In an activated cultural moment, where stories of harm are resurfacing and shame feels both deeply personal and profoundly systemic, I explore the question of consent in storytelling and what it means to write from the body. Drawing on reflections from a writing group with Sophie Strand and Noor Tagouri, as well as conversations from Becoming the People with Tarana Burke, I examine how sexual violence is not just an individual wound but something shaped by the systems we live inside.

Through the work of Alexander Chee, David Bedrick, and Riane Eisler, this piece traces the movement from private shame to structural domination, asking what kind of world produces this silence and what it would mean to tell new stories rooted in repair rather than harm. If shame has been inherited, perhaps so can partnership. If systems were made by people, they can be unmade by people.

Another story is possible.

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