels and me—and all women, really—with dignity and respect.

“Trump supporters are way better than Stormy Daniels supporters, because they put their money where their mouth is—and they do what they say they’re going to do,” Daniels says. “If people were as ravenous and committed and dedicated to spreading good, the world would be a much different place.”