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Of SlutWalks, Perfect Storms and Getting Out of the Way

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Submitted by Heather Corinna on Fri, 2011-07-29 09:41

From SlutWalk Manchester by Man Alive!From SlutWalk Manchester by Man Alive!On Monday, I talked about some of my own life, and the central, very personal, issue which kept me from attending one of the SlutWalks, an issue which also central to the walks themselves. On Tuesday, I brought up what appears to be a clear misrepresentation by the media, especially visually, of the walks. In both pieces, I expressed unwavering support for the walks.

While I did not agree with a good deal of it, I appreciated Rebecca Traister writing in the New York Times magazine last week.

But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.

To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So while the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.

The above is, from everything I can gather, not a critique of the walks, but of the way the walks have been represented, more by the media than by the organizers or the majority of attendees of any of the walks.

In fact, when she wrote, "The most sophisticated attempts elicit just as much derision and, frankly, receive a fraction of the attention," I thought she was going to address that what she was criticizing was the media representation. But then she didn't, which confounded me. It seemed like she became part of the media misrepresentation herself, and took part in solidifying that simplification and misrepresentation. I also wondered if she was asking the organizers or attendees to somehow control the media, something none of us have the capacity to do, and even when we try, our efforts are most typically in vain. We can respond to the media -- and I do think more response is something missing from this picture, a part of the movement that could stand some work -- but that's all we can really do is respond. Activists are not responsible for how the media chooses to portray them, especially when the media chooses to misrepresent. Are we even remotely surprised that a movement in which young women are making themselves visible around issues of sex, violence and appearance has gotten the kind of coverage it has? If we are, how can we possibly still be surprised by reactions that are such literal representations of exactly what the protests are about?

She calls these efforts clumsy (but also necessary: "while clumsy stabs at righting sexual-power imbalances may be frustrating, they remain necessary.") I'm not so sure that they are. Rather, I'm not so sure that they are any more clumsy than a great deal of activism tends to be and has always been. By all means, I think more advance and in-depth organizing with this could have been helpful, especially strategies around dealing with the highly predictable media response. At the same time, sometimes effective activism is about seizing a moment -- a moment like Sanguinetti's comments -- and moving as fast as you can. Taking more time to organize can be of real use, but it can also happen that in doing so, you lose essential momentum. It's a call that is easy to err with either way.

Traister also says, “I found myself again wishing that the young women doing the difficult work of reappropriation were more nuanced in how they made their grabs at authority, that they were better at anticipating and deflecting the resulting pile-on. But I also wondered if, perhaps, this worry makes me the Toronto cop who thought women should protect themselves by not dressing like sluts.” I appreciate her honesty and her introspection.

I do think there have been some possible missteps around the walks, though I don't think that's about how some attendees of the walk have chosen to dress. And like Traister posed in that last quote, if we start thinking that way, I do think we have to take a good look in the mirror, whatever we're wearing, and look for how much of the harmful and patently wrong-headed messaging about dress, "asking for it" and sexuality we've internalized.

Samhita brought the issues around the media up in the Feministing response to and roundtable of Traister's piece, and I agree with what she said there in saying that "Activism and social change are not as much about what you meant to do, but instead what you do do, and what is Slutwalk doing in the mainstream media? Are people rethinking the role victim-blaming plays in sexual assault or are people too caught up in the term “slut?” I am not really sure." Media pushbacks are important to assure your message doesn't get lost or you don't wind up letting the media rewrite your aims. This is something Courtney also brought up in her commentary at Feministing.

Maya also voiced something in that roundtable I really appreciated about the Traister piece when she said, "to some extent, it’s inevitable that a grassroots protest movement, organized entirely on the local level, and filtered through a mainstream media that latches on to the word “slut” and images of half-naked young women, will struggle with message control. (My own limited experience with protest organizing definitely reminded me why I, like Traister, embrace a medium like writing that allows for so much more precision.) I just wish Traister had acknowledged that inherent challenge more, instead of reinforcing the idea that SlutWalk is just about women “stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts” – when she clearly knows that it’s about more than that and, at most protests, the hoodies probably outnumber the skivvies."

There's the issue of if a "dress code" should have been suggested or enforced. I can see how, when we're working around the issue that "slutty" dress has zip to do with sexual assault,some being playful with that can be seen as sending a mixed message, or as reinforcing the message being protested. I do personally think that someone presenting like this creates a more powerful statement about dress and victim-blaming than someone showing up without a sign, who isn't a survivor, wearing the kind of clothing most often considered (in the west, anyway, and even though it's often an error) to signal indiscriminate sexual availability.

Yet, at the same time, suggesting or enforcing a dress code for the walks stands counter to the core aims, like making clear there is NO way of dressing or not dressing which will "get you raped" or protect you from rape, but also no way of dressing or not dressing in which someone cannot or will not perceive you as sexually available. As well, it's clear that some attendees who came to the walks in whatever their "slutwear" was experienced something powerful in doing so. We always have to remember that when a movement is made up of people it is also attempting to serve, that what experience the activists have is no less important that what impact it has on those who are not directly participating.

Again, people are sexually assaulted wearing everything, anything, and nothing a person can possibly wear, and there is no one way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility because there is NO way of dressing which makes rape a victim's fault or responsibility. If any way of dressing really, truly protected us from violence, don't you think we'd all have tried dressing that way already? We only need one victim's story about how the way they was dressed didn't make any difference for them. We have millions of these stories: they are all of our stories.

As a feminist and activist who works primarily with sexuality but also with sexual violence, I also know how tremendously challenging it can be to try and address both of these things at once, and the ways that they intersect, especially in a world and a culture which often does not recognize that -- and sometimes even purposefully blurs and obscures -- consensual sex and sexual violence may not be things we can completely separate from one another, but they are also incredibly different, usually for the perpetrators of this violence, and most certainly for victims. We are going to stumble, because it is rocky terrain. The only way to avoid that completely is to not take steps at all, which is just not an option if we want any kind of change. Could folks organizing have asked for more help with that tricky balance? Probably. Would the walks and SlutWalk as a movement have benefitted from that? I have no idea.

As another maybe-critique, I've heard people voice a wish that there was, for all of the walks and their various self-produced web media as a whole, a lack of shared, stated core values and aims. I, too, can see how that could be valuable. At the same time, I wonder if the lack of that was what allowed this to become such an international movement, with communities, cities and cultures feeling a flexibility to adapt the walks to suit who they were and what they wanted and needed to address. Unilateral core aims, especially if done without an exceptionally diverse group of people taking part, could have created very real barriers to that, barriers which have long been problematic within feminism and other social justice movements.

I keep saying possible missteps, because the fact that myself, or Traister or any number of people think errors have been or are being made, or that all of this could be done better or worse doesn't mean we're right. We could be. We could also be wrong. It could be that despite it seeming like this thing or this other way of doing or saying that would have been the better move, that doing a given thing differently would have less impact.

I've been part of activist efforts and movements myself that fizzled, crashed or burned, even one or two that blew up in my face; actions or movements which were planned to death, actions or movements which were very spontaneous. I experience activism as being an awful lot like working in chemistry with elements and formulas which are experimental, untested or not entirely understood. You can try mixing things via various formulas we already have, and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't: it makes a huge mess of things or does nothing at all. Sometimes you try new formulas, with the same array of results. When we're working in and with activism, we are usually working with unstable, unpredictable elements.

Growing up in and around activism, being quite literally born out of it, watching it and taking part in it in various forms for four decades now, one thing I know is that effective activism tends to require a sort of perfect storm, an often, if not always, difficult to predict mix of timing and numbers and ideas and actions and people. Even the literal climate -- not just the social climate -- can matter sometimes, as trite as that can seem. My father engaged in one activist movement, the civil rights movement, that eventually seems to have had its perfect storm. Another he engaged in, dedicating years to, sacrificing liberties for, was the movement against the Vietnam War, which pretty much flopped per its ultimate goal. From all anyone can tell, the Vietnam war did not come to an end because of antiwar activist efforts. Even though both of these issues were vital and core human rights issues that highlighted incredible abuses of human rights, even though both involved the dedicated efforts of millions, they didn't have the same impacts, and I don't think that was just about the differences between the two movements and the two issues. I think a great deal of the why of those differences was outside the control of activists entirely.

Traister finished her piece with something I thought was intensely valuable:

Social progress is imperfect, full of half-truths and sloppy misrepresentations. After all, we celebrate the victories of a civil rights movement that was shot through with misogyny, and of a women’s movement riddled with racial, class and sexual resentments. Fighting for power is a complicated, messy process, especially for complicated, messy human beings. Often, the best we can hope for is that our efforts draw a spotlight. Which, I guess, is enough to make SlutWalkers of us all.

Something else I believe to be true about activism, and have found to be so during my life experiences with and around it, and my historical understanding of it more broadly, is that it is often very difficult to evaluate until we have considerable distance -- emotional distance, and the distance of time having passed -- away from it. Without that kind of space so we are better able to see the bigger picture of what progress (or not) or change (or not) and what kind of change it sparked, created or completed, making an earnestly accurate evaluation of an action or movement is precarious.

Frankly, I think those trying to evaluate the results of the walks are trying to do so much, much too soon and with far too small a scope.

Going back to the American Civil Rights Movement, some people will list that movement as being less than a decade long. We can also know that at any point during that movement, a given action was seen or felt as the central action, the apex at the time. But depending on your scope, what you know about, and what you're recognizing, the span of that movement could be more like 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years or longer. I tend to see it myself as spanning over 200 years. Before the March on Washington and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for instance, there was the school desegregation movement, fifty years before that, the formation of the NAACP, before that the civil rights act of 1875, slave rebellions before that and on and on and on. That movement also was sparked and moved by more people than Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa Parks wasn't even the first to engage in her most historical action. In fact, she wasn't even the first to do it on that very bus line. There are so many activists who took part in actions that created the civil rights movement as a whole, people like Claudette Colvin, and like Octavius Catto, Gabriel Prosser, Bayard Rustin or Clara Luper, names few people know. There were people whose names we don't know or recognize and may never know. And for all we know, something one of those people did may have had more to do with the actions we recognize and the activists we know about. Trying to track a movement back isn't as easy or simple as it often seems, just like trying to evaluate what alchemy creates progress and change is not, and we are always going to see things differently depending on where we're at on the eventual (and often neverending) timeline.

This is some of what I mean when I talk about perfect activism storms and the scope of activism. When we're talking about activism around sexual violence towards women, already we have a timeline and a larger scope; we already have actions and activists and movements that reach back more then two centuries. Where do the Slutwalks fit on that timeline? What is their import in comparison to other activism around this issue? I don't think we can know that yet, nor do I think it's fair to ask that yet.

But I think that what we can know now, since people are asking, is that so far SlutWalk has been of value and has shown the potential to spark more than one kind of needed, important change.

Just a few relatively young feminists managed to spark numbers in-person, international activists movements largely made up of and led by young women all over the world. There have been alrgely attended walks, but there have also been so very many discussions, discussions and more discussions which have not been insular echo chambers, and where silences are being broken.

We have been able to hear, read and and be part of a real diversity of views, feelings and ideas. with a great deal of variance, many of which have involved a great deal of care, thought and positive intention. These discussions have generally been far more complex than simple yays or nays. These discussions are important, and often about more than either just sexual violence or just the right for women to be able to dress as they choose, and present or express their sexuality, when they do, as they choose without being held responsible for the violent actions of others when they do. From what I can gather, many of them have bounced off the issue of Slutwalks to get at some of the core issues that can create and have created divisions and exclusions in feminism and social justice that get in the way of women's rights and all human rights.

Even comments and discussions which illustrate some of the most ugly ignorance shows up exactly what people are trying to address with the walks is of value. It's tough to get a house clean if you can't see where all the dirt is, after all.

There are still discussions to be had here, issues that are part of the big picture to be addressed, like, for instance, that while blaming a victim -- or blaming someone who isn't even a victim yet -- based on her style of dress is largely, if not exclusively about women, male victims and survivors suffer a similar kind of victim-blaming around they way they present -- or are accused of not presenting -- their masculinity. There's the fact of the matter that, as with so many things, the world at large is often far more concerned, when it is at all, with the victimization of upper-middle-class white girls than with everyone (read: most people in the world) outside those groups. There's also the issue of how groups being presented as without their own sexuality, namely, those with disabilities, are often at the highest risk of, and have the highest rates of, sexual victimization, but also have the least freedom to engage in healthy, consensual and wanted sexual relationships and interactions. As someone who works primarily in human sexuality and hears about people's personal sex lives every day, there is also the incredibly sticky wicket of addressing how many people have sexual violence, exploitation, coercion and lack of real consent -- and not just women -- as part of their ongoing sexual relationships without the realization or recognition it is abuse and assault: who earnestly do not know and can often not even imagine, what healthy sexual relationships and interactions are like.

I think the walks and all of the discussion around them have given us a really great jolt in the arm to start having those conversations more and having them more widely.

The experiences attendees seem to be having vary, and it's clear the walks have offered a range of experiences. Survivors of assault have deeply connected with other survivors, or found a place where they felt able -- and for some of them, probably for the first time -- to feel safe in identifying as a survivor. Others have experienced a powerful and increased awareness about those of us who have survived sexual violence. I expect that someone in a hoodie and jeans walking next to someone in a bustier might have been able to see some common ground they did not before. For others still, the walks have provided an avenue to experience a lightening of the load so many of us have walked around with living in cultures which enable or excuse rape and which make many women feel afraid of expressing their own sexuality or enjoying their bodies. They have allowed women to deeply connect with other women, something which remains a huge challenge for many. I expect that for many participating in the walks, they brought them out to engage in in-person social justice activism for the very first time (something older feminists have been accusing younger feminists of having no interest in doing for a while now, mind you).

We know that how women dress or don't dress neither causes rape, nor can it protect against rape. We know that telling women to avoid dressing a certain way is not about protecting women, it's about controlling women or scaring women (and also about suggesting men need women to try to police or control their sexualities), something anyone who works in or around sexual violence or had education -- or should, like a police officer -- knows. We know that calling women names like "sluts" or otherwise arbitrarily applying perceptions of someone's sexual life or history to suggest someone's value as a person may be lesser is also about social control and can enable sexual violence. We know victims remain held responsible for their assaults far more often than perpetrators of those assaults. We know that calling these things out and stating and restating the truths they obscure is essential to reducing, and ideally, eradicating rape, and also crucial for an environment in which survivors of assault can heal and where people, whether they have been victimized by sexual violence or not, can truly see sexual violence for what it is and learn real ways to be safer.

All of these are aims of the walks; all of these aims are of great value and import, potential avenues to positive social change that could benefit everyone. And I do think that, so far, the walks have provided new inroads and outlets to cultivating these changes.

When thinking about how -- and if -- I was going to get involved with our local walk, I was reminded of Thomas Paine's words about revolutions, to "Lead, follow or get out of the way."

I knew I wasn't going to try to lead: this wasn't mine to lead, so far as I could tell. There were already leaders, and it's also seemed to me that much of Slutwalk as a whole is being led by younger people than myself, something I always want to support and never want to get in the way of. I wasn't going to follow. As I mentioned, there were a couple relatively minor issues with our local walk that kept me away, but also a far more core matter of my feeling that the most powerful way I could take part involved doing something I did not feel strong enough to do.

Which left me with the third option. To get out of the way. Which is what I chose to do and felt best about doing. But after I did that, I realized I wanted a bit of an addendum to that quote, because we can get out of the way without also being disengaged. We can be supportive from the sidelines, which is what I hope I have managed to do with these three pieces this week, and which is what I intend to do -- and hope others who don't feel they can or should earnestly lead or follow will do more of -- as this movement continues.

Because yes, it really DOES happen: A thank you to SlutWalks

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Submitted by Heather Corinna on Mon, 2011-07-25 14:03

I want to tell you something very personal about me. Not because I want to. I really don't want to. But I'm going to do it anyway.

It's one of those things where even though it's incredibly uncomfortable for me, I feel like sharing despite my discomfort might be able to make a positive difference. And since this has to do with something where I believe others have been making a positive difference in a way I, myself, have not also been able to, it seems the least I can do. I've been largely silent around the Slutwalks. There are a few reasons for that, but the biggest one of all is that what inspired them simply struck me much, much to close to home. So, my silence has not been about nonsupport of the walks. In more ways than one, it's been about my stepping out of the way of them in part based on my own limitations.

If you're triggered by candid stories about sexual or other forms of assault, this may be triggering for you. I know it still is for me, very much so. Telling this story in this kind of detail remains incredibly difficult for me, despite many years of healing, help with therapy, help and healing found through helping others and a lot of support. It's not a story I tell often, because even just typing it out or saying it all out loud makes my hands shake and my heart race and turns me into a bit of a mess for a bit of time after I do.

I keep hearing or reading people say things like that no one really gets told the way they were dressed makes them at fault for their assault, despite about a million evidences to the contrary, and knowing far more than one person personally who has had that experience.

Conversely (and oddly enough, sometimes from the same people who say that first thing), I keep reading people stating, despite so much great activism around this lately, that how someone dresses IS what "got them raped." Or that they were raped because of their sexual history, their economic class, where they live, how they talk, how they do or don't respond to men, how they identify or present their gender -- anything BUT the fact that they were in some kind of proximity to someone who chose to rape them, which is exactly how, and only how, someone winds up being a victim of rape.

A few months ago, I had an apparently politically progressive blogger who would not stop talking to me on Twitter about the "rape outfit" of an 11-year-old girl whose rape case I had linked to. He, without my asking him anything about it personally, expressed he felt she would not have been assaulted had she been dressed differently. He called whatever it was she was wearing a "rape outfit." Hearing about the fact that I had my own "rape outfit" at 12, or that, when my great-grandmother was raped and murdered in her home at the age of 76, her "rape outfit" was a housecoat, or that the "rape outfit" of young boys sexually abused by priests was often their super-salacious Sunday best; equally not hearing my firm requests to please not keep tweeting me with misogyny which I found deeply upsetting and hurtful seemed to only make him more excited to keep saying what he was. Even reminding him I was a survivor myself didn't slow him down. Only blocking him worked. I'm quite certain he left the conversation with exactly the same beliefs as when he started it.

These things we read and hear don't just come from one group of people: some men say them, but so do some women. Social conservatives say them a lot, but progressives say them, too. People who assault people, of course, will often voice things like this or other things to do all they can to avoid responsibility. But even people who have been victimized themselves will sometimes say things like this. Sometimes -- and, I'd say, probably most of the time -- that's about internalizing the messages they got. Sometimes it's about feeling a need to have another victim be at fault for their assault so that they can feel less like they, themselves, were at fault for their assaults, even though no victim is at fault for being victimized. More unfortunately, than I can express, rape culture is one of the most globalized kinds of culture there is.

I keep reading and hearing and seeing people who, so far as I can tell, and intentionally choosing to misrepresent or deny the core issue of what the SlutWalks are about: activism working expressly to try and counter deeply harmful and endangering attitudes expressed about rape and rape victims like those of Constable Michael Sanguinetti, who, in January of this year, speaking on crime prevention at a York University safety forum said, "You know, I think we're beating around the bush here. I've been told I'm not supposed to say this - however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised." (This is why the word "slut" is so prominently featured in this activism, because it is this comment which directly inspired the first walk.)

I wish I had never heard a police officer say anything like that at all. I also wish that if I was going to hear that, it had been the first time I had.

In seeing so much nonsupport for the walks and people who have participated in them, I started to worry that being silent might be interpreted as being nonsupportive, which is the last message I'd want to send. I'm going to talk a little bit about the walks in this blog post and another in another few days, but I want to start by telling you what I'm about to tell you, if for no other reason than to do what I can do in support, because there are things I can't do yet, things which others can and have.

When I was 12 years old, I was sexually abused for the second time in my life. The first had been a year before, when I was 11. Then, I was molested by an elderly man who cut our hair in the neighborhood. I didn't tell anyone. I wasn't even totally sure what had happened to me, nor what to call it. It was 1981, I was 11, and all I knew was whatever it was felt horrible, scared me intensely, and was not okay. But I also got the message that telling anyone about it wasn't okay, and seemed to feel some message that because it happened to me, it must have meant there was something not okay about me, too. The home environment I was living in enabled these kinds of messages constantly and was itself abusive in other ways, so I did not feel safe at that point saying much of anything, let alone disclosing something like this.

A year later, I was alone cleaning up the art room of the day camp where I was a junior counselor at he end of the day. Because the building was still open, someone was likely at the front desk, but that was very far away, and otherwise, the place was a ghost town. The only reason I was there so late is that I'd often stretch out those days as long as I could in order to avoid having to go home.

I'm going to tell you what I was wearing now. What I was wearing wouldn't matter and wouldn't have mattered, to anyone, in a much better world then I lived in then and we still live in now. But it did matter to someone at the time, in a way that messed me up just as much as my assault itself did. In our cultural context right now, or perhaps in someone else's view, it would seem clear that what I was wearing had nothing at all to do with my being assaulted. In fact, now, in our cultural context about what is and isn't "slutty" dress, what I was wearing may be seen as indisputable proof that I did NOT ask for rape or deserve rape, even though nothing anyone wears or doesn't wear proves or disproves that in actuality, which is clear when people are rubbing more than two hateful brain cells together in their thinking process.

It was summer in Chicago then. It's hot in summer in Chicago. I was working at a camp, and I also had to bike back and forth, so I needed to be work-appropriate, even at 12, but also able to move around easily and not pass out from the heat. If it had been totally up to me, I'd probably have been wearing less than I was so I was more comfortable on the ride home.

But as it was, I had on gymshoes. I had a fairly loose white t-shirt on with the sleeves carefully rolled up, my typical uniform of the time (because big t-shirts are more cool if you roll up the sleeves, everyone knew that). I had on red chino-eqsque shorts that ended just above my knee. I was an early bloomer physically, so whatever I was wearing, there wasn't then, as there isn't now, any hiding that I'm a person with an hourglass shape and curves. Would that there had been: after what happened the year before and having been teased at home about my development, I often tried to hide parts of my body as I could. I probably had on some lip gloss. I had chin-length feathered hair that year, gone blonde from being out in the sun.

A group of much-older teenage boys, probably in their late teens, came into the art room started talking to me, and asked what I was doing there. I told them, then they asked how I got back and forth from the camp to home. I remember that as I said I rode my bike, I'd wished that I could take it back. I could feel a lack of safety in the air right then. I wished I had said someone picked me up. They asked if I wanted a ride. I said no, thank you. They asked a few more times, making a bit of a game of it, but a very pushy game. I said no a few more times then said I had to go get something and ran out.

I went and hid in a bathroom stall down the hall for what felt like hours but which was probably only minutes. I didn't go to the front desk and try to ask for help. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the biggest was probably that I had already learned in my life that being in danger was normal and that not being helped in being safe was what I could most typically expect from people. I had also learned already that sometimes telling when I was in danger only got me hurt more.

When I came out of the stall, I went to the bike rack to get my bike, planning to speed away as fast as I could and unlocked it in a hurry. But those boys drove up behind me in the van they had, physically attacked me and dragged me away from my bike and into their car. (Typical perhaps of a tween mind, I remember having a hard time later figuring out if I should be more upset I got hurt -- assault or rape were not words I had at the time -- or more upset that in the midst of all of this, my bike had been stolen because it was left unlocked.)

I have very hazy memories of what happened next, memories I have never fully either formed or recovered, that only show up in mushy, jagged pieces in night terrors I have had about this over the years. I will honestly say I am glad I have only hazy recall of what happened in that van, and that while parts of my body have always made clear they remember, much of my brain never has. A day later, a big, nasty bump welled up on my head, so I've always figured I got knocked out, and the rest of my lack of memory can be attributed to shock.

The next thing I remember was finding myself back on the curb near the bike rack, scruffed up, shirt ripped feeling incredibly sore and strangely soggy in places. I went back inside to the bathroom and was bleeding from my rectum. I think I managed to wash my face, but that was all I could manage. I was incredibly confused, disoriented and still scared to death, not knowing if anywhere was safe,if those boys had left, nothing. I went to the pay phone and called my mother, who also called the police before she came over. All I was able to voice was that I was very scared and hurt and needed someone to come to get me now.

I went back outside and sat on the curb in front of the park where a lot of people were, hoping I'd be safe there and that my mother would find me. She arrived about the same time the police did, who I didn't know had been called. I know I was completely incoherent, and I don't believe I was able to express anything anyone could understand. I suspect what I said was something to the effect of, "Guys. Said no, no ride. Hid. Came after me. Grabbed. Van. Scared. Hid in bathroom. Woke up on curb. Are they gone? What? Are they gone?" I know, though, however incomprehensible my words, it could not have been missed that I was in shock, nor that I had clearly been attacked in some way. Over the years, I've looked for rationale and reason of why I got so poorly served, but I always give up, knowing all too well how very, very many victims of sexual assault have had the same experience, and that it isn't something with rhyme or reason part how poorly sexual assault is treated in most of the world.

While my memories of my attack are very hazy, my memories of what came next have never been. I've often wished they, too, were hazy.

The police and my mother talked for a while before anyone even talked to me or asked how I was at all. I sat shivering on that curb, holding my knees, watching a crowd form around us, people at the park starting to pay more attention, feeling more and more freaked out. My mother came over and asked if I was just scared, if the van was still there. I looked around. It wasn't. I said no, I thought it was gone, I hoped it was gone, please let it be gone. For whatever reason, she said more than once "So, nothing happened? You just got scared?" and I remember not being sure how to answer that because it felt confusing, and like there was some kind of cue about a right answer hidden in there. Then two of the police stepped over, and talked with my mother again, instead of me, and I heard one of them say, half-looking at me, half-away, that I really shouldn't be wearing shorts that short because if I did, I could expect to have trouble with boys.

I also know and remember that with those words, I suddenly got a little more clear, the clarity you get from having just felt unsafe, thinking you might be safe, and then all the more acutely recognizing you are not, and determined to say absolutely nothing to them or my mother about anything. I agreed that okay, sure, yeah, I just got scared, I was fine, please just get me home, fine. You'll just make a note about the van, and I should call you if I see it again fine (and yeah, right). How on earth could I have felt safe saying to any of them in that space that I was bleeding from my rectum and I didn't know why, something already incredibly vulnerable for me to share in the first place? How on earth could I say that I think what just happened to me was like what had happened the year before that I'd told no one about? So, I didn't say anything. Not to anyone, not until a handful of years later when ever so slowly, I started telling people, scared to death every time I did.

That I didn't say anything at the time and for a long time shouldn't be surprising. It's about all the same kind of things that keep most survivors from reporting or disclosing.

Here's the part where I think it's very, very important that anyone reading anything like this knows three vital things.

These are not opinions. These are facts. I can't stop you from denying they are truths and facts, but you have to know that if you do, you do so from a place of bias or ignorance because we have all the evidence in the world that they are true. We have not just the story of someone like myself but mountain of stories from survivors like myself and survivors different than me, from sound studies and research and loads of "rape prevention" tips that made so many people feel like they were safer who learned the hard way that those tips didn't do a damn thing to protect them. All they did was control them, make them feel more scared of living, more distracted by all the things they felt they needed to think about to be safe and then and they just wound up getting hurt anyway.

The only factual part of disputes to what I am about to say is that it is absolutely a fact that we still have a long, long way to go when it comes to the way most of our world and many of the people in it treat rape and those of us who have been assaulted and abused.

1) I was not assaulted because of how I was dressed. Those long red shorts and sneakers were not why I was assaulted. But. The person who was wearing a short skirt and heels when she was assaulted wasn't assaulted because of how she was dressed, either. Even if I had been wearing something else entirely -- like the housecoat my great-grandmother was, a burqua, a nun's habit, overalls, skinny jeans or business attire; even if I was not a woman with a vulva, but a woman with a penis dressing in clothing I felt was representative of my gender as a woman, but some of the world disagreed with me, and felt I was cross-dressing, how I was dressed would not have been why I was assaulted, nor would my assault have been prevented had I just dressed differently. That's not because there is one way to dress that "gets you raped" and one way to dress that doesn't. That's because the thing that "gets someone raped" isn't a thing, it's a person who chooses to rape you and what you do and don't wear is something we know does not matter and have loads of hard data that has made that clear fro a long time now. People have been raped wearing everything in the world people can wear, and the vast majority of the time people are raped, they aren't wearing what those who blame them consider "provocative" clothing in the first place.

The idea or statement that how a victim was dressed had anything to do with their being raped does not reflect the realities of rape and rape perpetration, only the realities of victim blaming and rape culture.

2) My rape was a "real" rape. It was not a "real" rape just because my attackers were strangers to me, because there was physical violence involved, because I was so young and had not yet chosen to have any kind of sex yet outside of furtive kisses and some clueless dry-humping with a girl friend at 10, because I struggled and probably yelled no, because I was a girl, because I managed to be assaulted in ways that now, at this point in time, most people recognize as "real rape." It was a real rape because people really did something sexual to me without my consent and against my will because they wanted to do it and either didn't care I didn't, or wanted to do it because I didn't want to. That is why my rape is a "real" rape, and is also why someone who is raped by their husband at home after church has experienced a "real" rape; why someone who is out at a party in clubbing gear, drinking cocktails, who says yes to something sexual, but no to something else but whose no is ignored has experienced a "real" rape; why someone who is worn down by verbal coercion and finally gives in to sex they do not want has experienced a "real" rape; why a man who is sexually assaulted, whatever the gender of his perpetrator, has also experienced "real" rape.

Rapes are real in all the ways rape can happen, not just in the ways that some people are most comfortable acknowledging, or the ways which do not challenge people to have to consider that rape culture is not only real, but more pervasive, widespread and more a part of anyone's life, ongoing relationships, and perhaps even personal behavior than anyone would ever like to have to acknowledge.

3) All I have said here has a whole lot to do with Slutwalks and the aim of slutwalks. All I have said here has a whole lot to do with who gets impacted by the kinds of statements and attitudes the walks aim to call out and challenge, how deeply we can be impacted and how those statements and attitudes not only do not help people protect themselves from being victimized, but how they hurt victims and can even put people in greater danger.

All I have said here is exactly about telling women that if they dress a certain way, like sluts (or hos, or harlots or loose women, or whatever word du jour of similar sentiment fits your era, culture or community) they deserve to be raped or are asking to be assaulted. All I have said here is not some kind of strange exception where the woman involved was treated that way but wasn't dressed "like a slut," because all I have said here is a textbook example of the fact that the idea of what "asking for it" is is completely arbitrary except for the part where so incredibly often, the mere fact of having been raped means, to someone, if not a lot of someone's, that a victim must have been asking for it.

I want to finish today by saying one more thing I think is critically important, and another big part of why I'm sharing what I have with you here, despite it all being so difficult for me to say so visibly.

I didn't attend any of the Slutwalks. I probably won't. I'm nearest to Seattle, and had some personal issues with some of ours here that were part of what kept me from it, issues I really think are personal and individual enough not to be relevant or important to anyone but me, especially with the bigger picture in mind. I also have some more political issues, but that's something I'll talk about more in my second post about this.

What I want to mention now is the one big thing that kept me from attending any of the walks, and that is a lack of courage and resiliency. I need to acknowledge that I have lacked a level of courage and resiliency around this which some other people who have attended these walks have had, and which I cannot possibly express my great admiration and respect for. When I see photos of them, read their words, think about them -- survivors like me, who probably have similar or even the same wounds, but went all the same, some even wearing what they wore when assaulted, I am overcome with awe and humility and gratitude.

I know: I have talked about being a survivor very publicly before. In many ways, I am very strong around this, especially since my most harrowing assaults are hardly fresh: they happened a long time ago, and I've had a lot of time to heal. But in some ways, I am not strong around this. In some ways, I am still broken in places that haven't yet become strong or whole. In some ways, I am not brave around this in ways that others have been or can be -- or heck, know they aren't but are so amazing, they do it anyway.

I thought about attending a walk wearing something as similar as I could find to what I was wearing that day when I was 12. And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't open myself up to even one person, saying or writing in a place I could hear anything at all about the way I was dressed and my assault, whether the statement would be that I deserved to be raped because of what I was wearing, or that I didn't, but some other woman did. I am just not that strong, mostly because hearing what I did, when I did, how I did wounded me just that deeply, that almost 30 years later, I can't even put on a damn pair of shorts to wear in public without a meltdown, even though I am comfortable naked or wearing anything else there is I'd want to wear.

I need to say this twice: there are women who attended Slutwalks who DID wear exactly what they were wearing when they were assaulted; who did wear what someone told them made their rape their fault, despite it undoubtedly being scary and painful, because they recognized how powerful it could be for them and for others.

I had to stop for a few minutes after I typed that again, because the bravery and integrity of that action literally makes me breathless. There are survivors who did what I could not do, cannot do, because they know how important it is, to them, to people like me, to everyone. There are those who did what I could not do, who I firmly believe have done something that might seem small, but which is, I think, major. Something that will make it less and less likely a 12-year-old girl, wearing whatever it is she is wearing, who already has been done the grave injustice of rape, will never, ever hear anyone say that their clothing -- that ANYTHING -- made being raped their fault.

Any of us can have whatever options or ideas or feelings about this activism that we like. We can disagree about some of it, or the way a given person has or hasn't executed it, but I just don't know how it's possible not to recognize the potential power of what so many people have been part of with these walks, nor to ignore how much participating must have required of some of the speakers and other attendees.

So, if there is anyone out there who organized or attended a walk who interpreted my silence as nonsupport, I hope you know now that it wasn't. If there is anyone out there who feels worn down or unappreciated by the critiques or the resistance, know there is someone right here whose s/hero you are, in a way that someone who usually has no shortage of words has a hard time even articulating the depth of. If there is anyone out there who was brave in a way I couldn't be, and who got torn down for it or spoken to in exactly the ways that I feared I would, I can't tell you how sorry I am that after all the courage you probably had to muster up, anyone around you couldn't manage to have just a fraction of the integrity and care and inner strength you do.

But know, too, there is someone sitting right here who believes that while you should not have ever had to take yet one more hit around this, I believe that in taking the risk you did, you've done something that not only will help make it less likely others have to, but you've humbled someone who sometimes arrogantly thought she was as brave around this as someone could be by raising the bar.

(P.S. I ask that you please tread gently in the comments on this, if you're going to leave one, and in whatever you might say if you're going to blog about my story at all. Like I said, this is something where I feel incredibly vulnerable. I think it's safe to say it's something where anyone would, so I'd hope anyone addressing any candid story from any survivor would be sensitive, cautious and thoughtful. I hate to even have to ask something like that at all, because, you know, we shouldn't have to. But like all too many survivors, especially those who tell their stories and speak up, and as someone who has been burned before when being visible and vocal about her rapes, I know that we do have to ask, and that even then, sometimes even just asking winds up resulting in harassment. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen this time around, but feel the need to make that ask. Thank you.)

My boyfriend wants naked pictures of me: should I do it?

MelissaDV asks:

Me and my boyfriend have been together for 9 months. I'm 17 and he's 22. Everything is going great! We never really fight and my family likes him, too, which is rare. Only problem is he travels a lot for work, he will be gone for 2 weeks at at time. I don't mind, but he asked me to help make his trip better...he wanted me to take nude pictures of myself. I said I would but only because I do love and care about him a lot and thought it would be good for the both of us. But I HATE pictures as it is...I tried to take them for him but I HATE every picture I take and it makes me feel even more self-conscious than I do already. I would rather walk around naked for him all day then take pictures of myself. I know it sounds stupid, but it's just really hard for me. I trust him and know he wouldn't do anything with those pictures but it's hard explaining to him why I don't like pictures, he doesn't get it...should I just suck it up and take em?

The age of consent... for what, exactly?

tortot555 asks:

I want to know what the government considers sex. When they say age of consent what kind of sex are they talking about?

How do I approach my college about sexual assault awareness?

Annie W. asks:

Beginning in September, I am going to be employed as Residence Don for an all girls floor at a university. I am pretty exited about the job and really would like to make residence life a positive experience for the students I will be living with (about 170 guys and gals in total). However, there is one MAJOR issue I have with the residence, they offered no sexual assault awareness education for the students. In the 2008-09 school year, there were 3 sexual assaults reported, which lead to criminal charges, and almost all I have talked to who have lived in this residence for multiple years have either been sexually assaulted themselves or had a friend who was while living there. So, clearly, something is needed to change this residence culture that seems to be conducive to sexual violence.

Dealing with Date Rape & Abuse

HurtandUsed asks:

Okay, this happened to me a few months ago but it's been really bothering me. I was dating a guy for a while and when we started dating, I told him I didn't want to do anything sexual till I was 18. He promised that it was okay for him and he wouldn't do or try anything. Well, after we were dating for about 8 months, he started to change. He would get ticked off at me if I didn't spend every minute of my time with him. He wouldn't let me hang out or even talk to any of my friends. Then he started saying things to me that were perverted but I just shrugged them off as him just joking around. He then started touching my chest area, and I told him to stop, but he just acted like it was always an accident. He kept on doing it even at school, so I just gave up, and didn't care if he touched me there anymore even though in the back of my head I knew it was wrong. Then one day, we were over at his house lying on his bed, and I guess you could say we were making out. I really regret it now. Then he did something he never did before, He put his hands up my shirt and took off my bra. I couldn't say no because it was already too late.

12-year-old violently killed by her mother over virginity

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Submitted by Heather Corinna on Sun, 2005-01-16 17:00

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A woman angry with her 12-year-old daughter for having sex forced the girl to drink bleach and sat on her until the child died, a police detective said. The girl's 9-year-old brother was forced to watch the attack, Detective Warren Cotton testified Thursday in a preliminary hearing for Tunisia Archie, 31.

Cotton said Archie... told authorities she was disturbed because ``her daughter told her that she was no longer a virgin.''


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