Consent
A Memoir of Unwanted Attention
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
In this "compelling and disturbing" true story, a young woman's toxic mentor develops a dark, stalking obsession that disrupts her career -- and her peace of mind. (Rebecca Traister,New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad)
Donna Freitas has lived two lives. In one life, she is a well-published author and respected scholar who has traveled around the country speaking about Title IX, consent, religion, and sex on college campuses. In the other, she is a victim, a woman who suffered and suffers still because she was stalked by her graduate professor for more than two years.
As a doctoral candidate, Freitas loved asking big questions, challenging established theories and sinking her teeth into sacred texts. She felt at home in the library, and safe in the book-lined offices of scholars whom she admired. But during her first year, one particular scholar became obsessed with Freitas' academic enthusiasm. He filled her student mailbox with letters and articles. He lurked on the sidewalk outside her apartment. He called daily and left nagging voicemails. He befriended her mother, and made himself comfortable in her family's home. He wouldn't go away. While his attraction was not overtly sexual, it was undeniably inappropriate, and most importantly--unwanted.
In Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention, Donna Freitas delivers a forensic examination of the years she spent stalked by her professor, and uses her nightmarish experience to examine the ways in which we stigmatize, debate, and attempt to understand consent today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scholar Freitas (Consent on Campus: A Manifesto) delivers a probing and painful account of being stalked by her graduate school mentor and the professional and emotional consequences it has had in the intervening 20 years. Because her mentor was a priest, an older professor, and an important figure in her field, Freitas couldn't avoid Father L.'s "sustained unwanted attention," even when he called daily, sent stacks of mail to her home and work, and creepily ingratiated himself with her ill mother. She lays bare in vivid scenes and complex reflections the overriding shame, confusion, and fear she felt as a productive professional relationship turned personal, then to persecution. Freitas's narrative illustrates how self-doubt, denial, and self-blame can silence victims she suffered for over a year before finally asking for help at her university (only to be paid off as a "nuisance" when she filed a formal complaint) and affect them long-term (she continues to blame herself even in these pages, writing, "I did want the attention from my professor that I got in the beginning.... That was my crime.... I will blame myself forever for these initial, intimate offerings that I brought to him"). Freitas's delicate study of her torment and its devastating effects, which raises thorny, meaningful questions about how to define consent, is an important testament for the #MeToo era.
