The Censors Within: Sarah Hepola on What She Was Afraid To Write About—Until Now

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2022

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sarah Hepola has been publishing personal essays and articles for decades and is the author of the 2015 bestseller Blackout, a memoir about her years of heavy drinking that focusses on the phenomenon of blackout. As Sarah explains it, blackout is a state of impaired memory that is distinct from being passed out and is often overlooked in conversations about intoxication and sexual consent. Meghan invited Sarah onto the podcast initially not to talk about blackouts but about Sarah's recent essay in The Atlantic "The Things I'm Afraid To Write About.": It's about censorship, specifically the kind we impose on ourselves in a culture where voicing controversial opinions can bring on devastating professional and personal consequences. This topic comes up a lot these days, but Sarah comes to it out of a particular interest: how confusion over the difference between being in a blackout and being unconscious has factored into several high profile sexual assault cases.

One case Sarah has looked into is that of Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who was convicted in 2016 of sexual assault after he was discovered outside a fraternity house in an encounter with woman who appeared to be unconscious. The story continues to elicit strong emotions in the public, but Sarah points out that the media narrative, which includes many vivid and troubling details, diverges significantly from the facts in court documents. Sarah's mention of the Turner case in her Atlantic essay set off a firestorm of anger and invective, thereby illustrating exactly why she'd been so reluctant to speak her mind over the last several years. In this conversation, Sarah talks with Meghan about self-censorship and what's happened in the media landscape to cause it. But they talk just as much about the Brock Turner case and how the media got so much of the story so wrong and never bothered to correct it. This may be the most "unspeakable" Unspeakable to date.

Bio:

Sarah Hepola is the author of the bestselling memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, and the host/creator of America's Girls, a Texas Monthly podcast about the lost history and cultural impact of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. She is currently working on a memoir for The Dial Press/Random House about her ambivalent singlehood. She lives in Dallas.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The victim's impact statement is just beautifully written, elegantly written.
0:09.7	I don't think that it avoids the fact that she had a blackout.
0:14.1	She didn't remember things, and she knew that.
0:18.6	A lot of the more affecting details are towards the end,
0:21.6	where she talks about what it was like to hear him describe it.
0:25.6	Because I think she heard either in trial or through transcripts or through news stories.
0:32.6	See, that was always very painful to me.
0:34.6	I thought she was learning about what happened through the media.
0:38.7	It's very upsetting.
0:40.3	She learned several details about this by reading stories.
0:49.4	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
0:51.8	I'm your host, Megan Down.
0:54.0	My guest is writer Sarah Hepila. Sarah has been publishing personal essays and articles for decades. She's been an editor at Salon, and she's the author of the 2015 bestseller Blackout, The Things I Drink to Forget. That's a memoir about her years of heavy drinking, focusing on the
1:12.3	phenomenon of blackout, a state of impaired memory that, as she explains, is distinct from
1:17.9	passing out and is often overlooked in conversations about things people do when they're drunk.
1:23.9	I invited her on the show initially, not to talk about that, but about a recent essay she published in the Atlantic called The Things I'm Afraid to Write About.
1:33.8	That piece is about censorship, specifically the kind we impose on ourselves in a culture where voicing controversial opinions can result in career-destroying punishments handed down through social media
1:45.8	and or the loss of friendships or collegial relationships. Now, a lot of people have been talking
1:52.6	about this kind of thing lately, myself, very much included, but Sarah comes to the subject out of a very
1:58.9	particular interest, and that is the role that
2:02.1	alcohol plays in sexual consent and how confusion over the difference between being in a blackout
2:08.5	and being unconscious has factored into several high-profile sexual assault cases, a few of which
	...

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