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Stories change the world.
As an increasing variety of stories are told and – more importantly – heard, we move our society forward and cast off our entitlement, ignorance and prejudice.
It is how we build empathy, how we walk in the shoes of others.
This week there are two women whose stories – a century apart – have changed the world.
Suffragist Millicent Fawcett, the British politician and activist credited with getting some women in Britain the vote in 1918, has had her statue erected in London’s Parliament Square.
She’s the first woman among 11 men (among them our own Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi).
It has been a century since she succeeded in her campaign for the vote for women – initially given only to British women over 30 who owned property.
She campaigned for many other social justice issues, such as ending child abuse by raising the age of consent, criminalising incest and ending the practice of excluding women from courtrooms where sexual offences were under consideration.
Coincidentally, in a court of law on Thursday where a sexual offence case was heard, Bill Cosby was finally convicted as the sexual predator many have known him to be for so long.
One of his more than 50 victims, Andrea Constand, told her story. It was heard and there were consequences.
Cosby’s scalp is significant because it is the first high profile one in the unstoppable #MeToo and #TimesUp movement.
That Cosby couldn’t – with all his apologists, influence and cash – stop it means that we can expect many more predators globally to be criminally charged for their sexual crimes.
All because those who have for so long dominated the narrative could no longer keep the voiceless from being heard.
Constand’s example entices more of society’s silenced storytellers to speak up.
Fawcett and Constand will, no doubt, end up in a later edition of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, the second volume of which is currently on my nightstand.
The writers, Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli, say in the new volume’s preface that they started a fire a year ago.
“A fire we could gather around to tell each other new kinds of stories. You joined us ... You came to listen, but you also came to speak.”
Now we are all storytellers and, as Fawcett and Constand’s stories prove – to borrow Rebel Girls’ dedication – “don’t step back, and everyone will move forward”.
