After attending the annual Take Back the Night (TBTN) rally , a forum on sexual violence, each April for the past three years, I have been reflecting on two images. The first is of my young daughters, with their long brunette hair framing fair-skinned faces, one’s tawny and the other’s chocolate brown eyes a distinguishing feature. They live in a world populated by fairies and gnomes, swingsets and playdates, and the ever-broadening magic of their imaginations. Violence, to date, is the random shove during a sibling conflict.
The second image is the mental connect-the-dots I have been doing as the women’s (and a few men’s) stories from the rallies have swirled through me. The picture I am trying to manifest is a society in which sexual violence is nonexistent or a rare event and trying to understand what actions would need to be taken to accomplish this.
TBTN’s primary goals are to provide survivors a public forum for telling their stories and to raise awareness about the daily reality and impact of sexual violence in our community. It does both effectively. If you listen closely, there is a lot to be learned about the lines between the dots. Those in attendance fall mostly into three groups: survivors, their loved ones, and an array of city officials, advocates, and/or service providers. It is clear that we need to continue to look at the gaps that occur at the level of intervention which may be addressed by enforcing existing laws more stringently, developing new laws, or providing more funding for those on the front lines of response. However, all of these initiatives are after the fact.
So what do we need to do to prevent sexual violence or greatly decrease it? With the abduction, rape, and murder of two women in our community within the past two years, as well as the daily, more insidious prevalence of violence against women, this question is directly in our faces. Let’s take the opportunity to look at this carefully before its urgency fades with time. For me, it starts with the whole community joining this dialogue and taking some responsibility for the choices we make daily. For example:
· Do we watch TV programs that are “entertaining” us with content about sexual violence?
· Do we go to movies that are graphically and gratuitously violent?
· Do we buy pornography or live with someone who does and say nothing about the connection between exploitation and violence, because we rationalize it isn’t related?
· Do we turn away when a child or a teenager comes to us with a disturbing story, because we aren’t comfortable addressing it?
· Do spiritual leaders address domestic and sexual violence within their congregations?
· Do we teach our children about safe touch, healthy expressions of sexuality and sexual violence prevention?
· Do we tell businesses that are marketing products in sexually explicit ways to stop with the power of spending our money elsewhere?
Or maybe it seems like these small choices won’t really make a difference. We don’t see them as the lines between the dots in the bigger picture of prevention. But what if each and every one of us started to look at the subtler ways in which our society tolerates and fosters a culture in which sexual violence is normalized? We aren’t just what we eat when it comes to food; we are what we consume in other ways too. And we have been culturally “supersized” when it comes to subtle and blatant messages that violence against women is the norm. It’s just so insidious or hidden like the fat in a Big Mac; we’ve become desensitized.
I know for me, I saw too many beautiful young women at TBTN that understandably thought “it would never happen” to them. And it shouldn’t have. Then I think about my daughters and my fervent desire that they never have to stand in front of a microphone with tears streaming down their faces, choking out their story of loss, betrayal and trauma, because we didn’t own it as a collective problem. We didn’t connect the dots we could individually in order to envision a different future. Because we didn’t, as a community, as a broader society say, “Enough already.”