“Life is a state of endless becoming. It is vital not to forget where we’ve been, to take inventory of all that we currently have, and to envision bigger lives for ourselves.
I WAS — In a society that is forward facing and fast moving, there is value in pausing and looking back. The first phase asks us to rest and reflect. To acknowledge the stages we have survived, the people we have loved, and the losses we have accumulated.
We must make a home for all of our experiences and allow them to take shape. How will we let our past inform us? How will we carry it forward? How will we become bigger than what has hurt us?
I AM — The character sits centered, anchored in the present.
We must take the time to absorb what is happening now without letting life mindlessly pass us by. Pay attention, even to the hard parts.
I WILL BE — Evolution is inevitable. Should we ever feel stuck or trapped, we can seek comfort knowing we exist in a state of flux.
The character exits the frame, envisioning a life beyond what the viewer can see.
This piece serves as an homage to process, rather than outcome. Healing happens when we are able to incorporate the full spectrum of our experiences and integrate our collective selves. Instead of keeping parts of us in the dark, we deserve to live wholly and authentically. I hope you will honor every leg of your journey, knowing life is infinitely unfolding.”
Chanel Miller. “I was, I am, I will be” is on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco through February 2022.
“when we are gentle with others, we also learn to be more gentle with ourselves.”
new year, same commitment.
♥
Ava DuVernay: You understood the dangers of American policing, the criminalization of Black, native, and brown people, 50 years ago. Your activism and your scholarship has always been inclusive of class and race and gender and sexuality. It seems we’re at a critical mass where a majority of people are finally able to hear and to understand the concepts that you’ve been talking about for decades. Is that satisfying or exhausting after all this time?
Angela Davis: I don’t think about it as an experience that I’m having as an individual. I think about it as a collective experience, because I would not have made those arguments or engaged in those kinds of activisms if there were not other people doing it. One of the things that some of us said over and over again is that we’re doing this work. Don’t expect to receive public credit for it. It’s not to be acknowledged that we do this work. We do this work because we want to change the world. If we don’t do the work continuously and passionately, even as it appears as if no one is listening, if we don’t help to create the conditions of possibility for change, then a moment like this will arrive and we can do nothing about it. As Bobby Seale said, we will not be able to “seize the time.” This is a perfect example of our being able to seize this moment and turn it into something that’s radical and transformative.
Excerpted from Vanity Fair, September 2020
Escreva para curar.
Scrivere per guarire.
Recently, I led a discussion on intersectional issues of abuse including systemic issues of sexism and rape culture, and ended with encouraging my support group leadership, participants, and loved ones to confront, disrupt, and eradicate these issues with a goal of helping establish empathic environments free of shame, stigma, and fear in our homes, schools, and workplaces. It was met with cathartic feedback; one survivor’s response hit home. I’m sharing bits and bytes from the presentation here.
It’s accurate to state that the majority of our country is aware of sexism and ignorant to rape culture and its direct linkage to sexism: that everyday rape culture is protected and promulgated in every aspect of our lives through sexist verbiage and policy; the promotion of sexual coercion; lack of bodily autonomy; and disregard for feminine-presenting or gender-nonconforming people. Rape culture can be subtle or overt; often, abusers consciously create situations with subtleties so that when called out, they have a litany of excuses—“gray areas,” they may say—ready to escape culpability.
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.”
Audre Lorde in “Learning from the ‘60s,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
All people have the right to engage with their social, academic, and professional spaces free from harmful behavior. Education on how to give and get consent in daily interactions is critically important to creating sustainable culture change. Coercive behavior at home, school, and work can include intimidation, subtle or overt threats, blackmail, dishonesty, and gaslighting, often romanticized. Eventually due to unyielding pressure, the victim may acquiesce, sustaining the false notion of a mutual agreement.
A person’s ability to consent is influenced by the interplay of power, identity, and privilege. In using coercion, an abuser in a position of power—perceived or actual—leverages that power to achieve their desired outcome which can include subjugation, humiliation, and sexual control. An abuser with power and privilege is responsible for not putting a person in a position where they are expected to say yes. Rape culture normalizes the belief that a yes achieved through coercion is sufficient consent, allowing for collective disregard of a victim’s personhood and value.
Example 1:
Abuser creates false sense of safety for victim; abuser intimidates victim with falsehoods that victim will later debunk; abuser silences victim with threats; abuser subtly and overtly abuses victim with others’ knowledge; victim calls out abuser for abuse and debunked falsehoods; abuser gaslights victim with discriminatory verbiage; victim struggles with debilitating anxiety and depression.
When victim discloses details to their support system, half of said support system responds with: “He denied it” and “Don’t think about it.”
Example 2:
On June 10, 2019, the Washington Post reported, “President Trump’s pitter-patter of exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasting and outright falsehoods has continued at a remarkable pace. As of June 7, his 869th day in office, the president has made 10,796 false or misleading claims.”
“He’s denied it. That’s all I need to hear.” —Senator Lindsay Graham, regarding the rape charges that Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll made against Trump on June 21, 2019.
Often when victims share their abuse—whether in pieces and on their time or full force and immediately—they are labeled and further shamed and stigmatized. When victims are advised to trivialize, divert, and ignore their abuse, they are further intimidated and silenced. Society is infinitely creative in dismissing victims’ abuse, particularly the experiences of victims whose identities are on the margins of mainstream culture. As such, a victim—survivor—who has experienced abuse, and whose identity is on the margins of mainstream culture, is more likely to face additional barriers to disclosing, reporting, seeking lifesaving care, and justice.
So how do we move forward? First, institutions and the justice system must stop protecting and perpetuating victim blaming and gender inequity, including hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy. All of this is part of rape culture. Victims must be empowered with the support that they need to survive and thrive; as such, they should be viewed as survivors. We must remember that credibility is a basic survival tool, and that survivors speaking up is courageous. Speaking up often comes at a price, whether at the expense of a survivor’s reputation, education, career, and/or health. We must work to confront, disrupt, and eradicate that expense.
Parents, leadership in schools and workplaces, and policy makers must teach and communicate prevention, engagement, and outreach regarding gender equity, violence prevention, and trauma. This is critically important to developing concrete strategies grounded in theoretical framework.
Finally, it is utmost important that survivors are supported. Responding to a survivor’s disclosure with compassion, validation, and support is critically important for a survivor healing from abuse and trauma. Supporting survivors confronts pervasive attitudes that cast doubts on survivors who come forward; as such, support is integral to preventing future incidents of abuse. Validation and support sends a message to society that these types of abusive behavior are harmful and must have consequences.
Survivor healing and abuser accountability are both utmost important to survivors finding closure and emerging with growth and resilience. Often, a survivor cannot move onward without it.
Survivors of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape often relive trauma again and again to prove that they’re traumatized in order to establish credibility with institutional powers and the justice system. Invasive ordeals compound the subjugation and humiliation experienced; all of this is necessary, survivors are told, for accountability and justice. Survivors are expected to behave, respect, remember, grieve, stay focused and maintain work ethic, suppress anguish, be strong, and divulge excruciating moments to strangers. Bearing witness to these details should only be accessed at the survivor’s will, on their time, and on their public or private terms at which point divulgence to their chosen person(s) can be an act of catharsis and empowerment for the survivor.
A year and a half ago, I vowed to myself to help other women and minorities access expert compassionate care; to heal and never lose faith in the beautiful collective humanity that I know exists; to go forth with confidence and strengthened dedication to well-being; for trauma to serve as a model of human insight; and for survivorship to serve as a conduit to empathy and expertise. I’ve since learned and unlearned: writing, as it once was, is still my catharsis and light and being; vulnerability is courageous and opening oneself up to another human is an act of resilience; post-trauma’s effects can easily be reignited with fresh trauma; survival may be dependent upon continually seeking care; and openly discussing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues is the most powerful way to break down stigma.
I write for every woman who wishes to write, who has spoken truth to power that protects and perpetuates gender-based discrimination, gender-based violence, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape. I write for every woman who wishes to write, who has been met with sexist and tired statements including and not limited to, “He’s a good guy” and “He’s talented,” as if talent (and often, statistically unsupported overconfidence), “niceness,” and bro culture that both men and women protect and perpetuate, somehow excuses the behavior and/or crime, and discomfort, anxiety, and depression that the woman endured. I write for every woman who wishes to write, who has endured gaslighting, victim blaming, shaming, stigma, and judgment.
“Being told that, categorically, he knows what he’s talking about and she doesn’t, however minor a part of any given conversation, perpetuates the ugliness of this world and holds back its light. After my book Wanderlust came out in 2000, I found myself better able to resist being bullied out of my own perceptions and interpretations. On two occasions around that time, I objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents hadn’t happened at all as I said, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest—in a nutshell, female.”
Excerpted from Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit.
“When I sat down and wrote the essay Men Explain Things to Me, here’s what surprised me: though I began with a ridiculous example of being patronized by a man, I ended with rapes and murders. We tend to treat violence and the abuse of power as though they fit into airtight categories: harassment, intimidation, threat, battery, rape, murder. But I realize now that what I was saying is: it’s a slippery slope. That’s why we need to address that slope, rather than compartmentalizing the varieties of misogyny and dealing with each separately. Doing so has meant fragmenting the picture, seeing the parts, not the whole.
A man acts on the belief that you have no right to speak and that you don’t get to define what’s going on. That could just mean cutting you off at the dinner table or the conference. It could also mean telling you to shut up, or threatening you if you open your mouth, or beating you for speaking, or killing you to silence you forever. He could be your husband, your father, your boss or editor, or the stranger at some meeting or on the train, or the guy you’ve never seen who’s mad at someone else but thinks ‘women’ is a small enough category that you can stand in for ‘her.’ He’s there to tell you that you have no rights.
Threats often precede acts, which is why the targets of online rape and death threats take them seriously, even though the sites that allow them and the law enforcement officials that generally ignore them apparently do not. Quite a lot of women are murdered after leaving a boyfriend or husband who believes he owns her and that she has no right to self-determination.”
Rebecca Solnit on why #YesAllWomen matters, and why phrases like domestic violence, mansplaining, rape culture, and sexual entitlement help us address issues honestly and open the way to change.
Note that academic institutions and the justice system have historically protected classism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Note the published phrases used to describe Brock Turner, the man who sexually assaulted Chanel Miller: “baby-faced Stanford freshman,” “All-American swimmer,” “Stanford swimmer,” and winning swimming times were promulgated by journalists to uphold Turner’s privilege and Stanford’s reputation.
Millions of women of Asian descent are bearing witness to Chanel Miller and Rowena Chiu claiming their names and taking control of their narratives. The catharsis that I feel as a woman, of Asian descent, and survivor is liberating and I know that it is resonating with other women of color. It is critically important to note that women, both cis- and transgender, are disproportionately affected by sexual violence, and that while the majority of sexual assaults and rapes in America are reported by white women, women of color especially Black women and Native American women are more likely to be sexually assaulted and raped. It is equally important to note that Asian women report rape and other forms of sexual violence less frequently than women of other races.
Asian women experience and intersect with racism, sexism, and misogyny in ways that are shared with women of other races and separately, unique to us. Everyone must acknowledge the dehumanization of Asian women—including hyper sexualization and fetishization—and acknowledge its unequivocal link to American colonialism, imperialism, and militarization in Asian countries. Asian women and all women of color are often asked, “Why didn’t you report it?” The obvious reasons include trauma; lack of financial resources; immigration status; mistrust of the justice system; and shame, societal- and self-stigma, and risk of alienation from families, friends, and ethnic communities.
The data on underreporting and shame, stigma, and fear associated with victim self-reporting is unequivocally linked to the data that three out of four sexual assaults are not reported to law enforcement. I personally do not believe that incarceration is synonymous with justice; nonetheless, the data is jarring: five out of every 1,000 perpetrators receive prison sentencing. All of this is evidence that survivors of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape—especially those from marginalized groups—can fail to receive justice from a system that is biased against them from the start. Half of survivors who report their sexual assaults and rapes say that they are re-traumatized by law enforcement, which may blame them for their own assaults and rapes.
So how do we move forward? First, we must support both cis- and transgender women, other marginalized groups, and survivors of all genders. Recognize whether there is a tendency to victim-blame, and listen to survivors of all intersecting identities whether they choose to publicly or privately disclose details of their traumas. Identify responsibilities—as a professional, as a human—and support survivors by working to eradicate systemic issues of harmful masculine ideals and rape culture. Understand that yes, all sexism is linked to rape culture; work to confront, disrupt, and eradicate issues of sexism at its rearing. Support community health centers and Planned Parenthood centers, where low-income women and minorities will be treated with expert compassionate care. Support public libraries and access to computers, free Internet, and digital literacy tools. Know that these tools are intrinsically linked to audibility and survival.
To my support network: I love you and am grateful for your love and support these past years. You remember when I was confident, uninhibited, and assertive; when I lost that for some time; and my re-emergence, grown, growing, and resilient.
I recognize my privilege and know that many survivors are struggling with alienation from family and friends and may be unsure where to seek support. Please find verified resources below:
BetterBrave is a guide to identifying and addressing sexual harassment.
The Center for Changing Our Campus Culture is an online resource to address dating violence, intimate partner violence, and sexual assault, supported by the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women.
Local domestic violence shelters resource guide
Equal Rights Advocates is a nonprofit legal organization dedicated to protecting and expanding economic and educational access and opportunities for women.
Me Too is a movement that supports survivors of sexual violence and their allies by connecting survivors to healing resources, and offering community organizing resources, information regarding pursuing a “me too” policy platform, and sexual violence research.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides lifesaving tools and immediate support to enable victims to find safety.
The National Women’s Law Center works to protect and advance the progress of women and girls at work and in school, with special attention given to the needs of low-income women and families.
Rise is a multi-sector coalition of sexual assault survivors and allies working to empower all survivors with civil rights and in 2016, drafted and passed the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights unanimously through Congress.
The TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund supports the brave individuals who have come forward, at great risk to themselves, to seek the justice they deserve and to protect others from similar behavior. It is administered by the National Women’s Law Center.
“At Planned Parenthood, we believe sexual and reproductive health care IS health care—and that health care is a human right. That includes safe, legal abortion. Everyone deserves health care that’s free of shame, stigma, or judgment.” —@plannedparenthood.
Unless you’ve been completely avoiding the news, you too know that over the past few weeks, hyper-restrictive, medically illiterate abortion laws have been passed in Georgia, Alabama, and several other states. As my generation’s parents witnessed in their time, women will have abortions whether they are safe and legal or not. Women will die if these laws are allowed to stand. Here’s my broad sweeping generalization: misogyny runs deep in this country. (Update: shoutout to the man who messaged me: “Then go back to your fucking country!” As a proud immigrant, I find statements like such both old and laughable. As James Baldwin wrote in his 1955 book, Notes of a Native Son, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”)
All of this merda reminds me of a particularly memorable “What I’ve Learned” from Esquire’s February 2016 issue. Cecile Richards, then-president of Planned Parenthood, said: “The same woman who is picketing your clinic one day finds out that she needs Planned Parenthood the very next day.” I remember reading this three years ago and finding it supremely profound. It still resonates. As an adolescent nurtured in a loving but privileged bubble at an all-girls’ Catholic school, we were taught that abortion was a grave sin. “I would never,” many girls said, as a majority group headed to the March for Life each year.
I fluctuated with my feels when I was a naïve adolescent. I’ll always express gratitude for those fourteen years of Catholic school but I’ve come to realize through lived experiences: no one needs to “believe” in abortion. Abortion is health care, not religion. Pro-choice is pro-life—respect for the sanctity of women’s lives, not every fertilized egg in an ovary. Choice is non-negotiable, health care is a human right, and I have a difficult time these days supporting those in my life who support politicians obsessed with controlling my physiology.
I don’t feel the need to expound upon my personal experiences but I will say that supporting and choosing these existences—choice, and Planned Parenthood—has been antithetical to my cradle Catholicism and intrinsically linked to my emotional and physical well-being and ultimately survival as the healthy, thriving woman I am today.
Women everywhere should have the right to choose and access to reproductive health clinics where they will be treated with expert care and compassion. As I expand my work with organizations dedicated to furthering inclusive sexual and reproductive health care around the world, I always remember my chosen home because God I do sincerely love America and feel an innate lifelong link to helping minorities receive the expert compassionate care I’ve been blessed with in my lifetime. The threat of bodily autonomy being removed here is terrifying and we should all be on the frontlines advocating to ensure safe and legal health care for all women in America.
Vogue: There’s a lot of talk of “civility” right now.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I do know that because of who I am, there are characteristics that people would be predisposed to think about me. It’s easier to label someone like me as emotional, or explosive, or whatever. But what I think is powerful is the fact that [my campaign uses] such unapologetic language while remaining composed. People in my opponent’s camp have accused me of running a negative campaign. I find it very interesting that we have now interpreted holding people accountable as negative. I never called him a name; I have never insulted him. But because I talk about the fact that he takes money from immigrant detention center profiteers, because I talk about the fact that he has been under ethics investigations within his role—both in Congress and as the chairman of the Democratic Caucus—because I’m holding him accountable for what he’s done, that accountability is being interpreted as negative. Because he’s a Democrat, and also because he is powerful, and we’re somehow not allowed or not supposed to talk about the misguided actions of people who are in power. Our democracy is designed for that to happen. Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power. Our democracy is designed for elections to be these kinds of conversations and referendums on our leadership.
June 2018. May AOC’s passion and drive help galvanize and propel our country always forward, never back.
Never underestimate its potential impact on the lives of people both within and outside of your bubble.
My past year was scattered with pain and it was during these times that I realized how very present God is in my life. Thus my year was an amalgamation of serendipitous blessings. The work that I accomplished spoke to my strengths and passions and enriched my life in professionally and personally transformative ways. The joyful humans whom I met touched my soul with virtues and grace, truly exemplified and imparted on me, and will remain with me in spirit for a lifetime. It was an absolute blessing to bear witness to a beautiful collective humanity and I go forth in this new year with reignited confidence, compassion, gentleness, and above all, gratitude, joy, and strengthened dedication to my entire well-being.
God is goodness and love; my mantra these days. Thank you to the humans passionately pursuing His good work, humbly living our faith in action, and profoundly touching the lives of others.
Let brotherly love continue.
Do not neglect hospitality,
for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.
Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment,
and of the ill-treated as of yourselves,
for you also are in the body.
Let marriage be honored among all
and the marriage bed be kept undefiled,
for God will judge the immoral and adulterers.
Let your life be free from love of money
but be content with what you have,
for he has said, I will never forsake you or abandon you.
Thus we may say with confidence:The Lord is my helper,
and I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you.
Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
From Friday, February 8, 2019.
Our brothers and sisters are being tortured and exterminated for attempting to exercise religious freedom that we, as Americans, take for granted every day. Let us speak out for the rights of all who are vulnerable and express solidarity through our faith in action.