understanding
a troubled landscape
When lives are interrupted by the traumatic effects of intimate violence,
survivors deserve support from our community. Support from our friends and family, support from law makers and health care providers, counselors and healers, justice workers, community members and social structures.
We imagine that our current systems offer care and accountability, but the numbers tell a different story.
IN EXISTING US justice system
99.54% of sexual assaults
result in zero accountability
So what is going on? How did we get here?
We seem to collectively agree that sexual violence is bad, so why is it still so common?
Why is there such a discrepancy between our values and our actions?
Why are our systems of care and justice so ineffective at addressing sexual violence, responding to it, and preventing it?
"The goal of talking about rape culture is about much more than just reducing the frequency with which sexual assault occurs or the impunity that allows it to flourish, because the problems at the root of rape culture are much bigger than that."
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/15/7371737/rape-culture-definition
the mythology
that permitS and perpetuateS
a culture of violence
Our beliefs and understandings inform how we respond to survivors. Incorrect assumptions around sexual violation, intimate partner violence and gendered harm shape how survivors are treated, and how communities respond.
mythology will influence healing
mythology will influence harm
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Whether a surviver will self identity and seek support for the long term biological, social and economic impacts of their trauma
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How isolated a survivor becomes in their healing process and community relationships
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Whether a survivor blames themselves, resulting in an increased recovery time
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Whether a survivor’s disclosures to those they are closest to will result in dismissal, minimization, blame or retraumatization
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How our society imagines the identity and behavior of victims, and allocates belief and resources accordingly
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Whether a survivor will be terrorized or harmed further during attempts to find support or seek justice by first responders, police, justice professionals, advocates
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Whether one is more likely to cause intimate harm to another person, or tolerate similar violence in others
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Whether one is likely to align not just with intimate violence, but also endorse other forms of systemic oppression like racism, sexism and homophobia
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How the media represents intimate violence, and ultimately influences criminal justice proceedings
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Whether people who harm will be held accountable in their community, or even have their violence acknowledged
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Whether the processes we use for justice incentivize denial, and to what degree they function to produce truth, address needs, create accountability and prevent harm
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What mitigation and prevention strategies we as a society choose to resource and implement, and whether or not they work
so how do we make a change?
How do we begin to move the needle?
rape
culture
CARE
culture
How do we support this cultural shift?
What are the realities of surviving intimate harm that survivors can teach us about?
How do we co-create conditions that can reduce harm in the first place?
What would a world that actually addresses accountability and care look like,
and how do we get there?
What we “know”
Informs what we do.
The beliefs, attitudes and assumptions about harm and healing that underpin our systems of response, should be informed by the people who know the experience best: survivors.
So we center the wisdom of survivors. Survivors should be positioned to inform and redefine our collective approaches to healing and justice. To imagine human and healing-centered alternatives and systems that meet the diverse needs of survivors, those who harm, and the communities that are impacted.
How do we support this cultural shift?
What are the realities of surviving intimate harm that survivors can teach us about?
How do we co-create conditions that can reduce harm in the first place?
What would a world that actually addresses accountability and care look like, and how do we get there?
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We recognize that socialization into the mythology of patriarchal violence is one of the greatest barriers to survivor defined healing and justice. So we work to flip the script, holding space for healing connection and radical reimagining, direct from the survivors who have hard earned their wisdom.
We are a growing coalition of survivors committed to addressing the toxic mythology around intimate violation, gender violence and sexual harm, by centering the wisdom of survivors in redefining our collective approaches to healing and justice.
