By Anastasia L.

**Content Notice: discussion of sexual assault and violence**

Cuno Amiet. “Flower Garden with Sunflower.” 1945. A Long Time Alone.

When I was twelve, I was first sexually assaulted by a relative while we watched a movie. It was dark, I was alone. In an instant, I knew what it was like to be an adult through the stress put onto me by the actions of one man. I let him stay until the credits started to roll, then I hurried him out of the house, closing my front door, and securing the lock, I got into the shower until the early hours of the morning.

For years, I couldn’t talk about, or even acknowledge, my experience. I tried desperately to understand why I had gone from carefree, happy, and lively to depressed and untrusting within such a short span of time. I was diagnosed as having an anxious personality and a healthy dosage of teen angst. It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I confessed what had happened to me to a school counselor. I told her not only about the night my relative came over to watch a movie, but about Easter Sunday, about the carpet of his condo, about every instance of touch that was unwanted, yet that I somehow ended up on the receiving end.

After that, I couldn’t stop talking.

I told countless people, some of them strangers, about what had happened to me. I was constantly going over the narrative in my head. It was like I had to warn people of what happened to me so that they would understand my shyness, why I built a wall around myself. At times, I even felt like I was protecting others from meeting the same fate.

I didn’t realize it then, but talking was my way of processing these events that I had pushed away for so long. Something that I should have dealt with years earlier was beginning to excavate from a place inside of myself that I had never dared touch.

I am an adult now, a college student, and much less vocal than I was, say, two years ago. I sought treatment through the necessary channels, I did everything that someone who has been through sexual trauma is supposed to do. My only choice now is waiting.

Ed Hodgkinson. “Madelaine Leaning” in Mark Jason Gallery.

At first, I was waiting to die myself. I temporarily lost my will to live in those “between” years – the years that I used whatever means I could to forget what had happened on my couch, on the floor. But this changed after I told someone about what had happened to me. I could not be content with allowing myself to disappear anymore. Finding solace had to come from elsewhere.

After exploring the mediums usually recommended to survivors of childhood trauma—meditation, therapy, mindfulness—a thought crept into my mind, which quells the anxieties I still face on a daily basis.

This comforting thought? A simple fact: one day, my abuser will die.

I do not wait for news of his death for reasons of revenge (which, I have accepted, I will never get because you can never get revenge on someone who took such a large part of you away). I no longer have contact with the man who hurt me, but I do pray every day that he is not hurting someone else. I, save for a few instances of paranoid thought, no longer fear for the worst. I know it’s next to impossible that he will ever contact me again. But I do know that he could very willingly harm another, and the thought of having this type of shared connection with someone unknown is the one thought that keeps my past alive.

I know that I will feel a sense of relief when he passes. Relief for myself and relief for other women “out there” who he had regular contact with. And yet, I do not place all of my life’s value in this inevitable future event. He lives his life, and I live mine, and both of us will be gone from this earth, taking with us our actions and the consequences of them. I have other things that preoccupy my mind. That’s the pleasantry of having dealt with the past. You have time to consider other, more valuable meanderings. He, my abuser, isn’t the front of me anymore, wearing my face as a mask.

Women who have been sexually abused or assaulted often fall into a space of self blame, both because of societal expectation and due to recounted memory of the body “freezing” during the assault. I still struggle with this idea, and often I catch myself wondering what I could have done differently in those situations of abuse. A part of me is always aware that it was never my fault—I was a child when I was abused. Someone made the choice to hurt me. Reclaiming my body and my sexuality forced me to come to this conclusion. There was no other way for me to heal.

We, those who are healing, can find peace in the idea that our abusers and attackers will perish, will not be a threat to anyone. The fear that once seized my heart is no longer such a dominating force in my life. With this realization, I have been able to progress with myself in a way that I never thought possible. A man who hurt me has no more power over my life than a stranger walking next to me down the street.

Helena Almeida. “Pinturas Habitada (Inhabited Painting).” 1975.

The haunt and hurt will never fade. I’ve accepted this, as one must. As I slowly try to piece together my life – understanding my experience through nonprofit work, writing, and discussion – I conclude that I cannot mourn myself any longer. I cannot treat my body like the graveyard of my former self, treating my person as a shell. There was a time when I denied myself sustenance, when I treated myself as lesser because I had been so violated. In the moments where I think of the pieces of me I will never again find, when I am tempted to regress into that state of half living, I repeat to myself – not anymore. Not anymore.

I am not the guide to trauma recovery, a guru of healing. I am simply a person, trying to get through each moment the best that I can. However, I do profess to believe in the healing power of one’s consciousness. I read the self help books and I do the healing every day. Of course, it is never one hundred percent; will it ever be? I am not sure, but I am aware of my own capacity to stitch together the parts of me that were once ripped to shreds.

I transformed my pain into a place where new life can occur.

Anastasia is majoring in Psychology. They are passionate about immigration issues, ending violence against women, and LGBTQA+ activism. When not studying or advocating, Anastasia can be found with their nose in a book, running, or power napping.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Where Flowers Can Grow appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Amelia Roskin-Frazee

**Content Warning: sexual violence, hate speech**

We’ve all had at least one friend tell us, “Don’t read the comments.”

The Comments. The He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named section of the internet. The internet equivalent of a car crash you’re oh-so-tempted to stare at even though you know you shouldn’t.

We’ve all seen our fair share of horrific comments underneath articles and blog posts. In June, I catfished Donald Trump supporters on Facebook and found a comments section in which a commenter said he’d beat a Muslim child with a baseball bat. I’ve had commenters tell me sexual assault survivors like myself are just “females who put themselves into compromising positions” or “liars who deserve to be fucked up the ass.” And that’s nothing compared to the death threats I found in comments sections below articles about fellow sexual assault survivor Emma Sulkowicz.

But I still read comments sections. I’m not masochistic — trust me, no one can derive pleasure from reading through the verbal equivalent of diarrhea and violent hate speech — but determined to defend free speech.

When I say “free speech,” I’m not talking about threat-laced comments. We seem to have this idea that “free speech” is the same as “hate speech,” and fighting against hate speech makes us thought police or too politically correct. However, freedom of speech was designed to protect ideas, words, and expression, from the brilliant to the absurd. Bigotry and threats aren’t just a form of expression; they’re intimidation and violence. In conflating intimidation and speech, we’re elevating rape threats to the same level as other dialogue. There’s an enormous difference between angry disagreement and a direct verbal attack that threatens another person’s bodily safety.

The irony is in ignoring the vitriolic bigotry and sexual harassment in comments sections out of fear of censorship, we’ve only further censored marginalized people such as women, people of color, queer and trans people, and people with disabilities. Comments sections are no longer accessible for anyone who isn’t a white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, wealthy man.

How did we get to this point? It’s more than just a fear of censorship; it extends to the idea that we, the commenters’ targeted communities, shouldn’t feed the trolls by challenging them. This is actually just another version of the argument commenters have made to me about my rapes: I, as a comment reader, shouldn’t put myself in the “compromising position” of exposing myself to threats. Reading the comments means I’ve given some troll the opportunity to call me a dyke, bitch, or list a hundred different ways they’d like to see me get raped again.

I actually loathe the name “troll” because it makes it sound like those posting slurs and threats are a different species and thus unaccountable. However, internet trolls are real people. People typing away at cafés while listening to music. People who have spouses and children and jobs. People who find the idea of a woman speaking up about her rights being taken away worthy of threatening her with bodily harm. People who find it “funny” to type the n-word. By calling these people “trolls,” we’re distorting the reality that each comment is written by a person. And as we’ve seen from the Pulse shooting in Orlando and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston, bigoted trolls can and do come to life.

Reading the comments is scary. Every time I see a rape threat, I can’t help but wonder if my rapist is sitting somewhere in his Columbia dorm room typing it. I can’t help but wonder if the commenter from the Trump support group will one day follow through and beat Muslim children. I can’t help but wonder if one day, the folder of screenshots I have of death threats made against Emma Sulkowicz will be subpoenaed for a homicide trial.

But I still read the comments because someone needs to. I need to post words of support for those brave enough to share their stories online. We need to let commenters know they’re being watched and their actions are unacceptable.

I also completely understand if you choose not to read comments as a way to support your own self-care. But for those who do, and can, read the comments, please be more of a presence. Even better, write your own comment. Outnumber the bigotry with support, or challenge the bigotry directly. Until we hold commenters accountable for their violence and intimidation, even by simply ensuring they know their words don’t go unnoticed, hate will continue to fester both online and off. We’ll continue to have Orlandos and Charlestons, and the internet will grow increasingly violent and inaccessible to those of us targeted by commenters’ violent language.

Amelia Roskin-Frazee is a B.A. candidate at Columbia University where she is an organizer with No Red Tape, Columbia Queer Alliance, and the Barnard Columbia Solidarity Network. Outside of school, she is the Founder and President of The Make It Safe Project and serves on the National Advisory Council for GLSEN. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Feministing, and Femmes Unafraid.

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By Jamie Zabinsky

On one of my 90-minute train commutes this summer, I came across a post in my beloved ‘weird Facebook’ group that pulled me out of a cramped-middle-seat-stupor and into the woke world of lively discourse. In a black sans serif font, the image read “Rape isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you” across what appeared to be a childhood picture of the op (original poster). This macro (a picture superimposed with text) fit with the general aesthetic of the group – a community of 17,000+ people from around the world who come together to share original pieces of what I call “internet art,” or anything fit for artistic online consumption that is NOT already a meme.

Posts in our group are usually self-deprecating, offensive to the outside (and often inside) world, or cater to thoughts of depression, sexuality, vulgarity, anxiety, irreverence, suicide, anti-normativity or existentialism. The posts are known to regularly reflect points of view that range from outright absurdist to apocalyptic. “Rape isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you” had little shock value in a group like this, but it touched something in me. Commenters responded with questions like, “You’re right. 20 years of torture is worse. Or is that the same? Idk” and “ive met ppl who say “if i was raped id kill myself” or sincerely try to say with a straight face that rape is worse than murder lmao ok.” They felt compelled to rank things like murder and torture against rape, as if to say that any one is definitively and objectively more ideal than the others.

This back-and-forth in my Facebook group struck a nerve in me. The attempt to hierarchize traumatic experiences hit me in a sensitive spot that has grown deep and wide over a lifetime of coping with the fallout of my own (non-sexual) traumas; to know trauma is to have a cavity in your side, one filled to the brim with pained empathy for friends and strangers alike who are surviving through everything from sexual assault to the death of loved ones on a daily basis. So I took great issue with the op’s callous evaluation of rape; the very act of assigning greater value to one person’s trauma over another’s in a game of whose-worst-experience-is-actually-the-worst did not simply lack in sympathy, it lacked in logic.

I felt fiercely compelled to comment on this post, despite the fact that I knew the macro would ignite a firestorm of argumentative outrage; I wanted to respond to the image in a way that dismantled its original argument without taking an exactly opposite stance. This is a rhetorical principle I picked up during my undergraduate years studying feminist theories and issues, and yet the op’s use of faulty comparative reasoning sent me spiraling back to a course called Mathematical Explorations, a class during which I mostly slacked off with other non-STEM students as a senior who simply hoped to fulfill her math requirement to graduate on time.

MATH 1300 was an experiential approach to mathematics (hence the name), a 3-credit attempt to expose students in various humanities and social science disciplines to the fundamentals of mathematical thinking. We did not crunch numbers, but we did attempt to adopt the mindset of someone who can evolve mathematical ideas; it was all about imagination, but was not necessarily fixated on technique or calculations. It was during one of our class sessions that our TA, a PhD student with a background in both math and philosophy (not an uncommon pairing), spoke about the concept of infinities – yes, plural – and that some infinities are bigger than other infinities. Many might recall this concept from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, a YA novel I admittedly own but failed to read before I saw the 2014 film adaptation in theaters.

When I felt the need to respond to the op’s “Rape isn’t the worst thing” post and the comments that followed, infinity seemed like an excellent stand-in for trauma. Here is my unedited comment, so you might experience my argument in its first iteration:

Jamie Zabinsky I feel like a decent analogy is that traumatic experiences are like infinities. Some infinities can be bigger than other infinities but that’s not quantifiable because they’re all infinities, abstractions, and greater than all other things in life. For a rape survivor, that is likely the worst thing – the biggest infinity. For someone who gets killed, well, that’s automatically the biggest, final infinity. For me it’s something else, and the same goes for others. To compare trauma across different lives makes as little sense to me as the futile concept of comparing infinities whose values are boundless and largely equitable though technically unequal.

Like trauma, the concept of infinity is nearly impossible for some people to grasp. And while I don’t claim to have mastered many or any abstract mathematical concepts, mathematicians have logically concluded that some infinite number sets (like real numbers, which include rational and irrational numbers) are ‘larger,’ though not in concretely quantifiable terms, than other infinite number sets (like natural numbers – 1, 2, 3 and so on). Real numbers can contain decimals infinitely long in and of themselves, making a complete set of all real numbers as infinitely deep as it is wide. A set of all natural numbers, however, grows infinitely in a more linear sense; like real numbers, natural numbers do not end – but unlike real numbers, natural numbers do not appear to grow as vastly in infinite directions, they simply grow upwards and onwards.

I can say, abstractly, that the effects (both negative and positive) of any traumatic experiences I have lived through are immeasurably large and endlessly significant, like a set of numbers (in)valued at infinity. But I can also imagine that bigger infinities exist; somewhere, in another life, stories of different traumas might read as ‘worse’ to me than the ones I’ve collected over the last 22 years. And I can see, without needing to imagine, that there are privileges and luxuries I have been afforded in conjunction with my traumas: ‘it could have been worse,’ or ‘it wasn’t so bad,’ are easy frames of mind we slip into when we attempt to reconcile our lives with the real or imagined lives of others. We can, only in theoretical terms, conclude that perhaps some traumatic experiences could grow higher, or longer, or deeper in infinite manners than others. The crux of trauma, however, is that it signifies the most intensely (or violently, or depressingly, etc.) negative-perceived experience(s) in a person’s lifetime. Trauma is an infinity in the narrative of life, unable to be quantified, difficult to explain and, more often than not, deeply misunderstood.

It is entirely possible for people who have experienced multiple traumas to say that some experiences have had a larger, longer-lasting or deeper impact on their lives than others. All hardships are not equal, just as infinities can technically vary in innumerable size. But to assign fixed values to lived experiences like rape, other assault or abuse, childhood disruption in the home/family, combat, incarceration or witnessing death, destruction or massive violence – which all have endless capacities to impact the lives they touch – is a grossly reductionist endeavor, and runs the risk of erasing the importance of stories simply because we can imagine they ‘could be worse.’ We should, for the sake of recovery and compassion, accept the ambiguities of traumas rather than focus on the impossible task of quantifying their effects.

Jamie Zabinsky is a recent Cornell University grad working in the PR industry. Lifelong learner of English and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, only now without the mandatory papers and graded assignments. Lover of memes, documentaries and cheese fries.

The post Trauma and Infinities: How Math Sharpened My Feminism appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Courtney Sylvester

**Content Warning: sexual violence, rape**

1 in 4 finally gets invited to a party 1 in 4 gets ready for a party by buying a pretty dress 1 in 4 accepts alcohol given to her by a cute guy from her class 1 in 4 finally feels like she fits in 1 in 4 flirts with the boy from her class and thinks nothing of it 1 in 4 gets compliments from said boy that makes 1 in 4 blush 1 in 4 gets separated from the crowd 1 in 4 starts to feel dizzy 1 in 4’s world goes black 1 in 4 wakes up not knowing where she is 1 in 4 notices she is naked 1 in 4 vomits and starts to shake 1 in 4 looks for her underwear, bra, and dress 1 in 4 feels alone 1 in 4 starts to cry 1 in 4 has someone walk in on her still naked and hears laughter 1 in 4 dresses but her underwear is ripped so she leaves it 1 in 4 goes home sobbing 1 in 4 is afraid to tell her parents 1 in 4 is ashamed and takes a shower 1 and 4 is asked by parents what happened 1 in 4 confesses 1 in 4’s parents worry about pregnancy and race of perpetrator 1 in 4 decides to keep quiet and not give any details 1 in 4 has panic attacks when she sleeps 1 in 4 goes to school and has classes with the boy 1 in 4 hears gossip being said about her 1 in 4 is told by some girls that he has pictures 1 in 4 is told she just wants attention 1 in 4 is told that just because she hooked up and feels bad about it now doesn’t mean she should change the story 1 in 4 loses friends because they say she is lying 1 in 4 sees boy move onto another girl but he still smiles at her 1 in 4 feels lost everywhere she goes 1 in 4 tries to talk to a counselor 1 in 4’s counselor tells her boys will be boys 1 in 4 tells her older brother 1 in 4’s brother tells her to keep quiet because he knows the boy and the boy wouldn’t do that 1 in 4 feels nauseated 1 in 4 starts skipping school and consequently fails her grade 1 in 4 drops out of school and gets GED 1 in 4 has a round belly 1 in 4 sees her old classmates sometimes and they make faces at her 1 in 4 gets prank calls 1 in 4 gets eggs thrown at her house and slashed tires on her car 1 in 4 files a report 1 in 4 is interrogated 1 in 4 is asked why she waited so long 1 in 4 doesn’t know 1 in 4 says it is her fault 1 in 4’s interrogator asks her how many people she has been with 1 in 4’s interrogator asks her to write down what happened and what he did exactly, did he violate you anally? 1 in 4 doesn’t remember 1 in 4’s interrogator is asking to have a DNA test on the baby after the little girl is born 1 in 4’s perpetrator says she asked for it 1 in 4 goes two long years before being told the case is inconclusive 1 in 4 gets put on medicine 1 in 4 gains weight 1 in 4 cant hold a job 1 in 4 longs for the day she can move away 1 in 4 can’t date 1 in 4 can’t be in crowded rooms 1 in 4 can’t smell Ralph Lauren cologne without getting sick 1 in 4 can’t sleep with the lights off 1 in 4 wears long sleeves and pants and gains more and more weight 1 in 4’s perpetrator is married now 1 in 4’s perpetrator wants custody 1 in 4’s perpetrator tells her that she was fantastic and went all night long 1 in 4 is told that he thought she was a virgin because he could hardly get it in 1 in 4 is told how he carried her and had to situate her up so he could enter her 1 in 4 is asked by perpetrator is she has ever heard of a bucking bronco? 1 in 4 says no and 1 in 4’s perpetrator tells her that’s when you fuck a girl from behind and then stick it up her ass really quick without her expecting it

Courtney Sylvester is a single mother, and a senior at Georgia Southern University. She cares deeply for women and the issues that concern them.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, 1 in 4 appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Ramisa Raya

to kill your daughter,
wrap her up in white satin
and place her in the hands
of wolves

then when you find her
on your doorstep,
stained with scarlet:

lock your door,
shut your blinds,
and turn off the lights,

because
nobody is home.

• murder weapon: shame

they
accused
me
of
crying
wolf–

they
couldn’t
see
through
the
woodcutter’s
mask–

until
it
was
too
late.

• murder weapon: denial  

Mother,

I
disappeared yesterday
with a basket of lemons
and an empty flask
of wine

She
pressed a wrinkled finger
to my lips and filled
my hands

They
faltered under my gun–
their large ears,
eyes,
mouth twitched;
I saw red

You
ignored
my waving
scarlet hood

He
is gone,
you
are gone
she
is gone
but I remain

   murder weapon: abandonment

Photo by Jez Times.

Ramisa is a law student and hobbyist writer. Her collection ‘Unbirthing Little Red Riding Hood’ is part of a greater anthology, ‘Speak’ – a collection of folklore and fairytale free-verse subversions that restore the voices lost (unspoken, silenced) in feminine discourse. She welcomes you warmly to her blog: http://ramisatheauthoress.wordpress.com/.

The post EMERGING FEMINISMS, Unbirthing Little Red Riding Hood appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Kimberly Peeler-Ringer

I was getting a feel for my own preaching voice right around the time Juanita Bynum’s “No More Sheets” came out. I still have the cassette tape a friend gave me, saying, “gurl, you’ve got to hear her preach!” I remember how it made me feel: like the woman taken in adultery, all by herself, shamed and blamed. One thing in particular sticks out, Bynum’s admonition that “we don’t know what to do with all this body.” And based upon “No More Sheets Part 2,” we apparently still don’t:

That skirts are so tight and short until half of your thighs are out? And you‘re ministering, and you’re standing on pulpits…preaching and leading praise and worship with no stocking on…with thongy, stringy shoes on, your legs all greased up, what kind of message are you trying to send us? Because to me, that look like somebody that’s got a hoe spirit, that ain’t purged out in God and any minute you can just go over in a corner to a deacon, and just raise your dress up, and hit it right there in the corner, because you don’t even have drawers on. You got on thongs! And a bip bop skirt!

I will pick back up on Bynum’s quote in a moment, but a bit of back-story is warranted here. During the Civil Rights Movement Black Christians pricked the conscience of America by identifying racial segregation as a moral issue — that any treatment of Blacks as “less than” went against the teachings of Christ. Regrettably, the Black Christian response to sexism as a moral issue has not received the same kind of attention. Patriarchy, in its simplest terms, is the privileging of maleness, which functions much like racism in that there are institutional and embedded structures that oppress women through social, political and economic practices. Black women experience racism, sexism, classism and other isms in ways that make our experience unique. Scholar activist Moya Bailey refers to this as misogynoir, “the intersection of racism, anti-Blackness and misogyny that Black women face.”

Since the first African women and girls were forced upon slave ships where shipmates raped them repeatedly, stereotypes were crafted in order to normalize diabolical behavior. Joan Morgan explains the complete disregard for Black female humanity in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost when she writes, “that filthy task of satisfying baser needs was best left to black women, whose ‘hot-blooded’ constitutions rendered them strong enough to take it.” During both slavery and segregation, white rapists preying upon Black women and girls seldom faced any consequences. This prompted Rosa Parks to travel on behalf of the NAACP to take the statement of a woman who had been gang-raped by six white men in Alabama, a decade before she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white rider. Unfortunately, many stories like this are outlined in Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street.

Though many historians privileged the stories of men during North American slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, women writers like Morgan, McGuire, and others aid us in recovering women’s contributions and experiences. And so I wonder, what would it mean for Black churches to include Black women and girls’ histories of violence and liberation in the collective cultural memory? Too many in Black churches continue to privilege the male point of view — just as Bynum does in the quote above. Likewise, far too many Black churches and congregations embrace strands of the same theologies that enabled slaveholders to beat and rape a Black woman on Friday then go to church on Sunday, without any condemnation or conviction. What I mean to note here is how male lust is too often excused, and how it may lead to violences against everyone, but particularly women and girls.

What if we recovered and centered those stories and how entangled they are with demonizing stereotypes? What if we chose to critique masculinist libidinous gazing rather than police women’s bodies? The persistent devaluation and policing ravages Black female self-esteem. This is exactly what Bynum does in “No More Sheets Part 2.” She assumes men are victimized by women’s choice of dress and thus articulates shame-based rhetoric meant to make Black women and girls self-conscience about the curves God gave them. And this is merely an appetizer inviting self-loathing, the starter course for a meal too many Black theologies are serving up on a silver platter. At some point, we need to recognize how many pairs of Black women’s hands continue to help with the cooking. How many bodies are attached to those hands. And how many stories those bodies may recover, if given space.

We cannot expect Black women and girls to value themselves if we co-sign God’s name onto messages that suggest our bodies, and the celebration thereof, are demonic, that our sexuality is toxic, and that men have no responsibility to control their gazes or desires. With this in mind, it is imperative that we find ways to talk about women and girls’ bodies positively in the church, as divinely and wondrously made in God’s own image, as well as our histories. Not doing so helps maintain intersecting cultures of violence. To be clear, sexual assault is a much bigger problem than sexual arousal. 60% of our Black girls report experiencing sexual assault before reaching their 18^th birthday (Black Women’s Blueprint). Some of these violences happen in the church and/or by church members. Failing to center sexism and classism (along with racism), recover women and girls’ histories of agency and violence, and their right to be autonomous consenting choosing bodies, enables such cultures of violence to thrive.

In “No More Sheets 2,” Bynum centers the male gaze when she blames women and girls for men that ‘fail their wives.’ But also, she ignores the church’s history of sexual abuse, and particularly where grown men are the aggressors against pubescent and teen girls. Ideally, the church should be a place of sanctuary. However, this cannot happen as long as the Black preaching tradition ties the Sacred to misogynoir, or as long as our talk about bodies privileges the heteropatriarchal male perspective. We need to collectively resist. But in the meantime Black women must do the hard work of shielding our girls. And this is no easy task. As “woke” as I think I am, I still have to fight to keep myself from internalizing messages that Black women’s bodies are locations of inherent lubricity. Truth is, like many of us, I was twelve years old the first time a random man propositioned me on the street. We need language and rituals to combat this. But if we continue teaching girls (and women) that they cause lust simply by inhaling and exhaling, then we are affirming not only that men are not responsible for their own self-control, but the act of violence itself. Moreover, what kind of message does this send about consent?

Empowering conversations in the church about sex, consent, pleasure, resistance, rape, desire, etc., which imagines the body — all bodies — as sacred rather than a source of unholy contempt, and sex as human rather than a gender specific samurai sword, allows us to consider the uplifting of women and girls as a moral issue. I certainly do and teach from that perspective. And I believe Jesus supports that. The church should never be a place where Black women experience misogynoir, particularly when you consider the struggle it would be simply to pay the light bill if Black women withdrew their financial support and left their churches en masse. But it shouldn’t be this sort of place  just because. Who wants to worship a God that tells you—and only you—that your temple is toxic? Perhaps we should consider that many young women have already left the building because the churches they attended failed to make them feel as though God is with them, or that God cares and sees them. Let’s just say there are spiritual consequences for all of this.

Minister Kimberly Peeler-Ringer is a former television news producer with graduate degrees in biblical and religious studies from the Morehouse School of Religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia and Vanderbilt University. She is the founder and creator of www.thechurchedfeminist.com, and has been selected as one of the contributors to the upcoming King Bey Bible anthology. She is also a Christian Education consultant who specializes in developing curriculum that privileges the African-American woman’s experience, and identifies as a Black feminist follower of The Way. “If a woman could carry the Word of God in her womb, she can surely carry it in her mouth.” You can follow her on Twitter @churchedfem.

The post #BlackSkinWhiteSin: Shielding Our Girls From Misogynoir…Even When It Comes From the Church appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

Date Grape

“Brewer responds to protests about offensive beer name”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 7^th, 2016

What if I took the worst thing

that’s happened to you

and joked about it

and joked about it

Using you as both

ammunition and target

Puckered up

shut down

What if I pit you

against yourself

Only a

joke Stoked to win

the same old contests

If I add some sour

to the sweetness

how does it taste?

Concord seedless

purple like a bruise

wrinkled fruit

The bitterest grape

the stapled shut lip

All the bars I’ve jumped

………………over sleeping in anger

………………holding

………………that sour grape

………………date rape

Freesia McKee is a working poet. Her words have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Gertrude, Argot Magazine, Burdock, and Sundress Press’s Political Punch anthology. Freesia co-hosted 57 episodes of The Subtle Forces, a weekly morning show on Riverwest Radio. She is moving this summer from Milwaukee to Miami to study poetry at Florida International University.

The post Date Grape by Freesia McKee appeared first on The Feminist Wire.

By Eunice Park

You didn’t speak – but you did stare
Smile right at me and bare
A rock tumbling back and forth
South & north
A disjointed compass directing you
To a heavy moan & laugh too

You didn’t touch – but you did speak
Ruin memories of a street I no longer seek
I was going out to eat
But you were going out to keep
A palate of breasts & ass
Only words, but enough to devour as I past

You didn’t penetrate – but you did touch
But you still loved me baby
Even when I screamed to save me
The law had an expiration date
For my Prince Charming transformed to Hate
I knew I was too late
When I was asked, “Why did you wait?”

You did stare.
              You did speak.
                            You did touch.

And when you knew no one cared to see –
You did penetrate me.

Laughing when investigations shrieked to a halt
My testimony now a grain of salt
You told the fashion police what I was wearing
What tempting fruit I was baring

You did stare.
              You did speak.
                            You did touch.

And when you knew no one cared to see –

You did penetrate
me.

Eunice Park is a student living in sunny Los Angeles, California. She is an avid reader, writer, and feminist, who is passionate about giving a voice to the underrepresented. Founder of the Girl Talk Organization, she dedicates her time to organizing online career seminars to connect girls in orphanages around the world to women in a variety of different career fields.  Always ready to learn new things and challenge existing beliefs, Eunice hopes to fuse her passions for language, culture, and politics as a social advocate. She can be reached at: eunicepark18@gmail.com

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My project, The Aftermath, was my way of coping with the after effects of rape. Each individual photograph reflects in detail what happened the night I was raped. Photographing and developing film was my way of beginning to heal, which lead on to my projects “Process” and “STOP”, developing the negatives by stopping the process, the development stages define my healing process of the after effects of rape.

I attended court this year to get justice from when I was raped. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the justice I wanted. It was the most difficult experience being made to feel like I’m the criminal when I am the victim. I stood up and made my voice be heard: no one should be silenced; I refused to be and still do. Others shouldn’t be silenced either. My photographs are to inspire others to go forward – the more exposure for this I think will help survivors to move forward in their lives and that, for me, is important.

Paige Megan Hawley, is a London based photographer, specialising in the fine art industry. The artist is looking to build a career within the creative industry of contemporary art. For more information: www.paigemeganhawley-photography.com

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By The Feminist Wire Associate Editors

We write in celebration of our visionary sister and comrade/comadre, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, black lesbian feminist, cultural worker, filmmaker, incest and rape survivor, and the creator of NO! The Rape Documentary (2006). This feature-length, internationally acclaimed, award-winning film, with Portuguese, French, and Spanish subtitles, a two-hour supplemental educational video, and an accompanying 100-page study guide (funded by the Ford Foundation and published in 2007), which includes national rape and sexual assault resources organized by state and a bibliographic treasure box of over 90 recommended readings – urges us to call rape out and end it. The latter she notes as a “non-negotiable necessity.”

We want to pause and acknowledge Simmons and this black feminist labor of love not only because she is a pioneer of the contemporary anti-violence movement, but because her work, which began in 1994, helps ground current moves to raise awareness about rape, sexual assault, and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence. More, Aishah Shahidah Simmons provides an opening to center and make present the continuum of too-often invisibilized feminist labors against rape, in which her work is deeply rooted and from which it emerges.

NO! Production Still: featured Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, assistant director Nikki Harmon, set decorator Kia Steave-Dickerson_ associate producer /prod. manager Wadia Gardiner, Photographer ©1999

Recently, the #MeToo online movement has made space for women, some for the first time, to share their experiences of sexual harassment and violence. Initially, the hashtag was incorrectly deemed to originate with actress Alyssa Milano, who tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Milano’s tweet was a response to rape allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. However, #MeToo was in fact created a decade ago as “me too” (not an online campaign) by Tarana Burke, who is currently program director for Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equity. And though the current iteration of #MeToo exemplifies a significant historical social media moment, it began as a grassroots social movement, with the aim of empowering young women of color sexual assault survivors.

#MeToo, though initially focused on young women of color, seems in the current moment to have transcended race. This matters. It matters because women of color have been doing the work of “me too” for a very long time. And yet even proper attribution, though important, fails to offer adequate recognition of so many other women. In contemporary viral moments, we routinely fail to note the intricate layers, nuances, and intersections of these voices and works across several decades of anti-rape activism. It also matters that Milano is an Italian American Hollywood actress, best known for television shows like Who’s the Boss?, Melrose Place, and Charmed. It matters that she is an actress/activist who happens to have the ear not only of Hollywood but many Americans. Milano’s tweet calls rape culture back to consciousness in a very particular time in history, against a very famous white man – with very famous and mostly white survivors – and within the context of a “pussy grabbing” white nationalist hetero-patriarchal misogynist capitalist trans-antagonistic POTUS. The wide-ranging and fiery response to Milano’s tweet may very well be a covert way of saying #HimToo.

In short, Milano’s tweet likely caught on as it did not because critiques of rape culture are novel, but because hashtag activism makes anti-violence resistance accessible, easy to grasp, and contagious, and because who tweets about what, how we imagine the survivors, and who we visualize the perpetrator/s to be, matters. Still, online activism, with its tendency to strike quickly and then fade in response to moments such as this, is often ignorant of its historical precursors. Grounding viral moments in their historical, theoretical, and movement-based genealogies is critical, both to name the labor that made the moment possible and to ensure that discussions and actions continue beyond the Internet.

To be sure, online and hashtag activism may generate benefits, including providing discursive space. A great example is the Black Lives Matter network, which was first introduced to many of us as a hashtag. Notwithstanding BLM’s successes, some of the challenges of online and hashtag activism more broadly are that it erases herstories, movements, complexities, and laborers. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues, #BlackLivesMatter developed out of longer and continuing movements of and for Black liberation. So too do contemporary incarnations of the anti-rape movement.  

#MeToo was not created in a vacuum. It is not a single story. And its focus is not limited to rich white cis men who victimize. The anti-rape movement is about the eradication of heteropatriarchal white supremacy writ large and its specific manifestations of sexual, gender, and racial violence. And if we look at the contributions of radical diverse women who have been fighting against rape culture for two centuries, we see the herstories of sexual violence across inter-racial, intra-racial, and intra-communal lines. It’s easy to critique white supremacy and white feminists for erasures and white men for rape. It’s more difficult to provide complex and winding history that forces us to broaden the map of violences and resistances, and engage intra-communally and historically.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Toni Cade Bambara, & Kim Hinckson, 1994 courtesy: ©

It is not lost on us how the works of first-, second-, and third-wave black and of color feminists have been left out of the current discourse, or how Burke’s initial focus on young women of color and intra-racial rape in communities of color has been excised. Rape culture impacts all women. But what cannot be ignored is how the emphasis on “all women,” particularly in hashtag activism culture, tends to decenter black women and women of color, and how each have herstories of intersecting oppressions and violences that are overwhelmingly increased because of race, ethnicity, and gender reinforcing each other. Further, some women’s narratives of sexual violence have historically been disbelieved, and are still suspect now.

In fact, as Kimberlé Crenshaw argued in 1989, sex discrimination laws were put in place to protect white female sexuality/chastity (from black men), not to protect black women. Yet sexual violence was often the pretext for terrorizing black communities. She posits, “sexist expectations of chastity and racist assumptions of sexual promiscuity combined to create a distinct set of issues confronting black women.” That is, gender makes black women and girls susceptible to sex domination and violence, while blackness denies them state or local protection. Crenshaw notes that some courts went as far as to instruct juries that black women were not to be presumed chaste, leaving them to fend for themselves. Of course, the erasure of some survivors over others is nothing new. Similarly, the blotting out of black and of color anti-rape activists is not innocuous.

NO! Production Still: featured interviewee Barbara Smith and producer/director Aishah Shahidah Simmons)_Joan Brannon, photographer ©1999

We understand anti-rape activism as the resistance to sexual coercion in daily practice and its institutionalized forms. Because rape, as Angela Y. Davis argued in 1978, is the social relations of capitalism and a capitalist interstate system infused with patriarchy and racism, its existence is historic, intentional, and pervasive. Historically, anti-rape activism is present in the contexts of state-sanctioned sexual, gender, and racial violence during colonial and imperial conquests and acts of war; within institutions such as slavery, marriage, prison, health care, immigration, and education; and in the daily acts of our socio-economic and political interpersonal relationships. Anti-rape activism is fueled by and exists alongside sexual violence, be it within survivors alone, or in collectivity with others who strategize against harm. The politicization of our contemporary anti-rape movement is grounded in the global histories of decolonization and Third World Liberation, anti-slavery and abolitionary struggles, and U.S. anti-war, Black Power, civil and labor rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and feminist movements.  

The 1960s and 1970s are central to historic understanding of U.S. anti-rape activism, particularly in its institutional formations. The anti-violence work of these decades was deeply informed by Indigenous and Black women’s activism against white supremacist sexual coercion and exploitation that extends back into U.S. settler colonialism and slavery. These efforts developed hand in hand with women’s liberation movements toward greater economic, reproductive, sexual, and cultural autonomy. Anti-rape activism became entangled with other movements, including white middle-class women’s economic empowerment, in ways that made some pathways possible for these women while closing off opportunities for women of color and poor women.

NO! Production Still: producer/director Aishah Shahidah Simmons and featured interviewee Johnnetta Betsch Cole _Joan Brannon, Photographer ©1999

Anti-rape activists for decades have worked, together and sometimes apart, to raise awareness of sexual violence and to strategize against it. Interventions have targeted “private” lives and political institutions, while at the same time challenging the divide between public and private. The Combahee River Collective, Flo Kennedy, June Jordan, This Bridge Called My Back, and many other anti-racist efforts pushed to account for the whiteness of the 1960s-1970s anti-rape movement, grounding the work in a more expansive understanding of slavery, settler colonialism, and imperialism that targets Black, Indigenous, Third World, women of color, and queer and gender non-conforming bodies. The movement was refigured again by the spread of neoliberalism and inclusion of anti-rape efforts inside institutions via Title IX and sexual harassment law, moves that reframed anti-rape as largely a middle-class white women’s concern. How, scholars and activists have asked, can the movement remain radical when funded by the State?

Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Black feminist scholar-activist Beverly Guy-Sheftall at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia_Michael Simmons, photographer ©1996

NO! The Rape Documentary (and its supplemental materials), as it explores the transnational operations, reality, and effects of rape, sexual assault, and other forms of violence committed against women and girls, and as it deploys first-person testimony, spirituality, activism, and the academic and cultural works of Black folk, is a continuation of historical work, particularly the intersectional lessons of Black feminists who laid the groundwork for anti-rape activism in Black and other communities. Simmons’s cinematically groundbreaking work is significant because it forces us to think about rape through BLACK women’s experiences and intra-communally. That is, it pushes us to call out and resist not only the Weinsteins in every industry but the Bill Cosbys and R. Kellys, too. It refuses invisibility, marginalization and/or tokenism and demands a social, political, cultural, ideological, structural, institutional, and interpersonal shift.

Earlier this year, Simmons gave a powerful presentation to students of all genders and sexualities at King-Drew Magnet High School in South Los Angeles, a predominantly Black and Latinx campus.  Simmons’ presentation was followed by student-led workshops on sexual violence, harassment, and rape culture conducted by youth from the Women’s Leadership Project.  Simmons’ statements on the connection between white supremacist hetero-normative violence and racialized sexual terrorism against girls of color resonated strongly with WLP students.  Twelfth grade student Drea Wooden noted that normalized sexual violence against Black girls and girls of color is seldom discussed on most school campuses.  Tenth grader Cheyanne Mclaren stressed that Simmons’ talk reaffirmed that “sexual violence is an important issue for communities of color because women of color are seen as lesser in value than white women and women of color aren’t getting the justice they deserve.”

WLP students, peer educator Issachar Curbeon, Aishah S. Simmons & TFW’s Sikivu Hutchinson

We are celebrating Simmons because her work marks a pivotal moment in anti-rape activism. Because NO! “let’s you know what you need to know fast” (“Because We”), and has inspired new generations of womanists and feminists to resist and take action against a global regime of sexual violence. Because she reminds us that all oppressions are linked. Because she holds us accountable to how we respond to sexual violence. Because she charts an Afro-futurist path for collectively doing things differently and imagining and realizing communities free of rape, assault, and incest.  Because this work was created in community for community. Because NO! centers and hopes to heal black and brown sacred flesh. Because Simmons has shown up for us and for survivors everywhere. Because when and where she enters, she brings all the anti-rape feminist and womanist foremothers, co-laborers, and survivors with her. Because Aishah Shahidah Simmons taught us that NO! is a complete sentence that not only explicitly names rape, which may sometimes be cause for erasure because language is political, but unequivocally refuses it and calls us and our communities to action.

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