By M. Shelly Conner

As a kid, I loved nothing more than family gatherings. The adults partied the night away in the basement or front rooms of the host family’s home, and we children were sequestered away from their drinking and debauchery, piled up in the host child’s bedroom and left to our own devices. Those nights, filled with the unrestrained joy of being reunited after however many months had elapsed since our last visit, siblings and cousins challenged each other to play the dozens, sneak beer from the adults, and to stay awake far past the time that our preteen brains could function. No one wanted to get caught sleeping. The literal meaning mirrored the figurative, to be caught unaware or with one’s guard down. In my family, the first child to doze would awaken to find their face painted in toothpaste or whipped cream. The adults also seemed to partake in a similar ritual. Old family photos show slumbering aunts with empty liquor bottles planted around them and napping uncles oblivious to the colorful barrettes that had been placed in their afros.

Apart from family, my interactions with my peers presented a gendered form of this “game.” Boys crept up behind girls to yank their braids, swat them on the rear ends, or squeeze their budding breasts before taking off running and yelling, “Caught ya!” The offender later gathered to receive a round of high-fives from the other boys. The girls gathered in a circle to commiserate and share words of advice like, “You gotta watch out.” Even then, instilling that it is a woman’s job to always be on guard and man’s prerogative to play and to make playthings of girls and women.

When I was fourteen, I goofed off enough my first semester of freshman English to be sent to summer school. High school summer school is not the place to get a second go at understanding Shakespearean language or MLA formatting. It’s only about making up for missed days and completing copious amounts of busy work. I spent most of the time creating rhymes as a part of a nascent rap career with a male classmate. We rapped, joked, and passed them as notes while the instructor droned on about the next pages to be completed in our workbooks. When students finished early, we were allowed to read or even nap, as long as we remained relatively quiet. One day as I was dozing with my head down on the desk, I was awakened by a tickling sensation on my chest. My breast, to be exact. My friend/rap mate had been tweaking my nipple as I slept. I shoved his shoulder as he grinned and whispered, “What? Caught you sleepin’!” We never wrote another rap together, and I never fell asleep in class again. I didn’t tell the teacher.  I didn’t tell my brother or the boys on the block who served as honorary big brothers. I handled it in the ways that girls are taught: to not get caught sleeping.

Not only are young boys taught that it is their duty to initiate sexual contact with women, it is also presented that it should occur when women are in their most passive states. This is illustrated in the fairytale notion of a woman’s sexual desire in need of being “awakened” by male contact. We see the beginnings of this in the behavior that is permitted for young boys to repeatedly place their hands on girls without invite and oftentimes as a direct physical violation. To pull their hair. To steal a kiss. To cop a feel. It’s not unusual for the gropes to be followed with claims that the girl wanted it. But these actions have nothing to do with what a woman wants.

I am reminded of a scene in the movie The Fifth Element when Bruce Willis’s character Korben Dallas encounters Milla Jovovich’s Leelo, the Supreme Being. She has been taken to a priest’s home to recuperate after Dallas finds her injured and unconscious. In this scene, Dallas attempts to gently wake Leelo by caressing her face, and when she doesn’t respond, he kisses her.

Dallas’s desire is privileged and he sees nothing wrong with taking the kiss. Leelo’s permission is unnecessary, neither is her consciousness. Perhaps part of the desire is her lack of agency. Dormancy. The unawareness that is attributed to being caught sleeping and unguarded. A woman’s inability to say “no” being scripted as receptivity.

One of the most romanticized illustrations is in the tale of Sleeping Beauty. To place it in a more contemporary retelling: Beauty is slipped a “molly” and falls into a deep sleep. Some dude that she doesn’t know finds her unconscious and makes out with her in an effort to “awaken” or “save” her, which really reminds me of the guy who found his neighbor unconscious and had sex with her to “save her life.” This is what feminists mean when we argue about the rape culture that is being cultivated by all of our institutions: The idea that unless a woman says no, the default answer to unsolicited advances is yes. The linking of male desire to women’s silence and passiveness. The propagation that sexual violations against unconscious women are some form of “play” that can be dismissed as just “catching someone sleeping,” as evidenced by Rick Ross who saw nothing wrong with rapping, “Put Molly in her champagne; she ain’t even know it/ I took her home, and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” Ross’s desire is not predicated on the woman’s permission or participation. In fact, it seems to stem from her inability to do either. Most recently, Cee-Lo Green has also copped to drugging a woman’s drink with Ecstasy. His response via Twitter regarding rape, “If someone is passed out, they’re not even WITH you consciously, so WITH implies consent…Women who have really been raped REMEMBER!!!”

I recently threw a party for my brother’s fortieth birthday at my home. It was great to see friends and family and honorary brothers from the neighborhood. We still play the dozens and reminisce on some the best jokes launched at each other. It’s been almost twenty years since my brother referred to one friend’s Tasmanian Devil medallion with a missing foot as “Kunta Taz.” We still deride those who spill drinks, stumble, or are the first to fall asleep.

My godbrother was in attendance. He can always be counted on to help me when I need any heavy lifting done. Or to pick up or drop off my father. Or just about anything that I could ask of him. My godbrother is a great guy…until he gets drunk. Then my godbrother becomes THAT guy. He says inappropriate things to women (regardless of their relationship status or sexual orientation). I think I’ve spent the past decade apologizing to friends, relatives, and lovers for his behavior. I have begged men to spare him much-deserved ass whippings.

My home is a safe space for all who enter. They will be entertained, fed well, and should they imbibe beyond the legal limit, they will have a safe space to sleep. That was challenged when a female friend of mine needed to sleep and I directed her to lie in my room. I overheard my godbrother suggesting to a male cousin that he lie down with my friend and touch her while she slept. My cousin, a true gentleman even when drunk, was not entertaining it. But to hear such a suggestion in my home was the ultimate violation. Even now, while writing this, I can only transcribe the actual conversation to the best of my recollection. I cannot detach from the experience and write retrospectively:

Godbrother (GB): You should go in there and lay down with her.
Me: What? What are you saying? Dude, you can’t say that. You can’t suggest that.
GB: What? I’m not saying he DO anything. Just touch her hair and if she turns around then…
Me: Stop talking. You can’t just touch somebody in their sleep.
GB: I’m not saying DO anything…but if she turns around then you can touch. ::Pantomimes holding breasts in front of his chest.:: See if she’s interested.
Me: He can’t do that. That’s sexual assault. You can’t suggest he do that.
GB: It’s not doing anything.
Me: It is EXACTLY doing something. It’s sexual assault, and you can’t suggest that. This is the stuff that we talk about contributing to a rape culture.
GB: I’m not a rapist. I’m not saying rape her. I’m just saying…

At that time, I tried calling for my brother because I was really angry and I just wanted him out of my face. But my godbrother was caught in thinking that I had called him a rapist and he found my brother first. By the time I arrived in the kitchen, it was to three angry, drunk, and hurt men admonishing me for making a false accusation. My brother suggested that I apologize for calling my godbrother a rapist. “He’s not a rapist,” I said. “But what he was suggesting sounded pretty goddamned rape-y.”

My cousin and brother wanted me to appease my godbrother and apologize, if only for the interest of preventing him from driving home drunk and distraught. I admit, he really was hurt but I could not see him as some victim after what he had suggested. His ignorance was dangerous to himself and I finally saw how it made him a danger to women. His inability to realize (drunk or otherwise) that failure to obtain permission from a woman to touch her, was sexual assault. His lack of concern that she was not awake. Not to mention his complete disregard for her sexual orientation. My friend is a lesbian. For him, she didn’t need to be attracted to men or even conscious.

We all argued and it was mostly about their insistence that I had called my godbrother a rapist. They made the most compelling arguments about false rape accusations, which I don’t deny exist. And I responded, just as strongly, that that was not what had occurred this night. I had not falsely accused him of suggesting a sexual violation against my friend; he had actually made the suggestion and continued to make it even after I demanded that he cease and desist.

My brother argued that this was not the time to discuss things because my godbrother was drunk. I responded that this was exactly when these conversations need to happen. These types of sexual assault happen when people are drunk. Conversation needs to occur both in drunkenness when the violation threatens to occur and when sober. There is no wrong time for such discussions.

My brother has always been my personal gladiator. In fact, it was only a few years ago when my godbrother, in a drunken effort to illustrate why my girlfriend at the time was more physically desirable than me, placed his hands on my inner thighs and derided my thinness and the gap between my legs in comparison to my girlfriend’s thicker build. All I could think to do at the time was call for my brother who was out on the balcony. And just like when we were kids and I had seen a centipede or anything that frightened me, my gladiator appeared, fuming at the source of my distress.

I reminded my brother that following day as we all sat nursing more anxiety than hangovers (my godbrother had stormed out that night and the fellas blamed me for not apologizing while I blamed them for not taking his keys), that it is not my job to convince him of a violation to my person or my home. I am his sister who he has known all of his life. That experience is my testament. When I told him that I had called for him, something shifted and he dropped his argument.

“You did?” His hazel eyes sparkled in slight disbelief.

“Of course, I did. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I called for you and he thought I was drunk and calling him by your name. But I told him. I’m not calling you him. I’m calling FOR him. For him to come and get you out of my face.”

My brother apologized for not being there for me and we had the conversation again but this time sober. It bears repeating that these conversations need to happen drunk and sober. Yes, emotions run high when fueled by alcohol, but I’d rather have a drunken emotional conversation than have a dear friend wake in my bed to someone groping her. We had the conversation without anger, without accusations, and unfortunately, without my godbrother.

I don’t know what if anything my godbrother took from this latest foray. I don’t know if he’s put together this pattern of behavior. At this point, I no longer care whether he thinks that I called him a rapist or not.  I think about what happens if he makes such a suggestion to someone who IS a rapist about someone who doesn’t have a gladiator.  I hope that he learns his lesson and it is by way of deep reflection and not the deep physical pain that comes from some burly man who does not take kindly to his wife/sister/girlfriend/cousin/friend being caught sleeping by my godbrother.

After Note: In The Fifth Element, Dallas kisses Leelo, and within seconds she has a gun pressed to his temple. She growls something in her native language, while he retreats saying, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that.” Later, when he asks the priest what her words meant, the priest answers, “Never again without my permission.”

M. Shelly Conner received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is an instructor in the English Department at Loyola University Chicago and Executive Director of Quare Square Collective, Inc., a nonprofit collective for Midwest Queer Artists of Color. Shelly’s creative and academic writing explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. She is currently exploring publishing options for her debut novel everyman.

The post Don’t Get Caught Sleeping: Male Desire of Unconscious Women appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Toni Cade Bambara was an important catalyst for the creation of my film NO! The Rape Documentary. In one of my last of many scriptwriting workshops taken or proctored with Toni at Scribe Video Center, the vision for what evolved into NO! The Rape Documentary was fully conceived.  This particular workshop was very special because all of the students were women including Tina Morton, Crystal Morales, Sherri Denise James, and Wanda R. Moore. In Toni’s workshop, I expressed tremendous frustration and difficulty with transforming my thoughts and my feelings in my head about “The Rape Video Project” to images on paper. Sensing that I may come to class empty handed or worse, not come to class at all, she followed up with a big sista “take no prisoners” voice mail message telling me that I better come to class and I better not come empty handed. Her message was my initiation by fire and it was grounded in love. I am forever grateful. That December 1994 evening I conceived and gave birth to my choreopoem A State of Rage (ASoR) in my apartment. ASoR served as the steady twelve-year roadmap from conception to completion in 2006 when NO! had her world premiere at the 2006 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA.

“A State of Rage,” Jacquelin Thompson, Lois Moses, Bridget Jones. Photographer: Wadia L. Gardiner
Courtesy: AfroLez® Productions

Throughout US history Black women have been sexually stereotyped as immoral, insatiable, perverse, the initiators in all sexual contacts – abusive or otherwise. The common assumption in legal proceedings as well as in the larger society has been that Black women cannot be raped or otherwise sexually abused…
—African American Women In Defense of Ourselves²

This¹ is NOT an objective piece.
I said . . . This is NOT an objective piece.
I am in a STATE OF RAGE
I said. I am. I am. I am.
I AM IN A STATE OF RAGE ABOUT THE RAPE AND SEXUAL ABUSE OF WOMEN OF AFRICAN DESCENT IN THE united states of ameri-kkk-a.

I am tired of the silences that have been imposed on us. Shhhhh. Black women and girls.
I am tired of the silences that we, Black women, have imposed on ourselves and on our daughters.

I am angry that when a Black woman says that she has been raped by a Black man that many Black people view it.
The Black woman’s charge
As an act of betrayal against the Black community.
As if the Black woman’s rape ain’t an act of betrayal against the Black community.

I am angry that the very same people . . .
Particularly those designated Blackmaleleaders. Y’know the ones who supported Tawana Brawley and yet charged Desiree Washington with treason against the Black community.

I am angry that the rapist is more important than the woman who is raped.
I am angry that the fate of women who have been raped is judged by the race and class of their rapist.

This is a meditation peace.
A peace that is uncompromising. 

A peace that is Black woman identified.
Black woman identified
Black woman identified
Blackwomanidentified 

A peace that doesn’t hold back for the sake of community.

A peace that vehemently rejects the notion that Black women have to sacrifice our bodies and silence our tongues for the sake of the community.

A peace that will include the diversity of women of African descent, regardless of class, physical ability, sexual orientation, and/or religion.

From the time we were brought over here in SHACKLES

This is a meditation peace

We have been under physical, emotional, and spiritual attack.
OUR ABUSE HAS BEEN IN THE DUNGEONS IN WEST AFRICA, WHERE AFRICANS WERE HELD CAPTIVE AND ENSLAVED.

Through The Middle Passage. Through The Middle Passage. Obatala. Through the Middle Passage. Oshun. Through the Middle Passage. Yemenja. Through the Middle Passage. Oludumare. THROUGH THE MIDDLE PASSAGE. Mohammed. Through the MIDDLE PASSAGE. Isis. THROUGH THE MIDDLE PASSAGE. Isa throughthemiddlepassage Jesus throughthemiddlepassage Mary throughthemiddlepassage Osiris throughthemiddlepassage Elegba throughtheMAMABABADADAmiddlepassage Ya Allah throughthemiddlepassage God throughthemiddlepassage MAMA throughMAMAthemiddleBABApassage DADAthroughthemiddlepassageMAMA throughtheDADAmiddlepassage BABA throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassageMAMA throughthemiddlepassageMAMA throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage DADA throughthemiddlepassageBABA throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage throughthemiddlepassage…Ase.

A healing peace
On the auction blocks

A meditation peace
In the fields

A healing peace
In the homes we cooked for and cleaned in

A meditation peace
In the factories we worked

A healing peace
In the homes we lived

A meditation peace
In the schools we founded and attended

A healing peace
In the churches, mosques, and temples where we worshiped

A meditation peace
In the movements we led 

Given this history. Given Black women’s her story. Given all of our his/her story, will someone please tell me what the HELL is rape?

Well…

Is it enough for a woman to say NO!
Ask the question? 

Or does she have to prove that she fought
Almost to her death 

To protect her virtue, her womanhood…
As defined by a heterosexual patriarchal point of view. 

Does a woman’s behavior, attire and/or poor judgment justify her rape…her sexual assault, Physical or verbal?
No 

Did you hear me?
Ask it again sistah; we don’t think they heard you. 

I said, does a woman’s behavior, attire, and/or poor judgment, ever, ever, EVER justify her rape, her sexual assault, physical and/or verbal.

HELL NO!

This is a meditation peace.
This is a healing peace
A meditation peace
A healing peace
Meditation peace
Healing peace. 

Rage
Meditation
Action
Healing
Ase.

---

[1] Reprinted from Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence (Eds. Maria Ochoa and Barbara K. Ige, The Seal Press ©2007) by permission of the author, ©1994 Aishah Shahidah Simmons
[2] “African American Women In Defense of Ourselves,” New York Times, November 17, 1991, 47.

---

Aishah Shahidah Simmons
Photograph: ©Julie Yarbrough

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is a Black feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, cultural worker, and international lecturer. An incest and rape survivor, she is the Creator of the Ford Foundation-funded internationally acclaimed and award-winning feature length film NO! The Rape Documentary.  Presently, she is an adjunct professor in the Women’s and LGBT Studies Program at Temple University. Previously, she was an O’Brien Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Scripps College and a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Committed to archiving, documenting, and telling Black women’s herstories and contemporary realities, Aishah was the Curator and Lead Editor of  The Feminist Wire‘s (TFW), “Global Forum on Audre Lorde.” She is also the Co-Curator and Co-Editor, with Heidi Renee Lewis, of TFW’s “Toni Cade Bambara 75th Birthday Anniversary Forum.”  Aishah is the author of several essays  including the Foreword to the recently released Dear Sister: Letters to Survivors of Sexual Violence. She has screened her work, guest lectured, and facilitated workshops and dialogues about ending all forms of sexual violence; queer identity from an AfroLez®femcentric perspective; the grassroots process of making social change documentaries; and non-Christocentric spirituality at colleges and universities, high schools, conferences, international film festivals, rape crisis centers, battered women shelters, community centers, juvenile correctional facilities, and government sponsored events across the United States and Canada, throughout Italy, in South Africa, France, England, Croatia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Mexico, Kenya, Malaysia, and India. You can follow Aishah on twitter at @AfroLez and connect via her public Facebook page. For more information, please visit: http://NOtheRapeDocumentary.org

The post A State of Rage (for Toni Cade Bambara) appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

TFW’s Brooke Elise Axtell will perform with Katy Perry at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday, February 8, 2015 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Axtell is an award-winning singer, songwriter, poet and performing artist from Austin, Texas. She is the Founder of SHE: Survivor Healing + Empowerment, a healing community for survivors of rape, abuse and sex-trafficking. Brooke is also a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the U.S. and recently joined The Truth Panel for The Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives to speak out on the issue of human trafficking. Her work as a writer and activist has been featured in many media outlets, including Forbes, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today, The Washington Times and Fox News. Through her creative communications company, Persephone Media, she helps authors, thought-leaders and entrepreneurs transform their ideas into powerful writing.

At the Grammy Awards ceremony, Axtell will perform a written-word piece alongside Perry as the latter performs her ballad “By the Grace of God.” In an interview with People magazine, Axtell commented, “It’s an honor to collaborate with Katy in this way. She has been very devoted to various aspects of female empowerment. It’s going to bring a lot of encouragement and freedom to those who hear my story and know that they are not alone in this.”

The Grammy Award ceremony, hosted by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, has recognized outstanding achievement in the music industry since May 1959. The show, hosted by rapper LL Cool J, will be broadcast live by CBS at 5 pm PST, and will also feature performances by Beyoncé, Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, Mary J. Blige, Usher, Jessie J, AC/DC, Rihanna, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine, and other artists.

The post TFW’s Brooke Elise Axtell to Perform with Katy Perry at Grammys appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Last week in class, we watched Queen, a Bollywood film about a middle-class Indian woman who, after she is jilted by her fiancé, decides to spend her “honeymoon” alone. She chooses Paris and Amsterdam because she always wanted to go there. During our discussion of female empowerment as a persistent theme in contemporary Bollywood films, including Queen, a female student asked, “But why does she need to leave India to find herself, if that is at all her intention?” “Good question,” I said. “And the answer is already implied in the question. She needs to leave India because India is the site of her disempowerment, where she cannot even do the work of imagination—imagining a different, a happier, healthier, free self.”

The female student and others nodded in the affirmative as if they completely grasped what I meant. For a moment I was taken aback by their instantaneous perspicacity. And then I understood. They all knew of the infamous rape story from 2012. They knew of India’s rape culture. They knew of India’s misogyny par excellence. So setting a movie about a middle-class woman’s empowerment elsewhere is as unsurprising as it is believable. In fact, a foreign setting for such a project of female empowerment is a logical imperative.

I would argue, however, that a foreign setting in this case is less a testament to the civilizational evolution of the West and more a mode for recuperating the essential idea of an ethical nation (a battered idea by now). And as long as “woman” and “nation” are inextricable, her empowerment remains a misnomer, irrespective of the setting of such projects.

This is exactly the problem with the documentary Daughter of India by Leslee Udwin (2015). The documentary “examines” a horrific event that shook a nation—the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year old medical student in Delhi in December 2012. The documentary includes interviews with the two accused and their lawyers who repeatedly blame the victim for the rape-murder. Their claim that the “victim shouldn’t have resisted instead allowing the rape to happen” has generated a firestorm in the media, national and international. While Udwin successfully highlights the problem of culture, the problem of nation emerges only in the aftermath of the documentary’s release on YouTube and BBC, in terms of who speaks for the nation and its daughters.

But the burning question is: how is the rape victim “India’s daughter?” How does the Indian nation have any claim on girls and women raped and brutalized by men in the half century of its independence from colonial rule? To call a victim of rape “daughter,” rather than a woman-citizen of a republic whose fundamental human rights are violated, is to re-inscribe the nation that imagined heteropatriarchal community into the discourse of law and citizenship of a modern state.

You own a daughter, not citizens. Daughters have obligations, but citizens have rights along with obligations. Daughters labor for free, but citizens are paid for work. Daughters can be bought, sold, raped, murdered by and within their birth families or those they are forced to adopt via marriage, with uncertain consequences for the perpetrators. Citizens have recourse to law and courts for any injury, small or big, to self. Perpetrators are subject to punitive justice.

A daughter belongs to a family, a community, a nation, but a citizen is a member of state with legal rights and protections. Someone always speaks on behalf of the daughter. A citizen speaks for herself in her own voice. Someone always claims to protect the daughter from the strange and the stranger. A citizen protects herself from the familiar and the strange, for both are equally and potentially a threat. A daughter finds herself talked to, over, and for. A citizen talks for herself, bravely and surely. A daughter is forever subjected to guilt for potential transgressions and violations of self. A citizen walks her guilt to the court, dragging her transgressors and violators in her wake.

The point of such a comparative litany is to demonstrate the problem of categories and discourse, especially relating to the female condition. In the aftermath of “shock” over the rapist/murderer blaming the victim for the brutalization in the documentary (what did we expect the accused to say?), the media discourse skirted between who has the right to speak and who has the right to represent. Should the documentary have been made by an Indian rather than a British filmmaker? Should she have interviewed the accused and his lawyers? Couldn’t she have interviewed rapists in the West, of which there is no shortage as per the statistics available? Why did she need to travel all the way to India for this project?

A quick answer to all the questions above is: Leslee Udwin could only make this documentary in India because it is about an Indian case (the rape of Nirbhaya), not a western one. And any story has both good and bad—a one-dimensional story often fails to generate attention that it is meant to. In this case, getting the accused to speak is not a mode for his decriminalization—to the contrary, in fact. The accused in speaking reaffirms his criminal status while implicating heteropatriarchy in the process as the source of his bravado.

Our “shock” upon hearing what we already know renders the documentary successful in adhering to the multi-dimensionality of a heartrending story, though we want to deny it. We want to reject the documentary as being partial to the accused, an ultimate insult to the memory of the brave victim. Distress and shock could be synonymous cousins. But the subject of the documentary is “rape,” so it is difficult to escape either of these two emotions while watching it. Most importantly, the documentary does not attempt to baptize the accused. In fact, it defrocks the high priests of heteropatriarchy—the lawyers, judges, and courts of law. It allows us to juxtapose, as if on cue, the accused accusing the victim of her victimization and the legal defense sounding off on recalcitrant women who deserve no less a fate for violating heteropatriarchal imperatives. (Never leave home alone, never with a non-family member, and never at night). What is this if not betrayal, asks the documentary.

I ask: what is this if not heteropatriarchy, represented by the accused, the lawyer, and the judge, pushing back with vengeance against a woman-citizen for daring to fight back, literally and figuratively? What is this if not heteropatriarchy using nation/culture to undermine law/citizenship? So when the discourse of an “authentic insider” or “nativity” is deployed in rejecting the documentary, the discourse of nation/culture is deployed simultaneously and appears to even rest on the same continuum as heteropatriarchy. Simply put, the question of who speaks for the victim hovers dangerously close to who speaks for the nation. And it is exactly this conflation of victim and nation (or victim’s nation?) that ought to engender outrage – not the accused reaffirming his heteropatriarchal privilege and hence his guilt in the documentary interview.

Nirbhaya was her parents’ daughter, not the nation’s. They built her into the person she became, not the nation. They mourn for her every day, not the nation. Nation makes itself present only when there is an outsider present (in this case, the British filmmaker), who shames the nation by focusing on that which the nation is already ashamed of but would not confess to. Nation has no shame in promoting its imagined ethical center in the face of entrenched cultural practices of shaming women. It is an insidious emotion that rests comfortably in the individual and collective psyche of a community, debilitating the humanity of both at the same time.

Heteropatriarchy ensures the inhumanity of nation, whether this is deployed against a documentary about a “daughter” destroyed (Daughter of India) or a film about a “daughter” outsourced (to “safer” places to safely find herself, as in Queen). Heteropatriarchy renders both “daughters” non-woman and non-human. Both daughters ultimately are sacrificed before a nation, albeit in different ways. Nation will not allow either woman/citizen to be free—emotionally, physically, legally, or sexually.

I am furious with the nation—why isn’t everyone else? I am sick of the nation—its intrusions, its false promises, its violence towards women for the last half century and more. I want to see it dismantled in discourse and in projects of re-representation. Only then will heteropatriarchy start shaking in its boots; and shake it we must. My survival as a woman/citizen depends on it. And I am not India’s daughter. Never will be, never want to be.

The post No One’s Daughter appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Nicolette Natale                                     

This is how her story starts: “This is what I remember. My lips were cut. I bit down on them when he grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth. He said these words: ‘I’ll kill you if you scream.’ I remained motionless. ‘Do you understand? If you scream you’re dead.’ I nodded my head. My arms were pinned to my sides by his right arm wrapped around me and my mouth covered with his left. He released his hand from my mouth. I screamed. Quickly. Abruptly. The struggle began.”

My story doesn’t begin in a tunnel with a stranger. It doesn’t begin one night when I’m walking home late from a friend’s house. It begins in first grade in my grandparents living room, downstairs watching cartoons with my cousin. He was thirteen. I was six.

“Unbutton your pants,” he said.

In hindsight, I realize now my mom was trying to teach me the roots of rape culture at a young age:

“If someone slows down their car and asks you about a missing dog, don’t talk to them.”

“If a stranger tries to walk you off the bus and says he knows your family, don’t go anywhere with him.”

“If you’re in a dangerous situation and someone tells you not to scream because they’ll kill your family, scream anyway.”

I didn’t know what this meant at the time. I know now.

Skeptical and slightly suspicious, I unbuttoned my jeans. I don’t remember how, but I ended up with underneath him on the couch. He rubbed the butterflies on my underwear over and over and over again. I clearly remember him looking into my eyes and asking me, “Does this feel okay?” I wasn’t even sure what was going on. I just remember being so afraid, I nodded my head “yes,” not knowing what would happen if I said “no,” and too scared to try and find out. I then averted eye contact, examining the white ceiling as I pretended not to exist.

I only have fragments of that day. I remember at one point I ran away from him, looking at him from the down the stairs, and him yelling, “Come back here!” I remember I went upstairs anyway, knowing I didn’t like what had just happened, and I didn’t want it to happen again.

If anything, my life and Alice Sebold’s Lucky: A Memoir have taught me that it only really takes one day to ruin you. I think it’s so awful to use that word, but emotionally when something so traumatizing happens it affects your interactions and behaviors in the future. That’s how sexual abuse can feel: as if it ruined you.

In a way I can never repay her—Alice Sebold saved me. I like to think I lived vicariously through her after her rape took place.

If anyone has ever been sexually abused, I think they know what it means when I say it takes so much away from you. Like Sebold, my first sexual experience was one I had unwillingly. I had no choice, and at that time, no knowledge about what was going on. When you’re a child, you’re taught to trust your family, and my mom couldn’t protect me from the unimaginable.

I did tell her right afterwards, though. But he was my uncle’s first child, and before my sister and I were born, my mother loved him unconditionally like her own child. It’s my personal belief that my mom used the love she had for my cousin as a way to protect him, and I understand that. But it didn’t protect the other girls who I know he violated, or at least tried. I know filing a legal case against him would divide the family. Still, if I understood what happened at that time, I would have pursued the case. I would never want to see him again.

Unfortunately, as I learned, after a certain amount of years you can’t pursue a case. Before I fully understood what happened, I couldn’t pursue legal action either. He took that from me too. The closest I’ve ever had to a legal victory was Alice Sebold’s court case.

On October 5th, 1981, Alice Sebold saw her rapist again. Entitled, and unaware of her strength, he said smugly to her passing on the street, “Hey, girl, don’t I know you from somewhere?” I totally understood how violating that comment was. At my grandmother’s funeral two years ago, as my family was leaving the church, I started crying when my cousin who had molested me put his hand around my shoulder from behind, squeezed it, and told me that “everything was going to be okay.” The audacity for someone who has violated you to think they can talk to you is unexplainable. As if their actions weren’t damaging enough. I, unfortunately, had to tolerate this—there was nothing within my power I could do after so much time had passed. Unlike me, Sebold was able to take action right away. After seeing her rapist, she filed a report to the police.

A court case immediately took place. I sat with Alice as she was cross-examined. I wanted to reach out my hands to her as her prosecutor wanted to confuse her and make her seem as an unreliable young girl. I wanted to be the reassuring smile during the court case telling her I know she could concretely get every fact of that day right. I wanted her to win for herself, and for every girl who has ever been sexually abused.

I rejoiced for Alice when her rapist was declared guilty. And I rejoiced for myself too. I wish I could say it ended there, and everything after that was happy, but we all know that couldn’t be true. Like most rape victims, afterwards Alice Sebold suffered from post-traumatic stress. Although I’m not classified as having post-traumatic stress, I do have intense symptoms of it. When I first began dating, I struggled with intimacy. Although I never had sex in my first relationship, I was terrified that I was pregnant. I put myself through awful cycles of anxiety; I constantly tortured myself believing I had ruined my life after just kissing someone I loved. In other words, my anxiety led me to believe all sexual actions would somehow ruin my life. Society stigmatizes teen pregnancy and STDs and presents them as bad and wrong and thus, I believed I would get an STD or become pregnant. I believed that whatever sexual actions I engaged in were bad and wrong. Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, the aftermath of my molestation led me to feel ashamed of my sexuality. For me, my own sexuality was something I was trying to reclaim, but the more and more I tried to take it back, the more and more terrified and anxious I grew.

I think the hardest thing about that relationship was the way it was perceived from the outside. I heard people claim I didn’t care as much about my ex-boyfriend as he cared about me. I’ll be the first admit I wasn’t the girlfriend I wish I could be, but I was limited because of my experience. I had a hard time coping with my intimacy and sexuality in private, so there was no way for me to able to express public displays of affection. For someone with anxiety, PDA was like my worst nightmare. Because of my own experiences and the judgments placed on me, I will never make assumptions about other peoples relationships. Other relationships are not my business, and no one ever knows what really occurs behind closed doors.

In Alice Sebold’s words, to read her book was like “…suddenly being in the presence of someone who ‘got it.’ Not just knew the facts, but – as near as she could – understand what I felt” (67). I have always found that the beauty of literature lies within its capacity to make people feel less alone in this world. I think that’s why I’ve been able to get through so many hardships in my life, because books have been there to support me. In fact, when I told one of my friends in middle school that I had been molested, she told me “it didn’t count because it was family.” However, after reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye in Ms. McMane’s English class sophomore year, my friend apologized to me. I think it’s so incredible that books can not only support people, but also inform and make people more empathetic, too.

In Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou explains, “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced to it.” This is exactly how I feel surrounding my sexual abuse. I don’t share my story because I want pity, or because I feel like I am a “sexual abuse victim.” I share because I want to break the glass ceiling surrounding the discussions around sexual abuse. I want to be a resource for people who have felt violated. I want people to be proud of themselves and their sexualities, even after traumatic events occur. I feel claiming myself as a feminist and discussing rape culture adds to positive healing for other survivors and productive conversations for those who have not experienced these struggles personally. The disturbing reality of rape culture is everyone knows someone who has experienced something non-consensual, and maybe they haven’t responded with compassion. I want to change that.

Would you ever ask a six-year-old what she was wearing to make her thirteen-year-old cousin molest her?

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Nicolette Natale is a senior at Tappan Zee High School. She is the President of the English Honor Society, President of her school’s Social Justice Club, and the Art and Literary Editor of her school’s literary magazine, Tones. She has won over nineteen awards for the page layout she has created for the magazine, in addition to her writing. She has also been published in Teen Ink’s magazine, and won the Editor’s Choice Awards for pieces published on their website. Nicolette loves to combine her social justice work into her writings, especially based on her own personal experiences. She hopes that through writing, she can make a difference in the world.

The post ELEMENTARY FEMINISMS: The Lucky Ones [Trigger Warning: Discusses Sexual Abuse] appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

REMINDER: PLEASE SUBMIT BY 3/30/15 AND PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!

“COLLECTIVE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS”: 
CAMPUS VIOLENCE, RESISTANCE, AND STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVAL

Editors: Martina “Mick” Powell (guest editor) and Heather M. Turcotte

~~~

In 2014, over fifty US college and university collectives filed formal Title IX complaints against their institutions for a variety of reasons, including the mishandling of sexual assault cases by the administration.  Students, faculty, and staff nationwide continue to face both blatant and covert entangled acts of racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transantagonism, and xenophobia, which, when presented to administrations, are systematically ignored, rewritten, and/or co-opted for dismissive neoliberal civility campaigns. This recent mobilization across US campuses materializes within, and because of, historical and transnational contexts of violence against communities who resist and defy the intersecting structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and capitalism.

In her foreword to soulscript, an anthology of poetry edited by June Jordan, Staceyann Chin writes, “the collective voice of the voiceless is still one of the most powerful tools of change.” This forum is concerned with the ways in which “voiceless” members of college, university, and academic communities respond to the particular set of violences that surround them through coalition building, active resistance, and legal measurements. Additionally, we are interested in how campus collectives show solidarity with national and transnational publicized sites of violence, particularly around sexual assault, police brutality, and the lynchings, kidnappings, and mass murders of individuals, students, and communities. Importantly, this forum aims to serve as a space for critical conversations on surviving campus culture, academia, and international state violence.

Authors are invited to submit essays, poems, videos, pictures, and creative prose pieces that address any of these topics in relationship to college, university, and academic life from a variety of geopolitical locations (and in relationship to other educational structures):

• Institutionalized, individual, and intersectional violence: In what ways is violence operating individually and systematically in your space? How is it connected and informed by other sites of violence?;
• Shaping, structuring, and sustaining productive and safe coalitions, solidarities, and community;
• Responding to the reproduction of violence within coalitional work; 
• Accounting for identity, power, privilege, and inequality that shape movement participation and collective responses (e.g., intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, citizenship, religion, ability, and modes of embodiment);
• Transformative methods of knowledge production and exchange that builds accountable community praxis: How do you subvert violent, pervasive forms of knowledge? How do you disrupt discursively violent academic spaces?;
• Organizing acts of resistance: How, why, when? What mobilizations are most effective or not?;
• Creating a collective voice and ways of documenting it;
• The productivities and limitations of the law: What does law (and rights) offer us? What does it eclipse? How do we decriminalize our campuses and refuse increased militarization and surveillance of students, faculty, and staff?;
• Strategies for survival: Every day and long term visions;
• Communities of care: How do coalitions (whether formally or informally structured) care for one another? What is our collective sense of care?; and
• Self-Care

Submissions should be roughly 1,500 words and are due by March 30, 2015. Please submit your work for consideration to “College Feminisms Submissions,”  and indicate in your cover letter that you would like your submission to be considered for the forum. More general information on the submission process can be found at: submission guidelines.

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Selected News Articles and Writings on the Intersections of Campus, Academic, and State Violence and the Work of Building Collective Justice:

“Syracuse University Student Protestors Continue Weeklong Sit-In, Talk with Administration” By Catie O’Toole

“And We Sat: Violence against the Bodies of Diversity and Transparency (DAT) Student Movement at Syracuse University” by Farrell Greenwald Brenner

“Can You Hear Us Now?” by Jake New

“An Open Letter to UCONN President Susan Herbst” by Carolyn Luby

“An Open Letter Addressing the UCONN Community” by Victoria Rossetti, Rebecca Barton, and Stephanie Naranjo

“Racially Charged Incident at UCONN Triggers Concerns about Campus Atmosphere” by Gregory B. Hladky

“Perseverance Conquers: An Open Letter” by Princess Harmony-Jazmyne Rodriguez 

“Learning #EverdaySexualViolence: Women Telling Our Stories” by Stephanie Gilmore and Pia Guerrero

“Queering Sexual Violence” by Jennifer Patterson

“Transfiguring Masculinities in Black Women’s Studies” by C. Riley Snorton

“Buff, Black, Tattooed, and Feminist: On the Utility of a Bro-Feminist” by Marquis Bey

“TFW’s Sikivu Hutchinson and Aishah Shahidah Simmons Partner to Address Sexual Violence with Youth in South Los Angeles” by The Feminist Wire

Selected from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: “African American Old Miss Student Is a Victim of a Race Related Attack;” “Black Woman Scholar Earns $75,000 in Settlement of Race Discrimination Lawsuit;” “Racial Slur Written on Birthday Cake at the University of Maryland;” “Racial Incidents at the University of Massachusetts;” “Racial Incident at Saint Louis University”

“Racist Frat Prank at University of Chicago” in The Huffington Post

“#FergusonOctober: Francesca Griffin–A Black Woman and the Police State” by Ahmad Greene-Hayes

“The Cops Can’t Come Here: How a Predominantly White Institution is My Safe Haven” by ray(nise) cange

“An Open Letter of Love to Black Students: #BlackLivesMatter Dec” by blackspaceblog

“On Boko Haram, Missing Children, and Narcissism” by Niama Safia Sandy

“The Chapel Hill Shooting Was Anything but a Dispute Over Parking” by Nathan Lean

“SOAS Referendum on Academic Boycott”

“Salaita v. Kennedy, et. al.” at The Center for Constitutional Rights

“Paris, #BlackLivesMatter, the Cultural Violence, and the White Western State” by Malik Nashad Sharpe

“Ayotzinapa: A Timeline of the Mass Disappearance That Has Shaken Mexico” by VICE News

“Living on Borrowed Time: Six Young Trans Women of Color Have Been Murdered in America This Year” by Terrell Jermaine Starr

“White Terror: Spirituality, Ancestral Memory, and the Politics of Remembering” by Rajanie (Preity) Kumar

“In Solidarity with Anita Sarkeesian and All Women Who Speak Out” by The Feminist Wire

“Toward a Feminist Politics of De-Criminalization and Abolition: Why We Support Dr. Mireille Miller-Young” by Tamara L. Spira and Heather M. Turcotte

“Feminists We Love: Wagatwe Wanjuki” Interview by Stephanie Gilmore

“Dismantling Racism and White Supremacy Must Come from Within” by Aishah Shahidah Simmons

The post COLLEGE FEMINISMS: REMINDER Call for Forum Submissions on Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Maggie Hardy

Image credit: uconncampuscrime.wordpress.com

I write as a rape survivor, and like any victim, I can assure you that triggers are out there. If higher education should be a preparation for life, then it is worth noting that life doesn’t come with a trigger warning. Rape is common. Triggers are real. We should have an open dialog about rape, and what it means to survive rape. We should not teach victims that for the rest of their lives they will need a warning to live, to be educated, or to work. Being unfamiliar with, or lacking understanding about, rape and sexual violence do not allow you to give a two-word “trigger warning” and continue blithely along.

Triggers are as different as the victims they haunt. They could be places, events, or even a hint of cologne on the bus. As a result, I find the dialog around triggers and warnings misplaced. What we should be saying is, “Don’t rape.” But we do not – at least not effectively. California’s adoption of the nation’s first affirmative consent law is a novel development whose usefulness remains to be proved. The reality, according to a United States Department of Justice Report, is that higher education is churning out rape survivors at a rate greater than women the same age who are not in college (although the rate itself is variable, from double to eleven times a greater risk for college students than women the same age who are not college students). What is unknown is how many perpetrators are responsible for multiple acts of sexual violence. No matter what the numbers, any sexual violence is too much.

On Trigger Warnings

Let me be clear: triggers are real. Yet the perceived need for “trigger warnings” enforces the stereotype of rape victims as helpless, hysterical, and permanently damaged. This is not what we need. A flood of emotion can happen at any time and is valid under any circumstances. If dialog about rape or other trauma sends a survivor into such a downward spiral that the student is unable to function in class, then I suggest more reflection under the care of a mental health professional is required. There is nothing wrong with needing this help after a trauma such as rape, and to insinuate otherwise is harmful. Healing from rape does not come easily, but creating an artificial need for “trigger warnings” because we are infantilized does nothing to recognize our agency. Healing is hard work.

Further, reinforcing the trope that we require trigger warnings alienates those who don’t identify as women from the experience and minimizes the role of those of us who have moved from victim to survivor. Am I any less a rape survivor because I’ve learned to hear accounts of rape in war and in society at large? No.

Discussing the necessity of “trigger warnings” reeks of privilege. The conversation does nothing for those who are unable to ask for trigger warnings because they live with their attacker or are unable to get away from the person instigating the violence (because they are children or dependent economically or otherwise).

I do not suggest that instructors and supervisors should be insensitive and ignorant, plowing through difficult topics with no regard for their students or trainees. During classes, it is appropriate to tell students the material to be covered is difficult – but that doesn’t necessarily mean only for rape survivors. Talking about, reflecting on, and learning about rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment can be difficult whether or not you’ve had these experiences, as can conversations about many other topics. Given the staggering number of rape survivors in the world, the likelihood is that all students have helped support someone through the aftermath of a sexual assault or rape, whether they know it or not.

But students and staff must feel supported through these conversations and a clear framework must be in place for additional follow-up with professionals if needed (for example, a campus resource or hotline). Incorporating rape into our understanding of history is a much-needed exercise and normalizes the concept so perhaps other doors to dialog can be opened. Statistically speaking, there are millions of us. Imagine if rape victims didn’t feel alone, and knew there were others throughout history who had a similar experience and lived to thrive?

Handling difficult topics well is the hallmark of a well-trained mentor, and specific training should be made available to supervisors and instructors. The solution is not a general: “Some may find this disturbing” trigger warning, but a well-crafted plan that discusses the topic with compassion and that can elevate the conversation beyond the trauma itself. Rape is violent – it is a means to take power, not a sexual act itself. Rape is an act of war, and is treated as a war crime internationally. It is important to be aware that women are not alone in their shared familiarity with trauma: men and members of the transgender community are also survivors, and the discussion should be inclusive without exception.

Sexual Violence in Higher Education

Trigger warnings aside, what can be done to help survivors succeed? My focus now turns specifically research on sexual assault and sexual harassment in the higher education research system. A recent study described the widespread experience of sexual harassment of trainees conducting fieldwork (71% of women and 41% of men) and of sexual assault (26% of women and 6% of men) (PLOS ONE 2014, 9: e102172). The paper’s authors show that men most frequently experience “horizontal” harassment dynamics, meaning the behavior originated primarily from peers, whereas women experience “vertical” dynamics more often, meaning the behavior emanates from those in superior positions in the field hierarchy.

In the leading scientific journal Nature, I suggested the creation of a national ethics framework for researchers that academic, industry, and government stakeholders could amend as appropriate for their organization. The policy should be inclusive of women and men (both cis- and trans-), and include an explicit denunciation of sexual harassment and sexual assault on the basis of race, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation. I followed that up with an article in The Conversation, encouraging continued dialog around sexual assault and sexual harassment experienced by researchers. Although people were largely invested in such a dialog, I heard from many who were concerned about repercussions for speaking out. Women in Astronomy is the name of an excellent blog run by, you guessed it, women astronomers. They list no less than 30 posts with the tag “harassment.”

One of the reasons research-focused staff are particularly susceptible to underreporting workplace abuse is the short-term nature of our job contracts: three-, six-, and nine-month contracts are often the norm. As a result, we rely heavily on forming strong working relationships with our supervisors, with the reality that reporting assault and harassment complicates present and future appointments. Creating more funding exclusively for early- and mid-career researchers, as well as diversifying the hiring process to ensure the best scientists are recruited and retained, could alleviate this reliance on the supervisor-employee relationship.

Changes to policy could be the most practical way to effect benefits for researchers. In the absence of effective local policies (many campus frameworks focus almost exclusively on the student/professor relationship), a national set of guidelines that institutions could adapt and sign would be a strong start. Professional organizations can also be involved in this space, and require that their members act appropriately towards undergraduate and graduate students, as well as research staff and among peers. Legal and professional consequences should be clearly spelled out, and applied consistently after an appropriate adjudication process finds a perpetrator guilty.

The type of infractions to which I refer, and that the PLOS ONE study describes, are sexual assault and sexual harassment. These are felonies. Inappropriate jokes, consenting relationships between adults not in a supervisory/trainee situation, and unfortunate social awkwardness is not what I describe here. Sexual assault and sexual harassment are entirely preventable on the part of perpetrators, and are often or always illegal in locations where the incidents have occurred.

Speaking Out

The insidious nature of sexual assault in higher education and disciplines that are already complicated to navigate should not be a barrier to rape survivors. I understand being known as a rape survivor has a stigma that many cannot carry professionally, or personally. Despite this, rape survivors now have several role models who have discussed their experiences in the media: some have unrequested celebrity status, like Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Lee Dugard. Others are like me, and Julie DiCaro, living our lives as rape survivors and working as lawyers or scientists. Again, rape survivors are everywhere: we are in Steubenville and Houston, in Dehli and Nova Scotia.

I have been disheartened (but not surprised) that more survivors do not speak up in solidarity with victims, do not say, “You are not alone, and I believe you.” I hope many do behind closed doors. I will say it publicly.

For my entire adult life, from the time I entered college at 17, I have been either a student or an employee of universities. I am now a wife and mother. But I have been a rape survivor longer than I’ve been any of these, and recognizing this chapter of my personal history is important to understanding who I am now. I am optimistic there is a way forward, but it relies on difficult conversations and drastic – albeit often inexpensive or free – changes to policy to enact consistent consequences for perpetrators, as well as support mechanisms to help survivors move forward with their lives and their careers. Education can be transactional or transformational – dealing with difficult topics in a way that prepares students for a more meaningful life is a cornerstone of higher education.

We don’t need trigger warnings. We need change.

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Originally from Boston, Dr. Maggie Hardy is a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She is an internationally recognized biochemist and insecticide toxicologist, and regularly contributes to the development of evidence-based policy. Dr. Hardy earned her MSc from The University of Hawai`i at Mānoa in 2007, and her PhD from The University of Queensland in 2011. In addition to her research interests, Dr. Hardy is involved with programs designed to help traditionally underrepresented groups succeed in higher education and careers in science. Outside the laboratory, Dr Hardy is a wife and mother. You can connect with her on Twitter @DrMaggieHardy.

The post Campus Rape Survivors Need Policy Change, Not Trigger Warnings appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Jamie Huff

Since the recent killing of nine Black congregants at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel AME church on June 17, debates about the confederate flag have again surfaced on a national scale, particularly for South Carolinians hoping to eliminate the state’s most overt symbolic tie to its history of slavery and secession.  The flying of the flag on the capital dome, and later on the capital grounds, has been a perennial controversy in South Carolina. However, the flag is not the only symbol through which Southern culture preserves and sanitizes histories of the “Old South.” When discussions about confederate imagery devolve into proclamations about heritage, they evade the problem of why Southern states seek to remember specific aspects of history and how that history is imagined. Old South nostalgia erases a history of racial violence and replaces it with imagery suggesting a benign past in an attempt to absolve responsibility for slavery, Jim Crow, and their legacies.

South Carolina Statehouse. Photo by Chris Keane/Reuters.

Supporters of Old South imagery insist that the displays are means of remembering and preserving cultural heritage, but there is little danger that the confederacy will be forgotten, especially in Southern states. Memorials to the Old South permeate the landscape. Small towns and large cities alike have erected memorials to their confederate war dead and museums dedicated to the confederacy flourish. Tourists and locals can visit restored plantations, where they may hear about the glories and gaieties of Old South society.  Gas stations sell “mammy” themed saltshakers and teapots. Highways are named for Jefferson Davis. State offices close for Confederate Memorial Day. Maurice’s BBQ, a Columbia, SC restaurant chain, emblazons its bottles of sauce with confederate flags. SC abounds with statues of confederate and segregationist leaders. The industry of confederate nostalgia is not only pervasive, but also celebratory. One only has to look so far as the 2010 “Secession Ball” held in Charleston, in which South Carolinians donned antebellum apparel and danced to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the state’s secession from the union.

On June 17, Dylann Roof spent an hour at Emanuel AME church before shooting and killing State Senator Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Rev. Daniel Simmons, and Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. Dylann Roof was explicit in the racial motivation of this shooting. A witness reported that he stated, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country.”  More images and words of racial violence by Roof have emerged since his arrest.  Roof appears alongside confederate flags and in front of confederate history museums. He believes that an epidemic of “Black violence” is occurring in the US. These images, statements, and ideas are familiar to those who know well the long history of white supremacy in the US and US South in particular.  Roof’s attachment to symbols such as the confederate flag has sparked discussions of heritage, memory, and history in the South. Some Southerners argue that the flag and other Old South imagery are important aspects of Southern cultural heritage while also insisting that they are not symbolic of the white supremacist regimes that spawned them. There is a need to confront the ever-present problem of how Southern history is distorted and reimagined, and how that distortion facilitates individual and collective acts of racist violence.

To claim that confederate images are mere attempts at historical preservation is to ignore the obviously celebratory and nostalgic nature of these displays. The image of the South and its history that is projected is one of a genteel, aristocratic antebellum society graced with mansions and Spanish moss, moonlight, and magnolias. If slavery is represented, it is often in the figure of the faithful, content slave—Scarlett O’Hara’s “mammy” rather than the enslaved person as a target of legal and social violence. These images hide the labor, the interpersonal violence, and the legal violence that created the profits and social systems that sustained the Old South. When Southern history is presented in this manner, it conveniently elides the fact that chattel slavery was part and parcel of creating the “beautiful” Southern cities, the “stately” plantations, and the “genteel” life of parties and balls. The enslaved people who labored in and outside of plantation houses, small farms, and in cities are shunted to the side or reimagined as content with their status—their history, so central to the creation of the South, is misrepresented and rarely prioritized.

Old South nostalgia also covers the violence that continued after emancipation in the forms of post- Reconstruction repression, the long era of lynching, and the lingering legacies of segregation. These events were, and are, part of Southern history all the same. We cannot separate these institutions and events—there is no honest way to remember plantation life without the slavery that enabled it and no honest way to consider the confederate flag without its ties to segregationists in the 1950s and 60s. Insisting that we can sanitize Southern history not only does a disservice to the many lives lost in the struggle for Black liberation in the South, but it also perpetuates tradition of mythmaking and violence.

John C. Calhoun Statue in Charleston, SC. Photo by Joe Patrizzi, III.

Southern history cannot be divorced from the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow. So long as nostalgia characterizes the memorialization of the Old South, it will render invisible the violence inherent in that way of life and the legacy of marginalization that it has caused. Roof’s manifesto displays a stunning belief that histories of Black oppression in the South are “lies, exaggerations, and myths” and that slavery was a positive institution. Old South nostalgia facilitates this same narrative. After all, if the social customs of the Old South were truly horrific, why would people come together to celebrate secession? If slavery was truly violent, why would plantation museums often refer to slaves as “servants” and present whites primarily as “kind masters?” Why would there be a booming trade in Black caricature figurines and confederate flag decals? These images, logics, and practices all naturalize white supremacy by insisting that the social and legal systems of the Old South and the Jim-Crow era were worthy of celebration.

There are cracks, however, in the edifice of white supremacy. The Old South as a halcyon society is a myth, and its mythology ties in with a persistent pattern that emerged yet again in the shooting at Emanuel AME. Roof invoked the purported rape of white women by Black men as a justification for his violence. The myth that Black men are sexually threatening toward white women is not new, nor is the critique of this myth. The same logic was used to justify lynching throughout the South. Even more broadly, a pattern of imagining the oppressed as the authors of their own oppression is common in white supremacist ideologies. Southern whites used slave revolts, real or imagined, to justify legal repressions of Black populations and abolitionists. After emancipation, whites relied on fears of purported Black violence and crime to support segregation. White fears of Black populations have been used to excuse the legal, social, and political repression of Black communities throughout the US, and especially so in the South. In contemporary responses to police shootings of Black people, the meticulous focus on the appearance and background of those killed performs a similar function. Rather than attempting to eliminate violence against Black bodies and communities, this discourse validates it by reifying myths of Black violence. The myth of the Old South and the myth of pathological Black violence are inherently intertwined, and we cannot address one without the other. These myths survive long after the formal institution of slavery was destroyed, and they are still being used to justify violence against Black communities, as evidenced by the Emanuel shooting. Failure to confront the realities of history and culture sustains a climate in which white supremacy thrives. However, when we engage with the connections between cultural imagery and contemporary violence, we rupture the myths used to rationalize social, legal, and individual violence against Black communities.

Denmark Vesey Monument. Photo by Adam Parker at The Post and Courier.

Confronting white supremacy requires an honest conversation about Southern history and how that history is represented. The shallow and violent understanding of heritage that has dominated conversations about confederate imagery in the South must change. If we want to remember and preserve, we must not attempt to decouple Southern history from race, violence, and repression, and we must also illuminate the moments of resistance and resilience to white supremacy that are part of the South’s history. Importantly, we must remember that the South is not the only place in which histories of violence are erased in later memory. But because Southerners have made the argument that Old South imagery is a cultural imperative, the symbolism of these images deserves critical attention. If we are to dismantle white supremacy, we must see culture and history as they really are—explicit acts of violence against Black communities. Whites must cease to be complicit in, profit from, and celebrate sanitized images of the Old South.

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For some further information on local activist groups fighting against white supremacy and oppression in the South, visit:

Black Lives Matter Charleston: https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatterCHS

Southerners on New Ground (SONG): http://southernersonnewground.org/

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Jamie Huff is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. Her scholarship and teaching interests include critical legal theories, legal history, and marginalization in the US South. She is a former resident of Charleston, South Carolina and an alumna of the College of Charleston.

The post Memory and Violence: Old South Nostalgia in the Wake of the Emanuel AME Shooting appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Ashleigh Shackelford

The first time I was pregnant, it was as a result of rape by my then boyfriend’s close friend. I was only 18. After being raped, I did not go to the hospital to get a rape kit done or report my assault to the police. I was too emotionally scarred and afraid of what my rapist would do to me if I told. I kept it a secret from everyone.

I found out that I was pregnant when I missed my period the next month. I was scared. I felt overwhelmed with guilt, shame, and confusion. So in true anxiety driven fashion, I ignored it. Those were the longest three weeks of my life. Eventually, I started suffering from severe stomach pains and fatigue from the pregnancy. My body was changing. After much internal debate and strife, I finally decided to reach out to my family doctor’s office to see what I could do.

At the time I didn’t know where to go for an abortion so it only made sense (in my head) that my regular doctor’s office could help me. When I called them, I asked if they had abortion services. They transferred me to “Family Planning.” I spoke with a woman about getting an abortion and that I thought I was about 5 weeks pregnant. She said that she would have my doctor call me back to schedule an appointment. I believed her and I waited.

After two weeks, I hadn’t received a call, yet and I was in excruciating pain from the pregnancy. I decided to call again. A different woman answered this time. She told me that I should come in to get a check up and see what options they had for me. I kept asking what I needed to do to prepare for an abortion. She continued to deflect my questions and advised me to come in for a check up. I asked how much does it cost to get the abortion, she responded with silence. I started to cry on the phone out of frustration. She said, “You’re going to be fine. We want to help you with your baby.” I hung up. I felt so alone and confused. I could not figure out why my doctor’s office would not tell me anything about getting an abortion or show any sense of urgency. Here I was, a rape victim who was keeping a secret from everyone, while also dealing with an unwanted pregnancy from my attacker. I felt forced to tell someone who could help me in order to make sure I wouldn’t be forced into keeping my attacker’s child.

I built up the courage to go to my mom. I managed to avoid telling her that I was raped. I manipulated the truth by telling her I accidentally got pregnant with my then boyfriend. She then did something I didn’t expect… She told me that she had an abortion at my age and that it was okay, that I was okay. And right in that moment, I fell in her arms and cried. I never felt so relieved. I felt like so much shame and secrecy was lifted from my shoulders. I never realized how common abortions were, but more, that different types of people get abortions for different reasons. Even my about-her-business type-A personality mom was just like me.

My mom helped me find a clinic, set up the appointment, and took me to get the procedure that same week. I had saved some money up from my job, so I was able to afford it with the little bit of savings I had. I never dealt with the attack of my rapist, or told my family or my boyfriend about it. But I got the abortion with the support of my mother and continued to be emotionally supported afterwards.

My second abortion was a completely different circumstance. I got pregnant due to not using any protection with my then boyfriend when I was 20 years old. At the time I was in a committed loving relationship where our idea of prevention was pulling out. I was very comfortable in this decision to not use protection. And eventually, it backfired. I never believed that it would happen to me when it seemed like we were so careful, but it did. It took me getting pregnant (a second time) to convince me that using protection is important to prevent pregnancy.

When I found out that I was pregnant, it wasn’t from a missing period, but from severe stomach pains (again). My then boyfriend and I were very proactive in having a conversation about what we both wanted. We decided to get an abortion because we were not ready to have kids. We made the appointment together, paid for the abortion together, and never looked back. He supported me emotionally through the abortion and understood how much this may affect me more than him. I never felt regret in our decision, nor did I feel regret in doing something that affects my body and livelihood.

There are no rightful abortions or bad abortions. Both of my experiences speak to circumstances in which the autonomy I had over my body was necessary to do what was best for me. I did not want to have a child in either situation, regardless of mistake or tragedy. During my first abortion, I felt sadness around my assault and what I had to go through to begin my healing. But I never regretted the actual abortion, just the inconvenience of it. I always felt guilty that I wasn’t ashamed or in mourning. My second abortion, although more painful than the first one, did not make me feel any feelings of sadness or regret either. I felt relieved and happy that I was in a supportive relationship at the time. And of course, that same guilt of not feeling bad about making a valid decision for myself set in.

In retrospect, I realize that the stigma of shame attached to abortion and the policing of bodies is why I carried so much unnecessary weight on my heart. I reflect on how this same stigma is what might have prevented me from getting my first abortion due to my doctor’s office trying to make it more difficult for me to find the resources I needed. By addressing this stigma through the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag, it allows for the radical reality that abortions are not shameful. Sometimes abortions are due crisis and sometimes they are just happenstance in which we have our own unique reaction to.

I am very happy where I am in life and with my decision making. I’m childless and not hindered by an unwanted pregnancy. It’s powerful and important that we challenge the shame and silence surrounding abortion. Reproductive justice is more than saying we should be allowed to receive and have access to abortions. It demands that we address the stigma around the who, why, how, what and when of our abortion experiences. We don’t have to be raped, in a life threatening situation, or destitute to get an abortion. Body autonomy is not limited to circumstance. Therefore, our circumstances, our bodies, our choice, and our response to our choices should not be policed.

Ashleigh Shackelford is a radical queer Black fat femme writer that resides in Baltimore, MD. Ashleigh is a pop-culture enthusiast, a community organizer at Black Action Now, and the founder of a body positivity organization, Free Figure Revolution. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in African American Studies at Morgan State University.

The post #ShoutYourAbortion: I’ve Had Two Abortions and I Don’t Regret Either of Them appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Joanna Christi

I’m saying this loudly. I’m saying this loudly because it needs to be said. When I was in college, I was raped. I wasn’t even twenty-one yet. Along with being raped—and finally realizing I had actually been raped—I also realized something else in that month. I was pregnant. I became pregnant. My body was not my own. A man had claimed it, and now, there was a baby.

I was alone. My best friend was studying abroad. I had other friends, but none were the kind I could ask to accompany me to get an abortion. It’s not something casual you can suggest over an early morning egg sandwich, or at a party where mostly everyone is in their underwear. During those weeks, it would not be an overstatement to say I hated myself. I wanted to disappear—to somehow not exist in the universe. In other words, I wanted to die.

There was no way in my mind that I was ready to have a child. I was barely an adult myself, still in college with hardly any money (despite that I worked several jobs), didn’t have a boyfriend, and had just been violated in one of the most terrifying ways. While I knew in the deepest, darkest, most honest depths of my bones, I also felt responsible for the pain I knew I was about to feel. I decided I was not going to have the baby, but a huge part of me felt as if I was becoming the very monster who did this to me in the first place.

In my guilt-addled mind, I could hear the voices of my family, of others I didn’t even know, tell me I was killing a baby—my baby. Being raped was not my choice—but this—getting rid of my baby as if it didn’t exist in the first place—that was my choice. It sickened me. What does that say about me? I was fighting death with death—the death of me, the death of a child. Part of me wished I could abort me, not the child. But again, I knew it had to be done; and in many ways, I knew I wasn’t wrong. There were many voices in my head then, and I knew I had to be strong enough to listen to my own. To listen to my body.

It rained a lot in those few months. Maybe it was because it was spring, maybe it was my sorrow manifesting itself around me. Or maybe it was just in my head. And no, I didn’t tell the man who raped me that I was pregnant, with his child. He didn’t, and doesn’t, deserve to know. He didn’t care enough to listen when I said no. Yet still, I would cry alone on my bedroom floor or in my closet so none of my roommates would hear me, praying to some faceless god to make me not a woman, make me anything else. I would pretend to be happy at parties and in class. Most of my friends never realized what was happening to me. I was a very good actor.

I did the only thing I could. I went to Planned Parenthood. I didn’t have a car and the closest one was too far for me to walk to. So I took a cab. I was afraid to visit the health clinic on campus, half assuming they wouldn’t be able to help, but also afraid they would make me tell the on-campus police. I didn’t want to report it; I didn’t want to bring any attention to myself. When the cab rolled up after I finished work, I got in and noticed the driver was a man. I promptly told him where I needed to go. He said nothing.

When we arrived in front of the Planned Parenthood, he paused for a moment, then said, “You know, I can wait here for you if you need me to.” I paused, too. I was grateful to him, even if he didn’t realize what he was saying, even if he just felt bad for me because I was a young college kid. I told him no, that I would be fine. I wanted to be alone. The rest, as they say, is history.

This is a story about why we need Planned Parenthood, about how they helped a poor college student get the help she needed at her most vulnerable. They listened to me, treated me well, and didn’t offer any judgments. Eventually, I began to realize I did exactly what I needed to, that I didn’t need to hate myself for it. It took a long time for me to realize that instead of being angry at myself, I should be angry at a society that makes women feel this way. What kind of “free” country allows women to think this way?

I’m speaking out, not because it is easy, but because I know no other way. How can I live another way? How can I let Planned Parenthood be defunded when it saved my life? And saves the lives of other women everywhere, whether with cancer screenings, birth control, or abortions. I want other women to have what I had—the ability to live. But I also want women to have what I didn’t—the ability to make a real choice, not a shamed one. I do not want other women or girls to go through what I did—wanting to disappear, for someone to just make it all end.

We need to reach a point where we can talk about ending a pregnancy, not as something to feel ashamed about, but as common. As normal for women everywhere, not just in the United States. And normal for women who weren’t raped, who just aren’t ready to be mothers yet, or to add more children to their already existing families. There are endless reasons why a woman may not want to continue a pregnancy, and we need to support women with kindness and compassion. Shouldn’t we value women enough to let them think thoughtfully about bringing life into this world? Abortion doesn’t mean anti-motherhood or anti-life; it just means we’re giving women the choices they need.

It’s still raining.

________________________________________

Joanna Christi is an author of several books. Or a ghost.

The post Saying It Loudly: I Had an Abortion at Planned Parenthood appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By J.B.

My rapist didn’t look like a monster.

He was a six-foot, brown-haired, 25-year-old working at a startup, with dark eyes, a trace of stubble, and a slight French accent. He caught my eye from across the bar, and we started talking. Then somehow we were dancing, then kissing. When the bar closed, he walked me home, got my number and kissed me goodnight on my doorstep.

We dated for four months. He was handsome, smart, mysterious, charming; he swept me off my feet. But the night before Rosh Hashana, he raped me.

I sat through services the next day in shock. I had trusted him. I thought I knew him. And I listened as the congregation recited, “I now forgive everyone who has done me harm, whether intentionally or by mistake. Let no one suffer on my account.”

And I thought, no chance in hell.

I couldn’t yet name what he had done. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the R-word, to wear that victim banner forever. I didn’t even know what I was crying for, as I sat beside my parents and friends with tears spilling silently down my face.

But what I knew was this: It would be a very long time before I forgave him, if I ever did. I needed to forgive myself first.

I felt so stupid for having trusted him. I racked my brain for warning signs I had missed. How could he have done this to me?

I was a virgin before the rape. I had told him that, that very night. He nodded and said, “That makes sense. In that case, yeah, maybe you should wait for someone special.” An hour later, he raped me.

He asked to apologize to me in person. So I sat across from him at a neighborhood cafe and confronted him. Tea in hand, surrounded by college students working on laptops, I asked him why he had raped me. He said he just hadn’t been thinking.

I told him I was disgusted by his selfishness. I said, “Every day since then, I have been walking around crying. I will live with what you did for the rest of my life.” I added, “I feel broken inside. I hope you never do this to anyone else ever again.”

He looked wretched, saying this was the worst thing he had ever done and that he felt like he had killed somebody. He cried and thanked me for having the courage to see him in person. But I hadn’t gone for his sake. I went for me, and for the girls in his future.

He later wrote to me, “What I did was inexcusable. I am truly sorry for what I did and all the pain I’ve caused.” I believed him. But it felt like he sliced my chest wide open and then felt guilty so put a bandaid on it.

Part of me still misses him. I wondered, what do I do with all the good memories now? Am I supposed to suddenly hate this restaurant, these clothes, this apartment, this body because I was in them with him?

I wondered, will he rape again?

My heart raced every time I saw a tall man with stubble and dark hair. My stomach clenched whenever I heard a French accent. When my best friend slept over, I woke up crying in the middle of the night, panicking at the sound of someone in my bed.

I told my therapist that I did not trust my judgment anymore. She pointed out that sometimes there are no warning signs, that I do have good judgment. I knew what he did was very wrong. I knew to break up with him, to tell friends who would be supportive, to seek out resources.

She told me words that became my mantra: You are stronger than you know.

I have truly wonderful friends, and their love sustains me through it all. A few are survivors, and they assured me that the pain lessens with time.

I began taking baby steps to reclaim my space. I bought a new bed frame so my bed would feel different. I went back to the places we went on our dates and created new memories there. I scheduled plans on the 23rd of every month to distract myself from the anniversary. My therapist reminded me, “It is never selfish to take care of yourself.”

Half a year later, “I got raped” was still my first thought when I woke up every morning. So next to my bed, I taped the words, “I am in control. I have already survived.”

I participated in a fundraiser walk for my local rape crisis center. As I looked around at the hundreds of survivors and supporters walking beside me, I realized that every one of them was rooting for me and wanted me to be okay.

At times I am tempted to date again. After feeling so unsafe, maybe a new relationship would rebuild my trust. But not yet. I want strong arms to hold me and a confident voice to whisper in my ear that everything will be all right. But I realize that those arms, that voice, need to be my own.

I run my fingers over my face, torso, body. I wish there was some part of me that he had never touched. I whisper, “This is mine. Mine.”

I burned the underwear from that night. I watched the pink fabric go up in flames, watched it curl and shrivel into ashes.

I sent him one final letter. I wrote:

What you did was cruel and traumatizing and illegal. You effectively decided that a few minutes of your pleasure were worth me becoming a rape victim, and you becoming a rapist.

This was not just a mistake you made. It was a crime. You decided you were entitled to my body. You didn’t respect me enough to respect my decision.

You made me feel more hopeless than I ever have before. Bad things have happened to me before. People I care about have gotten very sick, and people I care about have died. But until you, no one I cared about had ever raped me. No one had ever made me feel so unsafe and powerless.

There have been so many nights when I couldn’t fall asleep because I couldn’t stop crying. There have been so many mornings when I could barely pull myself out of bed because I felt so hopeless about the world. There have been moments when I felt isolated from everyone. There have been times when I wanted desperately to crawl out of my skin and not be in this body that you violated.

I added:

You told me afterward, ‘Now your whole life is ruined.’ But you were wrong. I’m still alive. You will never hurt me again.

I will still go to med school one day and become a doctor. I still have a job that I care about. I still have incredible friends and family who love me.

I am learning to feel safe with men again. I will have boyfriends and, someday, a husband who will care about me and will never hurt me. My body still is and has always been mine.

I am not defined by what you did to me, because your decision had nothing to do with me. It was not my fault. I deserved so much better.

You have shaken me to my core, but you haven’t destroyed me. And that makes me realize I can survive any loss.

I will continue to love. I will continue to travel, write, laugh, learn. I will relish every bit of beauty in this world that I can. I will remember every day just how strong and courageous, how loved, I am.

And you? I saw the terrible guilt in your eyes. You can never outrun what you did to me. For the rest of your life, you will always be a rapist. And I feel sorry for you.

I sent it to him over Facebook messaging on the nine-month anniversary. Then I finally unfriended him. He read the letter, but he didn’t reply. And I realized I didn’t need him to.

What I needed was to be heard. I needed to tell him that it was rape, and that the rape had pervaded every area of my life and changed the way I looked at the world. But I also needed to tell him that I am taking back my life.

I think often of Maya Angelou’s words: “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.”

He took so much from me that wasn’t his to take. Not just my virginity, but my sense of safety, my autonomy over my body, my faith in humanity. But ever so slowly, I am beginning to rebuild a fragile new kind of trust. And I’m still alive. And I’m still me.

__________________________________________

J.B. lives in New England.

The post Stronger Than You Know appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Mick Powell and Heather M. Turcotte, Associate Editors

“The collective voice of the voiceless is still one of the most powerful tools of change.”

                                                                                                   June Jordan 2004

Retrieved from Wesleying. Available:
http://wesleying.org/2014/04/08/silence-is-violence/

When we had the idea for this forum, we were both in what we knew to be our final semester at our university—both of our “contracts were up.” We had worked together for two and half years—long enough to be sutured together through struggle—trying to get the administration to acknowledge and work with us to change the culture of gendered, racial, sexual, ableist, and xenophobic violence on our campus. We were in Heather’s office, speaking in whispers because the walls were thin and the neighbors had built their careers by colluding with state violence—surveillance their specialty. We could’ve been screaming. We should’ve been screaming. We had been screaming in a variety of ways against the university’s sanctioning of violence. So many of us affected by the administrators’ denials of violence, faculty refusals to practice the politics they proclaimed, and the constant rewriting of our experiences into one homogenous, monolithic lie by administration, faculty, staff, and students who refused to account for their privilege.

We struggled. How did we, and how could we continue to, survive? What more could we do to disrupt the silences that permeated our resistance to institutional and daily lived violences?

Importantly, we were part of something else too—a collective, non-institutionalized feminist group that refused to be silenced and who named the violence in a variety of sites—we organized, we protested, we made demands, we wrote, and we talked non-stop. We, as a collective, reached out to movements beyond our institution including, The Feminist Wire, so that we could feel the support of others experiencing and working together to end these violences, and creating new possibilities of life. With the help of a large network of feminists, we dealt with the consequences together when the backlash got stronger—and it definitely got stronger. In each moment that we grew louder, the institution worked harder to silence us. All of us in this feminist collective had endured incalculable amounts of violence at our university and at the hands of the university elite. We are all still experiencing the affects of institutionalized violence and our experiences there. And many of us continue to experience new forms of violence from those administrators, professors, and students who profit off this violence—it does not end. But through our relationships and desire for Liberation, which began years before by our fore-feminists who made it possible for us to meet in the classroom, we keep demanding and making new ways to survive—we name the truths of our lives collectively.

This forum is another beginning point of connection to do the collective “work that needs to be done;” it is another site in which to expose interpersonal and structural violences and continue to build strategies of Liberation. The personal is still very much political and we—in the midst of the Fourth Wave—refuse its privatization.

UCDA Campus Violence Poster Project. Available:
https://ucda.com/posterproject.lasso

By naming colleges and universities as sites of multiple forms of violence, contributors attempt to hold the institutions, and the people that profit off them, accountable for their transgressions. This forum comes at a particular time of neoliberal conservative backlashes and growing amnesias around on-going anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, Black, Third World, queer, and Indigenous Liberation movements. It comes at a specific moment of over sixty Title IX complaints, systemic police brutality, ongoing settler colonialism, and white supremacy that sanctions the lynchings, kidnappings, sexual violences, and mass murders of individuals, students, and communities here in the U.S. and around the world. This forum discusses these violences in order to hold important conversations on survival, self-care, resistance, solidarity, and continued coalition building.

The University is a contentious site. It is the manifestation of state violence and a landscape that reveals colonial contradictions, which builds collective resistance—and thus, it is a potential site for decolonial work.

After many months, we are proud to present a compilation of voices that were shut down and silenced in spaces that were supposed to be the place for growth, connection, and change. In what follows in this forum is a compilation of hardships and their subsequent survivals.

We would like to wholeheartedly thank all of our contributors for sharing their important words, their patience with this process, and their solidarity across academic borders. We would also like to express our deep appreciation for The Feminist Wire who continues to give us strength, purpose, and loving insight when we are tired and bruised from this work. We are so grateful to share this space with all of you.

The “Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum is for those who have been and continue to be physically, emotionally, mentally, intellectually, and financially harmed at the hands of the academy’s intersecting structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and capitalism. This forum is for those who have resisted and survived. It is for our friends and feminists who did not survive. It is for the generations in the making who will carry all of our stories in their bones and create new insights and life-worlds.

This is a space for the “voiceless” who are the most powerful agents of social change.

In love and solidarity.

**********

Publication Timeline for

“COLLECTIVE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS”:
CAMPUS VIOLENCE, RESISTANCE, AND STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVAL

Monday, October 26

Introduction, Mick & Heather

What I Should’ve Said Then, Emily Rooney

Tuesday, October 27

Taking What’s Mine, Alex-Quan Pham

Wednesday, October 28

The Silence of Burning, Grace Kuell

Thursday, October 29

Collective Love in a Time of Tension, Mick Powell

Friday, October 30

A Report on #WeAreHere, Lynden Harris & Madeleine Lambert

What I Owe, Brendane Tynes

Good & Quiet Men, Andrew Tan Delli Cicchi

Monday, November 2

Clapping Back and Losing Friends I Never Liked, Terese Marie Mailhot

Tuesday, November 3

Faculty Survivors and Campus Sexual Assault: A Conversation, Alissa Ackerman and Simona Sharoni

Wednesday, November 4

Safe Space, Anonymous

Thursday, November 5

Speak: My Own Transformation from Silence, Hannah Robb

Friday, November 6

UConn’s Dangerous Politics: Valuing Profits over Students’ Safety, Lisa Vickers

Monday, November 9

Deleted Scenes and Improper Acts: Scars from Reoccurring Feminist Disciplinary Engagements (February 2010), Shither

Tuesday, November 10

Sexual Consent is NOT Color-Blind: A Black Feminist Call against NYU’s Neoliberal Politics and White Feminist Ideologies, Akiera Charles

Wednesday, November 11

For the Professor, Mick Powell

Thursday, November 12

End to Beginning, Sa Fa

Conclusion, Mick & Heather

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, An Introduction to the “Collective Voice of the Voiceless” Forum on Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Lynden Harris and Madeleine Lambert 

*”Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum Contribution*

Retrieved from Duke University’s #WeAreHere Campaign, Hidden Voices.

Inked in black and gold, the words sprawl across a glass wall inside our student union:

IMAGINE sexual violence doesn’t exist.  What’s different?

Below the script, green and black sticky notes tattoo the glass.

• I wouldn’t be periodically overcome with the feeling of being dirty.
• Intimacy wouldn’t be a game to win.
• I could flirt without being nervous about “giving the wrong impression.”
• I could walk behind a woman at night without being self-conscious that she likely perceives me as a possible perpetrator.
• I would feel safe going to night classes.
• I wouldn’t need my pepper spray and knife.
• I would be proud of my body—proud to be a woman.

Every day more notes appear.  If you pause long enough, a visual chorus begins to emerge:  walk, wear, night, safe, alone.

But notice how rarely the answer to “What’s Different?” appears in present tense.

This past fall, my colleague Madeleine Lambert and I offered a new course at Duke University, “Telling Stories for Social Change: Confronting Sexual and Gender Violence.”  Housed in the Department of Theater Studies, the class was cross-listed with Public Policy, Women’s Studies, Literature, and Dance.  Our aim was to facilitate student exploration into how personal narratives and radical story-sharing can serve as tools for movement-building, advocacy, and policy shifts.  We began with a few simple statistics.

• 300,000 women will be raped on U.S. campuses this year.
• Nine out of ten of those rapes will be serial assaults.
• Most victims will be freshmen.
• Most assaults will happen before Thanksgiving.

Sound bites.

The juxtaposition presented a stripped-down perspective on some commonly held misperceptions.   Yes, college is a time of experimenting with relationships, boundaries, sex, alcohol, and more—a messy and liberating period.  But contrary to many recent blog posts and articles, confusion over consent isn’t driving the problem.

Retrieved from Duke University’s #WeAreHere Campaign, Hidden Voices

“Telling Stories for Social Change” was designed and facilitated from a solutions-based perspective.  The end to sexual violence is reachable and teachable.  The course would provide space for students to uncover and deconstruct personal and societal attitudes and biases related to the issues of interpersonal violence and then utilize their new understanding to facilitate similar integrative pathways for peers.  And because this was a service-learning course, students would be learning from community members through oral histories and ethnographies or what we at Hidden Voices call “living listening.”

Whose stories need to be shared?  Who needs to hear them?  What do they not understand?  What blocks their understanding?  In conjunction with research and fieldwork, students engaged the Hidden Voices process to consider resonant questions, identify targeted outcomes in their communities, develop a multifaceted action plan to end sexual violence, and gather the community members most affected by violence and most able to forward its end.  The students built a collective.

They built #WeAreHereDUKE.

Foundational to Hidden Voices’ process is the precept that all targeted outcomes and action strategies must be personal, passionate, and possible.  Passionate gained a whole new meaning once students entered the living listening sessions with victim-survivors, advocates, and service-providers.

Whether we call it engaged scholarship, community fieldwork or co-teaching, this exchange between stakeholders and students is key to informed, participatory action.  Issues take on a face and a feeling.  Solutions are no longer theoretical but evolve from lived experience, as was expressed the course: “Before entering this class, my attitude toward the subject of rape could best be described as ambivalent, perhaps even apathetic . . . it was too hard to determine who was telling the truth, so I just stayed away from the issue, actively choosing to remain neutral and not take a stand. . . My viewpoint has now drastically changed, and it did so in this class as I began to read and listen to the stories of actual victims.”

“WeAreHere” follows a collective community based statement of purpose: “WeAreHere stands for victims and survivors. We are all victims when any one of us is harmed. WeAreHere stands for allies and advocates. We can take care of each other. WeAreHere stands for men willing to stand up not back.  We can affect change.”

With the support of these community “stakeholder” voices, students developed three campaign strategies (social media, public policy, campus events) to realize their targeted outcomes, along with a plan to collaborate in future semesters with other campuses to continue changing the social and political cultures that support sexual violence.

Social Media: Iconic Duke.  One cold morning, students gathered on the gothic Chapel steps to photograph the statistics that had most influenced their shifting understanding of campus sexual violence and to pair them with action steps.  Seventy-five percent of victims tell someone, usually a friend.  Are you prepared to listen?  In order to post the photos more widely, the class created the WeAreHereDUKE Facebook page and Twitter feed @WeAreHereDUKE. This fall, students are expanding the sites as story-sharing vehicles.

Policy: The policy initiative identified two critical areas for change: reporting and prevention.  In conjunction with Duke victim-survivors, and with guidance from Duke Student Government, the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, the Women’s Center, and Duke Support, the policy group surveyed students about attitudes and experiences with the campus reporting process. Based on response data the policy initiative drafted a letter recommending fundamental and feasible changes to the reporting and the hearing-resolution processes. Students presented the survey results and recommendation letter to the university Task Force on Gender Violence, which included Duke’s Title IX Coordinator, Gender Violence Intervention Coordinators, Chief of Police, and Head of Student Affairs. The presentation sparked dynamic discussions, which continue, and contributed to several tangible changes in the reporting and the hearing-resolution processes, including increased inclusivity in the language used and the fulltime hiring of a woman in the role of Title IX outreach and response.

Retrieved from Duke University’s #WeAreHere Campaign, Hidden Voices

The policy group also focused on prevention.  Expanding the student-facilitated Prevent Act Challenge Teach (P.A.C.T.) training was one of the class’ targeted outcomes.  P.A.C.T. training helps students identify situations of concern and provides tools to encourage successful interventions. In response to the policy letter and presentation, approximately one-third of the 2015 incoming freshman class were P.A.C.T. trained.

Campus Events: Campus actions included the interactive vision-sharing wall Imagine, a T-shirt campaign, a zine publication, and a community performance.

T-shirt campaign.  More than two hundred faculty members, student leaders, and athletes wore T-shirts emblazoned with the hashtag #WeAreHereDuke.  At the beginning of class, faculty read a statement about the campaign, which began: “One in four women will experience rape.  Picture four women you love: your mother, your sister, your best friend, your girlfriend.  Which one do you choose?”

Inviting faculty to participate in this movement opened the door to some new revelations.  Most faculty appreciated the invitation to participate.  Most were concerned with the impact of sexual violence on their students and their families.  And most felt poorly prepared to respond. As one faculty member stated, “I wore the shirt tonight and read your statement to the class. . . I want to wear it tomorrow and Wednesday and each time someone asks me what the shirt means, I will give them a copy of your statement.”

The Zine.  Sketches, stories, and statistics about sexual violence at Duke.  One opening piece was reveling in particular.  A female class member shared this male student’s response to an informal campus climate assessment:  “We want to respect you, but if you don’t make us then we won’t … I searched for some sort of hidden positive meaning, but the translation was clear.  I am going to push you to give me as much as you are willing to give.  And if you are unsure of yourself, I am going to get more than you are willing to give because you have no idea what the fuck you are doing.”

Performance.  Each student wrote two performance pieces: first, a monologue based on the listening sessions with victim-survivors, activists, lobbyists, and artists; and secondly, a personal narrative tracing their own arc of change during the course. The final evening of the semester, we welcomed a public audience into the theater to hear these passionate, powerful, and personal presentations.  Within minutes, students, workshop participants, administrators, faculty, and community members filled the space. The audience was multigenerational, ethnically diverse and with a robust representation of men.  This was not the choir we were preaching to.  Nor were we preaching.  We were offering an opportunity for connection and reflection.   Scores of potential audience members had to be turned away, an unfortunate reminder that open spaces for this kind of community connection and reflection are far too rare.

The student who confessed to feeling ambivalent about the issue mentioned above closed her piece this way:

Knowledge has changed my ambivalence. A survivor [I interviewed] spoke of the repercussions she experiences thirty plus years later.

As much as we’d like to think ‘I am over it.  I am done. I don’t need to hold onto that,’ I think our bodies and our hearts and our souls have a much harder time letting go.

I am proof that people’s perspectives can change.  I am now an advocate of victims’ rights. . . 

Retrieved from Duke University’s #WeAreHere Campaign, Hidden Voices

After the students presented their narratives, we opened the floor to conversation. The first three questions were “Are you teaching this course again?”  and then, “No, seriously are you teaching this course again?”  We responded that we would teach the course until we no longer needed to.  When we asked for other questions or comments, a woman found her way to the microphone and uttered five words. “Someone just told my story.”  She paused.  And was unable to say more.  #WeAreHere is a powerful thing to be part of.

Afterward, the survivors who had collaborated with the course requested photos with their students—another marker on their long journey.  It was an honor and reckoning for the students to recognize their personal agency, as vehicles of change for the survivors, for the audience, and for themselves. Over and over we heard students say, “This is the first time I’ve been in a class where what I create has real impact. What we do in this class affects actual change.”

Transformation is powerful to experience.  Ending sexual and gender violence begins with envisioning a new way of being in the world.  In present tense:

• I can wear what I want, when I want, where I want, AND NO ONE HARASSES ME.
• Men step up, not back.
• Gender roles are redefined: Masculinity/male sexuality will no longer be synonymous with violent behavior or uncontrollable sexual urges.
• Women are called women, not girls.
• Everyone is free to dance!
• I can forget.

**********

Lynden Harris is co-instructor for “Telling Stories for Social Change: Confronting Sexual and Domestic Violence” at Duke University.  During her decades of work as an artist facilitating community connections, Lynden developed the Hidden Voices Process, a participatory workshop model designed to empower change through collective visioning and collaborative action.  This process facilitates a dynamic exchange between documentary, art, and community that allows for a multiplicity of voices and a multiplexity of understandings.  Lynden is the founder and director of Hidden Voices.

Madeleine Lambert is a theater artist and teacher. She is the co-instructor for the course “Telling Stories for Social Change: Confronting Sexual and Domestic Violence” at Duke University.

Since 2003, Hidden Voices has collaborated with underrepresented communities to create award-winning works that combine narrative, mapping, performance, music, digital media, animation, and interactive exhibits to engage audiences and participants in explorations of difficult issues. Hidden Voices creates venues where stories from those rarely seen and heard by mainstream society take center stage. These life-changing stories provide insight about identity, place, and access. They help us understand the unrecognized, unfamiliar, and displaced among us. Hidden Voices’ projects include narrative, performances, interactive exhibits, audio and walking tours, critical mapmaking, print and digital media.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, A Report on #WeAreHere: The Collective appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Alissa R. Ackerman and Simona Sharoni

*”Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum Contribution*

We realized that we are both survivors a few months ago, while viewing the Clothesline Project, a part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, at the University of Washington, Tacoma. We talked about how our experiences as survivors help us work with survivors on campus and motivate us as advocates. The new survivor-led activism on gender-based and sexual violence created space for student-survivors to tell their stories, but so far few faculty have publicly disclosed their experiences of rape and sexual assault. Because we believe that our stories as survivors can play a role in the movement to end sexual assault on college campuses and in society, we wanted to open a conversation on the topic. We tried to imagine questions that survivors, both students and faculty, would have for us.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Did you talk about your assault after it happened? What was the reaction of those around you?

Alissa – I was raped when I was sixteen.  I struggled in silence for many years out of fear that nobody would believe me, and that if they did they would blame me for what happened. I moved away for college at seventeen and was immediately drowning. I was an honors student, but my grades were failing. I exhibited clear signs of distress. Nobody at my university seemed to notice. Nobody checked in with me. Nobody asked if I needed help. Nobody offered a safe place to talk and I certainly didn’t seek one out. Before Thanksgiving break I withdrew from school and moved closer to home.

Simona — I was twenty nine when I was sexually assaulted. I was an international student pursuing a doctorate. The perpetrator was a middle-age faculty member and a well-known scholar in my field. My initial response was shock, followed by outrage. My friends were supportive but faculty, with one exception, advised me to put the “unfortunate” incident behind me. I was already an outspoken feminist and social justice activist so remaining silent was not an option for me. I was especially appalled by the reluctance of some well known feminist scholars to hold their colleague accountable.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

How did your experiences as survivors impact your personal and intellectual journeys?  

Alissa: I was always intrigued by criminal behavior, so I pursued a degree in criminal justice. In graduate school I began studying sexual violence because I wanted to know what made people commit these acts. More importantly, I wondered how to stop them from occurring. I built my career based on answering these types of questions in hopes that my work could help stop others from having to endure similar experiences to mine. I hold a Ph.D. in criminal justice and my research expertise is in sex crimes policy. I’ve learned that most of our policies are not survivor focused. Part of the reason for this is that survivors, like me, have not spoken out about their dual roles.  I disclosed to one friend in graduate school, but otherwise remained silent for fifteen years.  I was concerned that others would call my objectivity and expertise into question simply because I am a survivor.  I now understand that my voice as a faculty-survivor and my voice as a sex crimes policy researcher are equally important and not mutually exclusive.

Simona: Following my assault I worked for several years on trying to create accountability mechanisms within professional associations because I met the perpetrator at an academic conference. My efforts, which coincided with the students anti-rape movement of the 1990s were met with serious resistance. I was dismissed as an angry feminist, imposing my agenda, and blowing a minor incident out of proportion. However, as a result of my advocacy, several survivors reached out to me, including some who were attacked by the same person who assaulted me. One of main research interests involves the relationship between political violence and gender-based violence in conflict-torn societies. After receiving my Ph.D., I was determined to support survivors and to hold perpetrators, including my colleagues, accountable.  On my second day on the job at a reputable private institution, I was approached by a graduate student who shared her experiences of sexual harassment and intimidation by a very popular faculty member. I used the existing policy on campus to support the student in filing an anonymous complaint against the faculty member. Within weeks I became the target of institutional retaliation and eventually lost the bid for a tenure-track job at that institution. Again, most of my colleagues warned me against speaking up in support of the student and demanding institutional accountability.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

How do you use your experiences as survivors in the work that you do nowadays?

Alissa: Students will speak to trusted professors before they will seek out other resources. Given the content my courses, students often disclose to me that they are survivors. For years I listened in silence and I felt like a fraud for not acknowledging that I understood their pain and shame. Somewhere along the way I realized that I could be for my students what I so wished someone had been for me.  Change begins with one voice and I vowed to be that voice. Today, I do not shy away from the fact that I am a survivor. I disclose in class when doing so will result in a teachable moment. When students disclose to me, I now tell them that I am survivor and that I understand. I acknowledge my unique position as a sex crimes researcher and survivor. I use my expertise to advocate for policy changes that support the needs of survivors and I work to make campuses, and the greater society, free from sexual violence. Recently I gave the keynote speech at Take Back the Night on my campus. Several students told me that knowing that their professor was also a survivor was “life-changing and empowering.” This inspires me to continue speaking out.

Simona: I think that ALL faculty, regardless of their gender and personal experiences with rape or sexual assault, should get involved in confronting campus sexual assault. Those of us who are survivors have an important role to play. After my disappointment with my original field of study, I found a home in gender and women’s studies. Like Alissa, I gravitated towards research and teaching that helped me re-examine my own assault and gain both analytical and practical tools to work with survivors. In the classroom, I often identify as a survivor when we discuss gender-based violence. I shared the story of my assault when I was invited to speak at Take Back the Night, and I always tell survivors who choose to disclose their traumatic experience that I too am a survivor. Survivors share a powerful bond of pain and resilience that is difficult to craft into words, especially the first time someone tells her story.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

What are some obstacles preventing faculty-survivors from disclosing their experiences?

Alissa:  The main obstacle preventing faculty-survivors from disclosing is the same one that keeps most survivors living in silence. So often, the shame of sexual violence rests on the shoulders of those individuals who fall victim to it. Survivors fear being blamed, disbelieved, or seen as weak or damaged. These fears can be especially difficult for faculty members to navigate when merging personal experiences with professional life. There is nothing shameful about being a survivor and as more of us speak out and stand in solidarity, the less shame we will feel. It is easy to ignore one faculty-survivor, but to ignore an entire contingent is impossible.

Simona: In addition to Alissa’s answer, for faculty there is also the fear that colleagues and administrators will use our personal stories to undermine our professional expertise. Even without identifying as survivors, faculty with expertise on campus sexual assault, especially those who advocate for survivors, have been retaliated against. Those of us who identify as survivors fear that administrators could use our experiences as an excuse to further marginalize us and to exclude us from crucial discussions where survivors’ concerns should be represented.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Concluding remarks:

The decision by college administrators to turn all faculty into mandated reporters has complicated the relationship between faculty and survivors. The fact that we, as faculty survivors, can choose when, where, and to whom we disclose information about our assaults but students do not have this choice is problematic. This is one of the many reasons why we have criticized the blanket imposition of mandated reporting across campus. Faculty survivors can play an important role on campus by serving as confidential advocates for student survivors.

Clothesline Project at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

We wrote this piece first and foremost to convey to student and faculty who are survivors that they are not alone. We are part of a strong movement, led by survivors, determined to make our campuses and communities safer. We want readers to understand the hope we have found amidst outrage and despair. Our assaults happened decades ago, but they remain with us.  They took a serious toll on our lives, but they also shaped us into compassionate faculty and fearless advocates for survivors. Perhaps if more faculty-survivors spoke up, college administrators would treat us as assets to institutions, rather than liabilities. As faculty-survivors, we should be consulted as colleges review existing resources designed to support survivors and policies to hold perpetrators accountable. Additionally, those of us who teach in relevant fields should work to integrate material about sexual assault into our courses. As always, by telling our stories, we hope that faculty and students who are ready to come forward would join us and share theirs.

**********

Alissa R. Ackerman is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the Social Work Program at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She has written extensively on sex offender policy and practice and is currently involved in several research projects that span from sex offender policy to survivor-centered healing.

Simona Sharoni is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh, a founding member of Faculty Against Rape (FAR) and the co-chair (with Tricia Yi-Chun Lin) of the interest group “Confronting Campus Sexual Assault” at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA). Sharoni wrote the comprehensive college-level curriculum for the documentary film The Hunting Ground.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Faculty-Survivors and Campus Sexual Assault: A Conversation appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Anonymous

*”Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum Contribution*

Our movement is a safe space, they say

Inside, I’m cackling and sobbing at the same time

totally incredulous

the fuck?

Outside, I’m stone faced

totally speechless

deep breaths

I want to interrupt the press conference

I want to tear down every sign

and then my clothes and hair

and cry the tears I never shed when his hands were on me

when I couldn’t get out of bed

when I looked for miles and could find no one who knew the dull dolor of clipped wings

and scream exactly what I think of all the people who did not see

and throttle every last activist who thinks they’ve reached a point of enlightenment, exemption

I want to look each of them in the eyes and say

Just because I gave my body to your protest

does not mean you know the lines it has stepped over

or the walls it runs into

headlong

every

day

But I keep my cool

and isn’t it funny

how cool means silence

I keep myself distracted through the rest of the press conference with an ironic imaginary

conversation between me and resurrected Audre Lorde in my head

Safe spaces are like rainbows

Just slap a sticker on

Bam

coalition work done here

check that one off the list

We know better

don’t we?

We know that an oft-used synonym for safety is security

a word which begs a question: who?

It would be easy to say

I should have just called campus police

but then I would not be holding my community accountable

but then what do I tell my Black comrades who fear in the night?

but then what would I have said when my queerness

came to refracted light?

No homo, officer

No homo sapien, I renounce my human chains

I’ll fly home, no escort needed

I did not know the sick ironies of reclaiming space

until I knew the pounding of my own slowed heart on a couch far from home

Whose streets? Nah, the question should be Whose legs? Whose bones? Whose breasts?

Who can walk about in their own skin?

And who gets to walk all over that skin?

White women before me have already reclaimed the streets for SlutWalkers™

the streets paved by Brown hands over Native lands

They were never not mine

and yet no street could have stopped the pain the fear the immobilization

No street could have wailed LUZZEM for me when my voice died on my tongue

I never needed a street, I needed a friend

I needed the distance between my hand and my cellphone

I was inside

and you see,

we are often inside

entertaining company with a smile plastered onto our lips

pretending to be asleep

praying for one of us to stop breathing it doesn’t matter who

to interrupt the fable

This is more than skirts more than waiting more than condom parties

but somewhere between the wired late night meetings

and the groggy early morning greetings

and the midday press conference-zoos

somewhere between my tired body and the groping hands of someone I trusted

this was all forgotten

I’ll saunter away from the press conference

I’ll exhale loudly to be sure that I breathe

and watch as the sigh-cloud floats away in the cold afternoon air

and I wish

I wish I wish

I could fly away with it too

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Safe Space appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Shither

 *”Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival Forum Contribution*

              The spatial organization of the conference room suggests that a witnessing is about to take place. We all face one another, ready for engagement but the tension is strong. We are women, some women of color, deep class chasms, and positioned against one another within the hierarchy of the academic industrial complex. We feel especially alone.

We range from graduate student to full professor to artists

all embedded within the West

with urgency:

Why are there only women here, seemingly interested in this conversation?

Why is the self-proclaimed-patriarch speaking and everyone else following her lead?

Where is the breaking down of hierarchies that we talk so much about in the literature?

We watch as she decays from the inside out.

We are hesitant to do this work.

Tensions deaden the ability to speak—how to crack through it?
The first topic of the day? Hair.
What is it about feminists and hair?
Perhaps what needs to be said is that feminists of color have had to learn to do “hair talk”
as a way to put white feminists at ease.
Or is it a reminder that if nothing else, we have this commonality?

              Or is it the desire to be “just as beautiful”
or is it to reassure that not all our sentences begin with the Revolution

              for our brothers and sisters that are living

under the cement walls and wires of imperialism

              in New York City’s prisons or Baghdad’s streets—

                            conversations too threatening
and fall flat on cool eyes flickering with death.

What

              falls

OUT

of this game of hair-connectivity?

                                                                      Hair as social death;

that it is the segregating force of how to know difference, to reassert that

you

and

I

              are not                                                                      the same.

Some people’s hair

              carry histories of violence, of regulation, of death, and inner turmoil— of resistance, liberation, and refusal to be contained

and

other people’s hair carry forces of colonization so strong that it is easier to say

              “did you just get it cut?”

                            Who did the cutting? (my mom, my colonizer, my sister who never went to college
                            but still believes in utopia)

It is easier to just say how great your hair looks today as a way to defend the self against bad news…

Scanning the room, unable to move past a young woman of color graduate student who had to come to this place…

              Is that pain and suspension on her face?

                            Is it a warning sign that an all-out battle, in one form or another, is about to take place in this room?
                            She is here to bear witness…to whose pain?

              Graduate school teaches us through affective exchange that it is best to avoid these exposures and possibilities for clarity because it sucks too much out of us.

Be professional and summarize instead.

Why do we allow the siphoning of our souls in these moments of smiling faces and nodding heads?

To accumulate knowledge?

To become better people?

To learn the game and use it against new generations, like the older ones continue to do to us?

How many eco-friendly shoes of feminists who recant their politics for institutional profit will step on our faces before we begin to set their feet on fire and watch them dance through the pain of their lost souls…

It is too difficult to hold honest discussions about political violence in the “post-colonial world” with feminists, with (too many) white women, with those who chose to align with whiteness—decades of struggles that fall on deaf ears, yet make the body and all this “academic success” possible.

“We” talk of war and violence and the bodies of woman “over there,” while the students we work with and some of us “right here” negotiate the daily, intergenerational assaults of sexual, racial, and gender violence that so many faculty experts dare not name…for fear of retaliation from the institution that feeds them…

Hunger Strikes
              A historical practice for people who owed debts: fast at the doorstep of the moneylenders in order to gain more time;

              A political call for attention to injustice and inhumanity—
visions of
              Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity, Gitmo, IRA, Mahatma Gandhi, “Iron-Jawed Angels,” United Farm Workers, Palestine… a very small naming of hundreds of years and millions of emotions;

              The pain in the abdomen, the mind, the finger tips, the soul…

But we have already said this…

              These exchanges have to move us—people, the field, world politics—somewhere, anywhere but here.

We start screaming.

Floating on the surface is an appreciation of this moment. It allows us the space to struggle with mis/translations of our soul…

              the loss of words

              for the knowledge acquired from still-birthed conversations,

              the loss of words

              for experience becoming wisdom while he serves 70 years in my
              lifetime.

              Eight years later,

              the loss of words

              when a face that looks just like his young, black, and beautiful is
              shot three times,

              five bullets in total though

              his shoulder once

              and hand once too

              (he was trying to save himself)

              With genocide and homicide unsolved historically

              reality and fantasy intertwine,

              I agree.

              But the mirror does not lie,

              all of this happened to us.

              The loss of words

              as single poor mothers support one another to raise the nation,

              we worship through their unconditional connectivities.

              The loss of words

              from intergenerational struggle carried deep in our bones,

              connections made between blood and memory,

              as we witness now in these misplaced bodies—

              the life we’ve led is more sensual than you could ever imagine and we could ever explain.

But our countries, our landscapes, are ignored here.

                                          Some participants begin to narrate emotions as a way to say they are important without confronting how these emotions dictate power within global politics and academic knowledge formation. We rely on the distancing of emotion—of each other—to tell their story.

The story of white supremacy and all its axes of power

Again

And again

And again.

Why is there an unwillingness to delve into our own feelings about how we engage with the pains of creating?

 SHOULD WE NOT BE ASKING HOW TO DIVEST IN THESE FRAMEWORKS OF PRIVILEGE RATHER THAN REINSITUTIONALIZING (Y)OUR PRIVILEGE?

Must we keep reminding ourselves that not everyone is a poet (or are they?) yearning for engagement with emotions and the inarticulate-able? What is the utility of studying the emotions, or seemingly lack of, of those encountered

in                                 the                               field…..

how do those feelings reflect pain and distress onto our fields
                                                        of
                                                        understanding?

A crop duster flies over-head releasing tons of pesticides on Monsanto’s genetically modified crops, which seeps into the fields of land stolen from communities who are written into history as the needy ones—

              USAF A1s Skyraider

                            F100 Super Sabre

                                          F-4G Wild Weasel

                                                        F-14 Tomcat

                                                                      F-15 Eagle

                                                        F-16 Fighting Falcon

                                          F/A-18 Hornet

                            A-10 Thunderbolt

              B-52…

It never ends.

TELL US what emotion comes out of a Tomahawk Cruise Missile?

This space configures us through spectacle, we are all serving as witness to the discomfort with the Other’s feelings…do they despise us…how many times do we tell ourselves we are doing good things, dangerous, but good…we’re needed to do this work…

but wait—

Can we refuse our spectacular positions? Can we

EVER

get through this trauma of colonized feminist knowledge exchange?

IT IS necessitated
for social transformation.

Shall we just hold each other’s hand and
JUMP
Ship—
Knowing the ocean devours so many bodies?

Keep the process of segregation intact.
Don’t engage, don’t make eye contact

In
That
Room

—where is the honesty, the trust, the commitment, the politics?
The Feminism?

We are all witness to our ping-pong debates, our struggles of “affective exchange”
And they always end in full-blown interrogation of each one of us by

each
one
of
us.

Each question seems to strike a painful cord,
              resulting in hot comments back, ignoring the person’s presence.

THE GAME HAS ALWAYS BEEN SURVIVAL THROUGH ERADICATION:
              the brutality of colonial feminist mothers and their privileged young deathlings.

We have nothing left to talk about, and yet—
                                          There’s too much going on here.

Fear surfaces, the strongest will survive, and labor recenters itself.

Our feelings of rage, instability, and survival result in….

**********

Shither: co-anonymous, collective writing.  Old English, to “shiver” from the coldness of colonial feminists.  Decolonial, to feel the “shivers” generated from the heat of feminist decolonizations.  A divesting strategy that refuses incorporation into the feminist industrial complex. A truth telling framework amidst universal deceit, and in the face of retaliation.  An embracing of the shit that is her, that is us– contradictions, survivors, and love.  A continuation…

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Deleted Scenes and Improper Acts: Scars from Reoccurring Feminist Disciplinary Engagements (February 2010) appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Dear Communities:

We are grateful for your engagement with this Forum over these past two and half weeks—reading, comments, and sharing with others. Your interest in the Forum and continued support of The Feminist Wire reminds us of the strength community provides.

We are grateful for the work published in the Forum and for the contributors trusting all of us with their intimate thoughts and experiences, and for sharing their theories and strategies regarding violence, self-care, and social change. Your writings provide us with insight on how to think through each other’s pain and develop new approaches so that we may work together to reclaim educational spaces for liberatory work.

We are grateful for the virtual place of The Feminist Wire, which has been materialized in so many ways through everyone’s commitments to ending a world saturated with white supremacy along every axis of power. Your imaginations, labor, and collective love on a daily basis makes real all the possibilities of just futures, today.

Yet amidst all this gratitude, dear Communities, we remain outraged at the continued re-solidification of white supremacy and hetero-patriarchal privilege in our educational systems. In the two and half weeks of this Forum, we have witnessed ongoing violence against youth of color in high schools and universities. We are outraged at the militarization of our schools and people’s complicity in this process.   As this forum has detailed, the hostile environments of our educational spaces are toxic, violent, and antithetical to the work of justice. No student should carry this burden of violence—on their body or soul. No faculty, staff, or student should ever have to face retaliation for speaking truth to power.

We are outraged about the way universities trivialize and infantilize Title IX, gender and sexual violence, and anti-violence activism and awareness into cutesy cupcake festivals. We are outraged at the constant renaming and cooptation of historical feminist political projects into neoliberal mainstreaming that diverts attention away from institutional violence. We are outraged at the ways in which academic departments historically have been, and continue to be, sites of violences that go ignored by the administration. We are outraged about the school-to-prison pipeline, the blatant and violent racist conditions in which university students, faculty, and staff exist and the continued denial of safety, access, and humanity.

We write this letter to you in lieu of a conclusion to the Forum. What has been raised in this Forum is far from an ending; rather, it has offered up an opening to keep conversations going and build new strategies together. We ask you to continue to engage with us—we ask that you continue to send us your writings and naming the violences and sharing your strategies for self-care, solidarity, and survival. As editors, we will archive this work as a collection that is part of a larger collective.

Together we will refuse the silences and amnesias of institutional violence. Together we will educate each other with history and intimacy. Together we will dismantle this system and reconstruct anew. Dear Communities, you are already doing this work and we send you strength to keep doing so—thank you.

In continued love and solidarity,
Mick & Heather

**************

“COLLECTIVE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS”:
CAMPUS VIOLENCE, RESISTANCE, AND STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVAL

Table of Contents

Monday, October 26

Introduction, Mick & Heather

What I Should’ve Said Then, Emily Rooney

Tuesday, October 27

Taking What’s Mine, Alex-Quan Pham

Wednesday, October 28

The Silence of Burning, Grace Kuell

Thursday, October 29

Collective Love in a Time of Tension, Mick Powell

Friday, October 30

A Report on #WeAreHere, Lynden Harris & Madeleine Lambert

What I Owe, Brendane Tynes

Good & Quiet Men, Andrew Tan Delli Cicchi

Monday, November 2

Clapping Back and Losing Friends I Never Liked, Terese Marie Mailhot

Tuesday, November 3

Faculty Survivors and Campus Sexual Assault: A Conversation, Alissa Ackerman and Simona Sharoni

Wednesday, November 4

Safe Space, Anonymous

Thursday, November 5

Speak: My Own Transformation from Silence, Hannah Robb

Friday, November 6

UConn’s Dangerous Politics: Valuing Profits over Students’ Safety, Lisa Vickers

Monday, November 9

Deleted Scenes and Improper Acts: Scars from Reoccurring Feminist Disciplinary Engagements (February 2010), Shither

Tuesday, November 10

Sexual Consent is NOT Color-Blind: A Black Feminist Call against NYU’s Neoliberal Politics and White Feminist Ideologies, Akiera Charles

Wednesday, November 11

For the Professor, Mick Powell

Thursday, November 12

End to Beginning, Sa Fa

Conclusion, Mick & Heather

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Dear Communities: In Lieu of a Conclusion to the “Collective Voice of the Voiceless”: Campus Violence, Resistance, and Strategies for Survival appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Cover of Simmons’ personal copy of June Jordan’s “Naming Our Destiny: New & Selected Poems,” photo credit: Aishah Shahidah Simmons

I was first introduced to June Jordan’s words through the books on both of my divorced radical activist parents’ — Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons — bookshelves when I was a young Black girl and teenager coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s. However, I “met” June Jordan in 1991 through sister award-winning filmmaker Pratibha Parmar’s classic and timeless film, A Place of Rage, which is an incredible cinematic tribute to prominent African-American women featuring, Angela Y. Davis, June Jordan, and Alice Walker‘s engaged activism. It was Parmar’s A Place of Rage, where I experienced and became enamored with this incredible out Black bisexual feminist poet, essayist, activist, and distinguished professor named June Jordan. At that time, I was twenty-two years old. I was not able to say that I was molested as a child by my paternal (step)grandfather over a period of two years. I was barely able to say that I was raped in my sophomore year in college. It was three-years before I began my eleven-year journey to make my feature length film NO! The Rape Documentary. And this Black woman poet/warrior/activist/professor called out the various manifestations of physical, sexual and political rape in her Poem About My Rights not only in writing (Directed by Desire and Naming Our Destiny: New & Selected Poems), but also on the screen in A Place of Rage. The entire poem consistently takes my breath away every single time I read the poem, or hear an online recording of her performing it, or see her read it in A Place of Rage. However, it’s the final third of the poem that always, always reverberates throughout the core of my body:

I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life (102-103)

June Jordan is an ancestral Black feminist bisexual spirit whose radical anti-sexual violence work is one of the bedrocks of my own life’s work to break the silence and work towards ending the sexual violence committed against children, women and QTPOC (queer, trans* people of color).

Sista June’s words were also an integral part of my life’s musical soundtrack. I frequently hummed her words to the tune of Sweet Honey In The Rock® (SHITR) songs. Where would I be without SHITR founder Sista Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon’s musical arrangement of Jordan’s poetic and lyrical words that have been my anthems for decades?:

Alla Tha’s All Right, But… (Seven Day Kiss) (1981)

[…] I been scheming about my people I been scheming about sex
I been dreaming about Africa and nightmaring Oedipus the Rex
But what I need is quite specific
terrifying rough stuff and terrific

I need an absolutely one to one a seven-day kiss[…]

Oughta Be A Woman, (1981)

Washing the floors to send you to college
 Staying at home so you can feel safe
What do you think is the soul of her knowledge
What do you think that makes her feel safe[…]

The fathers, the children, the brothers
Turn to her and everybody white turns to her
What about her turning around
Alone in the everyday light[…]

We are the ones/Waiting for (1998)

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for

Sista June’s “Notes of a Barnard College Drop Out” (Civil Wars, 1975) was my lifeline in the “you’re a failure and you’ll never succeed in life” ocean that I was almost drowning in because I dropped out of both Swarthmore College and Temple University after my rape/consensual sex/pregnancy/safe and legal abortion at the ripe age of nineteen years-old in 1989.

And because Barnard College did not teach me necessity, nor prime my awareness as to urgencies of need around the world, nor galvanize my heart around the critical nature of conflicts between the powerful and the powerless, and, because, beyond everything else, it was not going to be school, evidently, but life-after-school, that would teach me the necessities for radical change, and revolution, I left. I dropped out of Barnard. It was, apparently, an optional experience.

And so I continue: a Black woman who would be an agent for change, an active member of the hoped-for apocalypse. I am somebody seeking to make, or to create, revolutionary connections between the full identity of my love, of what hurts me, or fills me with nausea, and the way things are: what we are forced to learn, to “master,” what we are trained to ignore, what we are bribed into accepting, what we are rewarded for doing, or not doing . . . (101)

I never met Sista June and yet her words not only affirmed and comforted me time and time again most especially in the 90s, but they also provided road maps for my different paths that ultimately merged into one life’s journey. Initially unchartered territory for me, she traveled down these paths and left a trail from which I could learn and either follow or create my own.

Throughout the six days of this celebratory  forum, readers  had an opportunity to hear from a range of intergenerational Black/Latin@, Arab, white, straight and queer activists, scholars, poets and cultural workers who knew Sista June personally or solely through her words. This online gathering represents a tiny sampling of all those whose lives have been influenced, impacted, ignited, inspired by June Jordan’s relentless and fiercely courageous activism. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s lyrical Introduction sets the tone for the forum. She informs the readers that this is an online praisesong soaked in love and respect for June Jordan.

It was a gift to publish love notes written by Margo Okazawa-Rey, Alexis De Veaux, and Evelyn C. White — three trailblazing, mapmaking  Black feminist activists, authors and scholars who shared personal anecdotes about beloved Sista June.

[j]im saliba and Aya de Léon’s articles provide a glimpse of life as a student and friend in June Jordan’s “Poetry for the People” program at UC Berkeley and life as Jordan’s successor of the directorship of the “Poetry for the People” program ten years ago. Sista June’s words are the foundation from which Kimalee Phillips builds the contemporary case for radical activism against, and demanding (not asking for) accountability and justice against those structures and systems that marginalize and annihilate. Tamara Lea Spira, Mick Powell , r. erika doyle, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs each provide beautifully crafted personal, herstorical, political, and creative experiences through and with Sista June’s writings and activism. All of which highlight that June Jordan’s legacy is not stagnant but is very much alive and breathing life into contemporary moments.

While almost all of the contributors made reference to Sista June’s non-negotiable stance against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Darnell L. Moore, Therese Saliba, and Sumaya Awad each detailed some of the many ways Sista June was unwavering with her public acts of solidarity with Palestinian sisters and brothers through her writing about, and speaking up and out against the Israeli occupation of Palestine as early as the 1980s. Perhaps not directly but without question Sista June’s early pro-Palestinian activism was one of the precursors to the powerful “Black Solidarity with Palestine” organizing campaign, which led to over 1,100 Black activists, artists, scholars, students and organizations that signed the statement. I am one of the over 1,100 signatories.  The solidarity statement, which is translated into Arabic, French, and German, draws parallels between white supremacist state sanctioned violence committed against Black people in the United States and settler-colonialist Israeli violence perpetrated against Palestinians in the occupied territories, “Palestinians living in Israel and the seven million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other countries in the region.” If Sista June were alive today, she would’ve been among the first to sign, if not co-organize, in tandem with the her younger comraders, this statement.

Kai M. Green and tourmalines’ collaborative artistic, sonic and poetic meditations are the final tribute in this six-day forum. They place Jordan’s ‘A Poem About My Rights’ as the foundation for their bridge with the past to contemporary realities of Black resistance, Black love and Black joy in the midst of white supremacist violence committed against Black people.

March 25, 2016 is the seventy-seventh birthday anniversary of another Black feminist ancestral spirit named Toni Cade Bambara. Given that Sistas Toni and June share a powerful herstory, it’s quite cosmic that The Feminist Wire (TFW) close this six-day online celebration of June Jordan’s life and legacy on Toni Cade Bambara’s birthday anniversary. Sista June is the third Black feminist ancestral spirit who was the focus of TFW online celebrations of their lives and legacies. Sista June’s contemporaries, colleagues in the SEEK City College Program in New York in the 1960s, and sista friends Toni Cade Bambara and Audre Lorde were the other two celebrants.

I won’t delve deep in this “peace,” but I definitely remember my teacher and big sistafriend Toni interrogating why so many of the radical activist/cultural worker/sistren who taught in the SEEK program had some form of dis*ease. Cancer cut Sistas Audre, Toni, and June’s physical lives in the prime of their lives in the 1990s and early 2000s. If Sista June were with us today, she would turn eighty years old on July 9, 2016. Sista Toni would be seventy-seven today and Sista Audre would’ve celebrated her eighty-second birthday on February 18, 2016. Their spirits and legacies still teach and inform.

It is purely magical that Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, and her colleagues in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass) are hosting “Feminist Poetics: Legacies of June Jordan,” a one-day symposium of great interest to students, faculty and the larger community, taking place at UMass on from 9:30 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. today –March 25^th, 2016.

As Mecca wrote in her Introduction to this forum:

The [March 25th UMass symposium] will gather a broad, intergenerational group of important feminist thinkers that includes foundational writers and theorists Cheryl Clarke, Gloria Joseph, Sonia Sanchez, Evelyn Harris, Paula Giddings, and Combahee River Collective members Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier, Sharon Page Ritchie, Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Akasha Gloria Hull. These scholars will engage in rich conversation with emerging and established theorists, artists, and activists including #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Alicia Garza, Evie Shockley, Samiya Bashir, Kevin Quashie, Jennifer DeClue, Aneeka Henderson, Che Gosset, and my brilliant fellow TFW Editorial Collective Members Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Kai M. Green, whose works, like Jordan’s, highlight the crucial connections between feminist inquiry, activism, and the arts.

All of the symposium proceedings will be live streamed and archived. You can view it in real time here. (The archived link will be available through this link: http://feministpoetics.blogspot.com/2016/03/livestream-available-here.html?m=1)

The forum intentionally precedes the one-day symposium. Make no mistake, however, this forum exists because of the symposium. This is a testament to Mecca’s tireless, love inspired visionary work in honor of June Jordan. As with everything at TFW, it takes a village to co-create a forum. Heidi R. Lewis, Mick Powell, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Tc Tolbert, Heather Turcotte, and I were the co-curatorial and co-editorial team behind this forum. We feel more like family in the most loving, healthiest, compassionately accountable, and non-oppressive version.

We reached out to many more people than those who are featured. Due to a variety of reasons, mainly being stretched too thin in this society that requires so much from those of us who believe in freedom and justice, many of the invitees weren’t able to contribute. I personally thank Sister/Friends/Comrades Heba A. Nimr for making the connection with jim saliba and Nadine Naber for making the connection with Therese Saliba. Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah from the Black Feminisms Forum (BFF)Working Group of the AWID (Association of Women in Development) 13^th International Forum made the connection with Kimalee Philips. These connections were pivotal because the three aforementioned important voices were previously unknown to the co-curators/co-editors. Special thank you to TFW Editorial Collective Member Joe Osmudson for his twenty-fifth hour technical issues trouble shooting with the co-curators/co-editors.

We are in the midst of a major fundraising campaign. TFW is an LLC that was co-founded by two Black feminist scholars— Dr. Tamura A. Lomax and Dr. Hortense Spillers. The owners (Tamura, Dr. Monica J. Casper, and Darnell L. Moore) do not make money off of the site. Everything we (the entire editorial collective and published writers) write, create, and publish, we do for free in our third and fourth shifts.  No one is paid for the radical, intersectional, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist, anti-transphobic, anti-imperialist, anti-settler colonialist feminist work that TFW has consistently published since its first article in January 2010. All of TFW’s archived and contemporary articles are readily accessible to anyone who has access to the internet. The traffic at TFW is so heavy that it requires paying for the same size server that a college or university would use. The major difference, however, is that TFW does not have an endowment or even a shoestring budget. TFW does not receive corporate funding nor does it accept ads from corporate entities, and that is intentional. S/He who controls the purse strings controls the vision.

This is invisible, multi-racial, intersectional, feminist labor. We deeply appreciate if not love what we do for our readers and also for ourselves. However, the editorial collective cannot continue to operate this way and be well. We can no longer use our backs to be the bridge to TFW. It takes money to keep TFW up and running. Presently, this money is coming out of some of the very pockets of those who are also donating their time and labor, after their first and second paid shifts let alone family time, to keep the site up and running. I, on behalf of TFW, invite you to please consider both make a donation through our indiegogo campaign and equally as important, spread the word about our fundraising campaign. It takes a village and TFW is calling upon our global village for support so that we can, in the words of Sista June, name our destiny. Thank you.

I close my “peace” and this forum with award-winning and trailblazing Black woman poet and culture maven Patricia Spears Jones‘ words from a March 14, 2016 email to me about her friend and comrade June Jordan:

But most importantly [June Jordan] demands we struggle with love and rage –twins in that fight against oppression.  She could do that because she had the best laugh ever and it came out of love.

The June Jordan Forum index:

Friday, March 18, 2016

• “These words/they are stones in the water”: Introduction to The Feminist Wire Forum on June Jordan by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
• For June by Tamara Lea Spira

Monday, March 21, 2016

• Another world is possible for we are the ones we’ve been waiting for by Kimalee Phillip
• Love Note to June Jordan from Margo Okazawa-Rey

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

• June Jordan, Genre Fiction and Publishing for the People by Aya de Léon
• the oath by jim saliba

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

• learning to pronounce my own name (ode to June Jordan) by Mick Powell
• Defeat Will Be Detestable to Us by r. erica doyle
• June Jordan Solves the Energy Crisis: Love is Lifeforce by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Thursday, March 24, 2016

• The Occupation Stole My Words: June Jordan Helped Me To Relocate Them by Darnell L. Moore
• June Jordan’s Songs of Palestine and Lebanon by Therese Saliba
• A Legacy of Resistance by Sumaya Awad

Friday, March 25, 2016

• Remembering June Jordan and Madonna’s ‘Borderline’ by Evelyn C. White
• A Conjuring Love Supreme: Love Note to JJ by Alexis De Veaux
• Ode to June Jordan’s ‘A Poem About My Rights’ by Kai M. Green and tourmalines
• “Naming Our Destiny”: Afterword to The Feminist Wire’s Forum on June Jordan by Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning Black feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, activist, cultural worker, writer and international lecturer. An incest and rape survivor, she is the creator of the Ford Foundation-funded, internationally acclaimed and award-winning feature length film NO! The Rape Documentary. Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, says, “If the Black community in the Americas and in the world would save itself, it must complete the work that [NO!] begins.” Simmons is the 2015-2016 Sterling Brown Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. She is also a 2016-2018 Just Beginnings Collaborative Fellow. She has taught at and/or been an Artist-in-Residence at Temple University, Scripps College, University of Chicago, and Spelman College. Her essays and articles have been published in several anthologies including the recently released Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence anthology edited by Lisa Factora-Borchers and the forthcoming Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Sexual Violence Movement anthology edited by Jennifer Patterson. Her cultural work and activism have been documented extensively in a wide range of media outlets including in a wide range of media outlets including The Root, Crisis, Forbes, Left of Black, In These Times, Ms. Magazine, Alternet, ColorLines, The Philadelphia Weekly, Tikkun, Ebony, National Public Radio (NPR), Pacifica Radio Network and Black Entertainment Television (BET). She has screened her work, lectured extensively, taught classes, and facilitated workshops and dialogues at colleges and universities, rape crisis centers, juvenile correctional facilities, and government sponsored events throughout the United States and Canada, and in countries in the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia. You can follow her on twitter @AfroLez.

The post “Naming Our Destiny”: Afterword to The Feminist Wire’s Forum on June Jordan appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Julie Winterich

If you find this title ugly, you’re right. It’s jarring and upsetting.

So is sexual violence.

I’m a professor of sociology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and I’m puzzling over the response to the findings of the largest study ever conducted on sexual harassment, assault, and rape among college students.

The American Association of Universities (AAU) surveyed 150,000 students across twenty seven campuses and found that trans, queer, gender nonconforming, questioning (TGQN), and cis female students experience the highest rates of sexual harassment, assault, and rape during college.

Across all institutions, the overall rates of penetration or sexual touching with force or when incapacitated is 11.7%. But that average differs greatly across groups of students from a high of 24.1% for TGQN students and 23.1 % for cis women to a low of 5.4 % for cis men.

The prevalence of the most serious type of sexual assault, an act that involves penetration due to force or incapacitation from alcohol or drugs is greatest among undergraduate TGQN students at 12.4% followed by undergraduate cis women at 10.8%.

According to the 2014 report issued by the White House Council on Girls and Women, survivors of sexual assault can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, alcohol or drug abuse, all of which can impede their success in college. Yet the recently released AAU study documents that most students do not inform campus officials when they’ve been harassed, assaulted, or raped.

Reporting rates range from 5 to 28%, depending on the behavior. For example, stalking (28%) and penetration with physical force (25.5%) are reported most often while sexual contact with incapacitation (5%) is reported the least.

Why not? The most common reason given is that students perceive the incident “wasn’t serious enough.” Other reasons include that students felt “embarrassed, ashamed or that it would be too emotionally difficult.”

A number of media outlets published the findings of this study when it first became public on September 21, 2015. But since early October? Nearly complete radio silence.

Why isn’t the epidemic of assault and rape against TGQN and cis women college students causing a nonstop public outrage?   Where is the outcry?

One way to understand the answer to that question is to consider: who is safest from experiencing assault and rape during college? If we think of sexual violence as the public health problem it is, as identified by the World Health Organization, the question becomes: whose bodies carry the least risk?

The bodies of heterosexual, cis men.

To be clear: no one is 100% risk-free. Heterosexual cis men are not walking through their college years impervious to all sexual violence. When compared to everyone else, though, they disproportionately enjoy higher rates of safety while they seek a college degree.

How would our society react if the study’s findings were turned around? That is, if heterosexual, cis men suffered the highest rates of sexual violence during college?

There wouldn’t be radio silence, that’s for sure.

If heterosexual, cis men consistently suffered the highest rates of sexual violence while maintaining their status in society as the most privileged by gender, sexuality, and educational status—in other words, if everything was the same except that our nation’s men were assaulted and raped at rates higher than everyone else, our collective reaction to sexual violence would dramatically change course.

Why? Because that’s how privilege works.

Living in a patriarchal culture as a heterosexual cis male means that one can go to a party, drink in a bar, walk home alone at night, flirt with friends or strangers, and generally live one’s life without fear that any of those behaviors might result in sexual harassment, assault, or rape. That freedom from worry and fear is what privilege looks like.

But if the social problem of sexual violence was a public health epidemic for college, cis men, the whole concept of sexual violence, and what it means to be a victim survivor, would dramatically shift. In the following, I propose in concrete ways what that transformation might entail.

I want to emphasize that I am in no way suggesting that anything about sexual violence would be “better” if heterosexual, cis men suffered more than everyone else.

Assault and rape are horrific. The way forward is to eliminate sexual violence for all victim survivors.

And to be clear, the high rates of sexual violence against cis women, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming students as well as the lack of resources to stop sexual violence are all linked to a larger system of inequality by gender, race, and sexuality. Changing one aspect of that system such that those with the most social power—heterosexual cis men—suddenly suffered more than everyone else would not end that larger system of oppression.

The purpose of the following musing is to demonstrate what concrete interpersonal, institutional, and cultural changes might occur if the most privileged college students were to suffer the most.

Consequently, it also points out the lack of attention and resources for those students who actually suffer most from sexual violence (this list is not comprehensive by any means):

No one would consider as relevant what men were wearing at the time of the crime.

No one would ask if they had been drinking.

Victim survivors would not consider whether they were drinking to be relevant.

No one would confuse violence with drunken flirtation.

In fact, no one would confuse entitlement, power, and violence with attraction and sex.

No one would ask victim survivors if they were walking by themselves at night.

No one would film assaults against men while others stood by or looked the other way because no one would react passively.

No one would blame male victim survivors for the crime.

Men would report the crime. And campus authorities and the police would believe them.

There would be comprehensive education about sexual violence.

There would be comprehensive education about sex and consent.

This education would start in middle school, if not grade school.

Colleges and universities would offer impartial campus judicial systems to alleviate any possible conflicts of interest.

Comprehensive mental health services would be available at every college and university.

PTSD symptoms would be taken seriously by everyone.

Professors would be trained about how to recognize PTSD symptoms in the classroom.

Professors would announce the mental health services available to all students on a regular basis.

The media and academic debate about trigger warnings for course content on rape would be respectful and compassionate (regardless if positions were for or against the use of such warnings).

Colleges and universities would conduct campus climate studies annually, and publish the results on their websites.

Bystander intervention programs would be federally funded. Colleges and universities would require all incoming students to participate in such programs.

The media would regularly publish investigative news articles denigrating the lack of protection for our country’s men as they seek higher education.

Politicians would run on platforms of holding higher education institutions accountable for keeping male students safe from harassment, assault, and rape.

Parents Against Rape (PAR) would mobilize, and demand stronger institutional protection for their sons in college.

The White House would issue an annual report card grading institutions on campus safety so that students and parents could make informed choices about their investment in college education.

The rates of harassment, assault, and rape would drop dramatically because of these responses and resources for safe campus life.

Can you imagine a US society where seeking a college degree is guaranteed to be a safe experience, free of sexual violence, for all students?

Why would we settle for anything less?

Julie A. Winterich is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Director of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Guilford College, a small, Quaker liberal arts college in Greensboro, North Carolina. She loves teaching and supporting students, and works in different roles to help prevent sexual violence on campus. She is often inspired by an amazing student group she advises, the Sexual Assault Awareness and Support Advocacy, and their work organizing community events to eradicate sexual violence and to promote healthy sex. She has published a variety of academic articles on gender, sexuality, and health, and her recent essay, “Trigger or Not: Warnings Matter,” appeared in the October 9th edition of Inside Higher Ed.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, If College Heterosexual, Cis Men were Raped More than Everyone Else appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Charmaine Daboiku

The email said “ABC News/Nightline Request for Info” in the subject line. I thought it was spam, and I almost deleted it. After all, how would ABC hear about me from little Dayton, Ohio? Inside the email was a request to talk to a producer about participating in a panel discussion about consent on college campuses—a subject I care very deeply about. Turns out, they contacted me because of the previous work I had done at my own college campus, Wright State University. I spent a year collecting stories of sexual assault from students on campus. I gathered volunteers, and we spoke those stories out loud on campus and reclaimed that public space for our empowerment and healing.

After reading the email I was in disbelief. After a year of working on this project, to have this kind of recognition and to be able to speak on this large of a platform put tears in my eyes. The producer and I set up a phone call for the next day to discuss what participating would mean. Instead of falling asleep that night my mind kept running through all the different things I could use this platform to talk about. I researched and updated my knowledge on sexual assaults in Queer relationships, with transgender people, disabled people, and people of color. With my list all made up, I could finally fall asleep.

The next morning, I was ready. I ate a great breakfast and even did my face. I chatted with the producer for over two hours.  We talked about consent, college campuses, and my experiences with sexual assault as well as the importance of these kinds of conversations. I was comfortable enough with him to go into detail about being raped multiple times and about wanting to bring a Queer voice into the conversation. I thought that finally an intersectional conversation about consent would happen in the mainstream media and I was thrilled that I could be a part of it. Our conversation seemed to be everything I wanted.

At the end of the conversation, I learned that they would contact the two men who raped me in order to get their “side” of the story. The producer said he only expected a “no comment,” but there was the potential for more. I would be one of two survivors on the panel of six people. There would be a “consent bro” (someone who goes to frat houses to talk about consent), a sex therapist who advocates for affirmative consent, a lawyer who has defended accused rapists on college campuses, and a boy who is suing his college for lack of due process. Not only all of this, but he needed to know my level of interest by that evening. I had mere hours to decide if this was something I wanted to pursue.

The truth is that I wanted it badly. I want it badly. Nightline offered to fly me out to a college campus to talk to a group of 50-100 students so that I could be a part of a panel educating them about consent, and then it would’ve been shown to millions. I could control my portion of the conversation to discuss marginalized people who aren’t ever part of this conversation; I could even demand that they use my they/them pronouns. Hell, I’m a Leo, so I’m attracted to this kind of attention on a very basic level, but I was torn. I was a mess.

I sent the producer an email with my concerns:

After I’ve slept on it some more I’ve come up with a few more questions. I know you’ve said that you would need to contact the two men who raped me to give opportunity to the “other side” to comment and to be “fair”. Unless this is a legal concern, I can’t really imagine what their comments (or lack of comment) would add to the conversation about consent. The idea that it is “fair” to reach out to rapists perpetuates the idea that survivors, especially survivors who have not reported, are liars and their story needs to be able to be “proved” to be valid. This paired with being on the same platform as someone who has been accused of rape as well as someone who get paid to defend accused rapists gives me great hesitation. Are you also contacting the survivor of the accused? It seems as though the accused has an advocate but who is the advocate for the survivors? The “consent bro”? I understand that there are complexities around campus reporting and Title IX, but I thought this story revolved around consent. If it is about consent, why would the perpetrators be able to help define what consent is? If this is a story about Title IX and campus reporting, I have no opinion to interject but would refer you to http://knowyourix.org and http://upsettingrapeculture.com.

If I do choose to participate, then I would need to know if you (those involved) understand trauma, its impact, and how triggering works? Are you (or whoever contacts the rapists) versed enough in sexual trauma to engage rapists safely? What parameters are you putting in place to ensure safety for me and for those reaching out? If I or the other survivor becomes triggered during the panel what nets are there to catch us? Will there be mental health providers there for the survivors on the panel or in the audience?

I want to participate in a conversation about consent on campus and I would love the opportunity to share a Queer perspective, but I want to make sure that I’m doing this responsibly and safely.

We set up a call the next day, and I remained hopeful. Instead of meeting these concerns with grace, he mansplained, he didn’t take my concerns seriously, he argued about semantics, and, after our conversation was over, he never called me back. I decided after we talked that I would say, “no” to any offer they gave me, but I never had to have that conversation.

This process forced me not only to think about what kind of narrative I would be participating in, but it also forced me to re-live all of it. I re-lived all of it. I started having dreams again about the boy who raped me. In these dreams, he and I were still friends, and in a few of them I explained why what he had done was wrong. This echoed the sentiments of the last conversation I had with the TV producer, “These men don’t always know that what they are doing is rape….” Gross. I would wake up and forget that it was a dream and imagine that he and I were still besties since high school only to realize an hour later that it was all a dream.

A month ago, I saw the boy who raped me ordering a coffee at a Starbucks. He didn’t see me, because he didn’t have to see me. I always have to see him, standing there, walking around, whenever he is in the same space I am. I am always amazed that he and I are able to live in the same physical plane. What the fuck? He went on to live a normal life, have friends, get a boyfriend, be happy, do yoga. How does he do all of that when I can’t even figure out how he takes one step in front of the other? What was I to him? His last attempt at claiming hetero masculinity?

A month ago, I found out that the man who raped me is getting married this summer. I don’t even know how to process this. He is in a loving relationship with a woman, and he is going to make a family. I found this out while googling him after learning that the producer would “have” to contact him.

Last week, a friend of mine and a fellow survivor, emailed me about still experiencing the trauma of rape years later but being afraid because she was still tormented by the thought that her experience wasn’t “real enough.” That feeling is all too familiar to me. I didn’t have any bruises, I have no physical scares, hell, I might have even verbalized encouragement, I don’t know because I was so drunk I couldn’t stand on my own. She deserves to be believed. I deserve to be believed. We deserve to be heard without trying to yell above the brouhaha of rapists and rape apologists in the clothing of “fairness.”

This is what the producer didn’t understand. His empathy was impacted only by his “journalistic integrity.” Please explain to me, Mr. Journalistic Integrity, how there are two sides to rape. Please explain to me, Mr. Producer, how a rapist gets to be on the same platform as a survivor and have just as much say in the definition of consent. Please explain to me, Mr. Fairness, how this is not just a Jerry Springer episode with better lighting and quieter words.

I am not in need of a platform so desperately that I’m going to share it with a rapist; I don’t need to be mansplained to about why consent is “confusing,” and I sure as hell don’t need you, Nightline.

Recently, Charmaine Daboiku has taken on the role of House Spouse, taking care of two cats and a partner in Cleveland, Ohio. They recently graduated from Wright State University with a major in Fine Arts, a minor in Women’s Studies, and is currently trying to figure out how that degree applies to life and this thing called “adulthood.” More of her work can be found at CharmaineRenee.com.

The post Request for Representation (or Why I Said “No” to Nightline) appeared first on The Feminist Wire.