The scandal of Bill Cosby’s alleged drugging and raping of dozens of women continues to unfold. The New York magazine cover depicting 35 women — all accusing Cosby of sexually assaulting them — also includes one quietly eloquent image: An empty chair. That icon has provoked a conversation on social media, where writer and radio host Elon James White is spreading the word about the widespread nature of sexual violence by tweeting the messages he receives from abused women. (Find the posts on Twitter under #TheEmptyChair.)

We spoke to White about the power of the image, the horrors of rape, and the best way to get troubling news out. This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

That entire New York magazine cover is powerful, but the empty chair has been the most resonant image for a lot of people. Why do you think that resonated so hard?

We’re dealing with the fact that so many women don’t come forward. Even in the situation with Cosby — that cover had 35 of the 46 women who placed accusations. So that chair represented almost a dozen women — not to mention the number of women who have not come forward. And then the various reasons people who don’t report their assault, because we’re a society that blames the victim, that asks them why they got raped instead of trying to figure out who raped them. . . .


Have you been surprised by anything, learned anything, from getting all these messages, putting them online, seeing people’s responses…?

I felt like I understood the situation: I understood how underreported rape was, I understood how many women had these experiences. But reading this many experiences…. over a 24-hour period. It would be hard to be the same person after reading that many rape accounts.

I didn’t think this many people would send them, and I didn’t realize that people would trust me to create some sort of safe space like that. It’s a lot. And there are still more to go. It started out on Twitter, now I’m getting messages on email and Facebook people are asking me to share.

This is a crisis across America that America has refused to deal with. It’s a crisis across the world. But here, we’re allowing a portion of our society to be assaulted and then just leaving them to deal with it.