"None of this was what I thought was going to happen."

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

After Harper's scheduled for its March edition an article by anti-feminist Katie Roiphe, in which she was preparing to out the anonymous creator of the Shitty Media Men list, an outpouring of righteous contempt for Harper's exploded on Twitter — and then the creator decided to steal their despicable thunder, by outing herself.

Moira Donegan at the Cut: I Started the Media Men List; My name is Moira Donegan.

This is what shocked me about the spreadsheet: the realization of how badly it was needed, how much more common the experience of sexual harassment or assault is than the opportunity to speak about it.

...I was incredibly naïve when I made the spreadsheet. I was naïve because I did not understand the forces that would make the document go viral. I was naïve because I thought that the document would not be made public, and when it became clear that it would be, I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did.

In some ways, though, I think the flaws in the spreadsheet were also a result of my own cynicism. At the time when I made it, I had become so accustomed to hearing about open secrets, to men whose bad behavior was universally known and perpetually immune from consequence, that it seemed like no one in power cared about the women who were most vulnerable to it. Sexual harassment and assault, even when it was violent, had been tolerated for so long that it seemed like much of the world found it acceptable. I thought that women could create a document with the aim of helping one another in part because I assumed that people with authority didn’t care about what we had to say there. In this sense, at least, I am glad I was wrong.

It is a powerful piece, and I implore you to go read the entire thing.

Donegan reveals in the piece that one of the consequences of creating the list and having it explode in ways she did not anticipate was losing her job.

I don't know what her future will be, although I fervently hope that it will be full of opportunities. Were I an editor at a major publication, she would be precisely the sort of person I'd want to hire: Fierce, brave, and a terrific writer.