courtneymilan

The thing that happened with Wickham has already been named in the narrative. Lizzie called it “manipulation” and a variety of other things. By giving a name to what happened to Lydia, and by giving it a name that is not abuse, but something lesser—being charmed by a charming man, being manipulated, acting as if this is just about the betrayal of selling the sex tape—this minimizes what happened.

There are times when I think it’s okay to step back from a narrative and not give a name for what’s happening. Hell, I write books in eras where the modern vocabulary we use to describe this kind of thing literally doesn’t exist, so I’m sympathetic to the claim that you don’t have to name everything. But you damn well don’t give it a label that minimizes the harm.

We’re dealing with a problem that largely goes unrecognized—where people who hear about these things happening often shrug it off or say, “So what? He didn’t hit you.”