Sharing Someone Else’s Story // Robin Zabiegalski

This article is part of our guest curated month examining the theme "Writing about the Living," which poses the question: How can writers protect their own privacy and the privacy of others?

I’ve been writing professionally for digital media for over two and a half years, and the majority of that has been personal essays. So, the internet knows a lot about me and my life. Consequently, the internet also knows a lot about other people in my life. Early on in my writing career, I learned that telling my own story often involves telling other people’s stories. Though I’ve managed to write a few pieces that are based solely on my experience—like the pieces I’ve written about my struggles with addiction and an eating disorder—more often, the stories I want to share are about the ways my experiences intersect with the experiences of others. So, I’ve had to suss out the ethics of writing about other real people and real things that have happened in their lives. I witnessed the potential dangers of telling other people’s stories during my very first digital media assignment. I was putting together a piece for the once-popular millennial women’s site xoJane, which interestingly enough, went under about a year later in a storm of controversy about some questionable personal essays they’d chosen to publish. In order to familiarize myself with the site’s voice, I browsed through their personal essays section. One of the essays I read was written by a woman whose marriage was falling apart. I was shocked by the level of salacious detail, including very personal information about her husband. As I finished the piece, I noticed that the comments section was particularly active. The gossip in me couldn’t help but take a peek. The top comments on the piece were from a user claiming to be the author’s husband, and he was livid. His wife hadn’t told him that she was writing a piece about him that she was publishing for the world to see. He was embarrassed and felt betrayed that his wife hadn’t consulted him. I assumed the comments couldn’t get any more awkward, but I was wrong. The author responded to his comments saying that she had every right to write about and publish her own experiences, regardless of what he thought. By the time I’d closed the tab, I was sick to my stomach and my chest was tight. Not because I was judging this woman or her husband, but because I knew that as a writer, I could easily end up in the same uncomfortable situation. I knew then that if I wanted to make a career out of writing about my life, I needed to come up with a respectful and ethical way to write about other people. It was clear to me that when I chose to write about my own life, I was making the informed decision to have that part of my life exposed to the public. It made sense to me that the people I would write about should be able to make the same informed decision and that I had no right to make that decision for them. The only way I could think of to accomplish this was to obtain informed consent every time I wanted to write about my experiences with someone else. So, I had to figure out what it meant to obtain informed consent and how it impacted my editorial process. The first step was obvious to me—whenever I wanted to pitch a story that involved someone else’s experience I’d need to ask them for permission before I sent the pitch. I didn’t want to end up in the awkward position of having an approved pitch which I’d then have to withdraw if the person involved said they weren’t comfortable with me writing about them. I was nervous about how much power this gave others over my writing career. I knew I was giving people permission to veto my work, to prevent me from getting bylines, but I decided that giving them this power was better than having people feel that I’d inappropriately shared their stories. Getting permission upfront was essential, but was it sufficient to constitute informed consent? I decided that it wasn’t. If I was really serious about obtaining people’s consent to tell their stories, then I thought they should also have the right to see what I’d written before it was published. Again, the fear of giving people so much power over my work arose, but the fear was soothed by the knowledge that I was approaching my work in a way I felt was respectful and ethical. I started implementing this process with a person I assumed would be accommodating—my husband. I wanted to write a piece about how we dealt with jealousy early on in our relationship, so I asked his permission before I submitted the pitch. He said it was fine. I offered to let him read the draft before I sent it to my editor and he declined, saying that he trusted me to tell the story honestly and respectfully. I wrote the piece, got it approved, and it was published within the same week. I was pleased with how well my process had played out in practice, but I soon realized that testing my informed consent process with my husband wasn’t really a fair test; I was sure he was going to say yes. My process got its first real test a week or so later when I wanted to pitch a piece about staying friends with my exes which, according my informed consent process, would require getting permission from all of my exes, including my ex-husband, and giving them veto power over the draft. As the pitch implies, I was still friends with all these people, but that didn’t guarantee that they’d be comfortable with me writing about their experiences from my point of view and publishing that on the Internet. With trepidation, I started reaching out to each of the exes whose stories would be involved in the piece. I let each of them know that I wouldn’t pitch the piece without their approval, that each of them would be provided a draft in advance of publication, and that I would make any changes they felt necessary. To my surprise and delight, all of them agreed without much hesitation. The pitch got approved, I wrote a draft, and sent it out to each of them. I waited anxiously to hear from each of them, with the full knowledge that I was writing on a deadline and feedback from any of them could result in major rewrites or torpedo the piece altogether. The feedback that I did end up getting was encouraging and affirming—each of them thought I had represented them and our relationships in an accurate and respectful way. With each of their blessings, the piece was published soon after. Since then, I have gone through this informed consent process with almost every piece that I’ve written that involved someone else’s story. Obtaining informed consent from the people I’m writing about gives me the assurance that I am working in a way that centers and honours the experiences of others the same way that I center and honour my own experiences. And it allows me to feel that I am conducting myself in accordance with my values, which is a central focus of my life. Of course, every rule has exceptions. When the #metoo movement erupted in 2017, I felt it was important to share my experience. I knew that sharing my #metoo story would involve telling the story of my abuser as well as my own, and that I couldn’t obtain informed consent from my abuser. I struggled with the question of how essential it was to speak this story, and how I could do so while still adhering to my values. I reached out to the editor at the publication I was writing for at the time, The Tempest, and asked her advice. She agreed that it was important for me to share my experience, for my own healing and to help others who’d been through the same thing, but she also agreed that I couldn’t do it in a way that adhered my informed consent process. After a few discussions with her about the piece, she suggested that I publish it anonymously. If my name wasn’t on the piece then it couldn’t be traced back to me or my abuser, which eliminated the need to get informed consent—my abuser would never know I’d written about them. I’ll admit, there was a petty part of me that didn’t want to give up the byline. It was my story and I wanted people to know that it was my story. But in the end, I knew that publishing anonymously was the only responsible, respectful, and safe way to put this story out there, which was more important than my byline. While it may seem like I made the choice to protect my abuser’s identity by publishing anonymously, I was actually making the choice to protect both myself and my values. In order to maintain my integrity, which was predicated on not publishing stories about others without their consent, I needed to publish the piece in such a way that no one reading it would be able to identify my abuser, which meant publishing anonymously. This also ensured that no one would be able to identify me, which kept me safe from retaliation. I’ve only published a couple of pieces this way. I’ve only done so in cases where telling my story could cause harm to myself or others were it to be traced back to me. There are very few situations where writing those stories is even warranted, but I have run into some, and publishing anonymously provides me the safety and peace of mind I need. However, for the vast majority of my writing, I don’t write anything that I wouldn’t want to or couldn’t put my name on, and I don’t publish anything that the people I’m writing about wouldn’t want traced back to them. Writing about the experiences I’ve shared with other people and sharing those stories with them via my informed consent process has enriched my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It has allowed us to process these experiences together in brand new way. I’ve become closer to each person I’ve written about by asking them to read about our experiences from my point of view. This process has also given me a level of clarity about my experiences that wouldn’t be possible if I hadn’t gotten feedback. Sometimes I found out that my perspective wasn’t accurate and that’s some of the most valuable information I’ve ever received. None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t taken the time to consider what it meant to share my story when it was also someone else’s story, and hadn’t come up with a process for doing so that aligned with my values and ethics. I’m a better writer and a better person for implementing an informed consent process, and I encourage other writers sharing their personal stories to consider doing the same, as long as obtaining such consent is possible and safe. 

Robin Zabiegalski's articles for digital media have been published on xoJane, The Tempest, The Talko, and Kinkly. Her satire piece "Recipe for Fermenting a Feminist" was published in the anthology Fermenting Feminism. Her story "The Center" was picked as a finalist in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Voices Contest and was anthologized. Zabiegalski started as an Editorial Fellow for The Tempest, and when her fellowship was complete she was asked to stay on as a Senior Editor for the Love section. She writes and edits from Vermont.