On Speaking Terms
By: Sarah Scullin
Tags: Writing, Academia, Byedolon, Reflections, Classics

In March of 2016 I threw my career away with both hands.

It’s not like it was much of a career at that point. I was rounding on a year of unemployment after quitting my teaching job for all the regular fucked-up reasons people quit academic jobs. I was also eight-months pregnant with my second child, so my academic days felt numbered in more ways than one. I didn’t have much to lose. But still, when I, together with the rest of the field, was shaken upon hearing that a prominent classicist had been arrested on charges of possessing child pornography, my first instinct was to keep quiet about it.

There’s already an entire social apparatus designed to protect men in these situations (“but what about his career?”), so that programming, combined with the pressure of academic precarity and the force of my myriad innate social anxieties were all screaming at me to shut up. Even so, I sent Donna a pitch, telling her “I can’t promise the piece won’t be a mess.” A week later, that piece went live. Five and a half months later I joined Eidolon as Managing Editor.

Looking back on this sequence of events, you could say that “Making A Monster” directly led to me getting a job at the journal (eww eww eww and also barf), but that’s not what it felt like at the time. During the week I was drafting the piece, I agonized over my decision to write it and talked things out ad nauseum with my family. I negotiated with my feelings constantly—I almost asked to publish anonymously and even toyed with pulling my pitch. I finally found peace when I decided that I was leaving academia for good and this article would be my mic drop.

It shouldn’t have to feel this way. How many other people have things worth saying but they don’t because they feel (and probably rightly feel) that it will damage their chances of getting one of the few dwindling jobs in higher education? Sure enough, many of the reactions to my article bore out my worst fears, saying I was damaging the field by talking about the scandal in a public setting, that I wasn’t showing enough care for the Parker family’s feelings, that it was too soon to talk about this and I should have taken months to ruminate before publishing.

Then I realized: if this is the pushback directed against gentle and deliberately equivocal writing about child pornography, then maybe we aren’t supposed to talk at all. Or maybe we should talk more, and louder.

After four plus years of editing articles at Eidolon, I’ve had the privilege of watching people speak up over and over again. Many of them have more to lose than I do, and some have lost out for speaking up. Sometimes our writers have needed to publish anonymously. Other times writers have pulled their pitches like I almost did. In those cases I would tell them, truthfully, that I understand completely.

Eidolon is ending but I will continue to cheer from the sidelines when those of you who aren’t supposed to talk lift your voices. To those of you who have something to say but feel you can’t: this is not a call for you to speak up—those risks are real and my survivor bias has reached its expiration date. I mourn your untold stories and I thank you for reading.

To those of you who wrote for Eidolon: it’s been an honor to midwife your writing. Whether you were excavating a painful past, geeking out over pop culture, taking risks or being rebelliously silly, you have enriched and fulfilled my life and helped my little academic heart heal. Thank you.

To those of you who always get a seat at the table: this is also not a call for you to speak up more—Make a hole. Don’t rush to defend those in power. Thanks for listening.

Sarah Scullin is a writer, editor, sometimes professor and full time homeschooler. Find out more at www.sarahscullin.com.