Hey-o! Wednesday again, which means it's time for another round of Why We're Walking, from BARCC's staff and interns.

• I walk for survivors of violence everywhere; past, present, and future.
   
• I’m walking to increase awareness and discourse about sexual violence and to give hope and support to all affected by it.
   
• I am walking because to me there is something incredibly empowering about coming together as a community to create change.  If we are to continue to work to end sexual violence and support survivors and are in this for the long-haul, we need one another’s energy, creativity, courage and persistence.   We need to be able to count on one another to keep showing up – and the Walk is a powerful reminder of how many of us are out there working for the same thing.
   
• I’m walking because people should be able to live life freely without worrying that they or someone they love could be sexually assaulted.
   
• I’m walking because I believe that we can prevent rape by educating our communities, colleges, young children, partners, parents and providers. Delivering messages that convey “nobody has the right to your body but you”, “rape is never, not even a little, okay” and “everyone deserves to be treated with respect” are powerful in dispelling myths about rape and bringing communities together to speak up against the violence that no one should endure. This is what BARCC’s Walk for Change does and it’s powerful to be a part of.
   
• I walk with my head held high because I am no longer ashamed. I walk for those who still live in fear. I walk in solidarity with other survivors.
   
• I can personally attest to the quality of BARCC's services and their necessity.  The other day, a participant in one of our groups for survivors said, "I'm here because there is no one else in my life that I can talk to about this."  By raising money for BARCC, I am helping us continue to provide these services for free to anyone who needs them.
   
• I am walking for survivors, for communities, and for a better future.

Why are YOU walking?

Around our offices, we're all looking forward to April 7th. Not just because we're tired of snow boots and neutral wool clothes, but because the Walk for Change is right around the corner!

Certainly, we love the opportunity to support our hardworking colleagues and volunteers who get the event up and running (and Walking!) each year, and we're endlessly grateful for the financial support of the people who register, donate, and sponsor it.

It's also our opportunity to showcase what we really love about taking on an issue as complex and frustrating as sexual violence, and why we're so proud to do it for BARCC.

With that in mind, each Wednesday between now and April 7th, we're celebrating Why We're Walking Wednesdays here, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Why We're Walking,
featuring the Staff and Interns of BARCC

• I am walking because I can’t think of a better cause than BARCC or a better place to spend the morning than the Esplanade.
   
• I’m walking because I believe.  I believe that people can make a difference.  I believe that future generations can live in a world free of sexual violence.  I believe in change.
   
• I walk because I grew up in a place where we didn’t talk about sexual violence. It happened but was shared in whispers and looks. I’m walking because we live in a world that excuses violence against certain peoples: people who are non-white, queer, trans, with disabilities, working class, and people who have vaginas. I walk because I learned to talk about sexual violence. I’m walking so others can find the language to talk about their experiences too.  I’m walking so that we create a world where all peoples are treated with dignity and respect.
   
• I’m walking because I tell teens that this is an important issue all the time. I believe that my example helps them to see that I’m not pretending and that causes need more than lip service.
   
• I am walking to show that while there is a lot of work that needs to be done, that there are many individuals, groups, and organizations who believe that the work should – and can – be done.  I walk to show my support of the work that people do each and every day to heal, to talk, and to prevent sexual violence.
   
• This April, I will be starting my 10th year working at BARCC - the longest I have ever worked at one place. I am still here because I am inspired every day by the amazing work of my colleagues and BARCC volunteers and the difference that I see their work makes in the lives of survivors, their families and friends. The Steubenville case reminds us of the importance of not only our work with survivors but also the work we do in day care centers, middle schools, high schools and colleges to prevent sexual violence by working with staff and students to be active bystanders and understand consent. And we do it all on a shoestring budget (I should know!).
• Because I really believe that it makes the world change for the better when we stand up,  together,  for what we value.

Why are YOU walking?

(Note to readers: the hyperlinks in this post that are followed by asterisks are links to external coverage or narrative of the Steubenville and other cases, many of which contain graphic descriptions of rape, threats of rape, and commentaries that may be difficult to read. Those without asterisks are links to resource sites.)

If you're a consumer of any sort of media--television news, print journalism, or especially electronic media--you've likely seen the wall-to-wall coverage of the juvenile delinquency hearing and sentencing of Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays in Steubenville, Ohio.

Briefly, Richmond, 16, and Mays, 17, were convicted of raping a 16-year-old female friend in August, 2012 during a night of partying that sounds, from all accounts, like the sort of nights that happened often in their town, and many others.

What stunned people about this night in Stuebenville was the sheer volume of real-time narrative that Mays and other young people present captured that night. According to the prosecution, they recovered over 350,000 text messages, photos, and videos from that night, and blogger Alexandria Goddard initially screen captured* many of the tweets about the rape. In early January, the hacker collective Anonymous released much of the video* taken of the survivor and others. Part of the reason for that release were the allegations that the Steubenville head football coach, an intial judge, and some in the DA's office were declining to prosecute or pursue the case because of their close connections to the football team that Mays and Richmond belonged to.

I remember when the video was released just after New Year's. I clicked through to it, looking for context, certain that because the pulled quotes were so contemptuous that there must be a story or a perspective there that was missing. Trying to make meaning. I could take only about 2 minutes before it was too much, and I had to turn it off and go for a walk.

We talk constantly--in workshops, on the hotline, in conversations with survivors during office visits--about why people withdraw (recoil?) from survivors and from engaging with the issue of rape, or say things that are "victim blaming", and the explanation comes from a place of sensitivity: that people distance themselves from survivors in order to distance themselves from the magnitude of rape and sexual assault. This doesn't diminsh the immense hurt that those words and actions cause, but it allows room for the people saying and doing them to be whole human beings, both caring and cruel.

I realized, though, sorting through links for this post that the explanation might be more literally visceral: the actual physical feelings of deep and real empathy and true revulsion are very similar to one another. One can bring tears to your eyes and tightness to your throat, the other squeezes your eyes closed and tightens and curls your shoulders into a cringe. The physical ache in your chest could be easily mistaken for the twisted knot in your stomach. Either way, they're uncomfortable, overwhelming feelings, and most of us cannot and do not linger long with them. We turn away, crack a joke, or try to mold what we're hearing and seeing into something a bit more digestible.

Knowing that we need some kind of access point, some doorway for a conversation about this, many people have spent thousands of words and hours of commentary trying to make meaning of what happened in this town. I don't believe that sexual violence is complicated, meaning difficult to analyze or unknown and unknowable. I do believe that it is complex, that there are many components that overlap and intersect, that work in concert with one another and that work in opposition.

Come, let us walk through some of these doors together.

Door #1: The media, social and otherwise

The witnesses and participants in this rape produced a staggeringly large volume of, for lack of a better word, content that ultimately ended up as both the catalyst for and evidence in the trial of Mays and Richmond.

Here are a couple of facts:

• Young people (and less young people) in the U.S. and elsewhere increasingly rely on social media and mobile devices to communicate and engage.
• One of the major cognitive tasks for teens is to attain cognitive maturity: to win the struggle between acting immediately on impulse versus making decisions based on consideration of the pros and cons of their options. 
• Social media and technology are not always helping teens with this task.

This may be what many commentators on this case wanted to say. Instead, it came out sounding a little like, "Rape is kind of frowned upon, but you know what's really bad? Tweeting about it for everyone to see!" Maybe they also meant to say, "I don't understand how so many people could have sent so many texts, tweets, Facebook messages, and videos and not done something." Implicit in that is that we see those as tools, but what is it, exactly, that we would have had them do? What is it that we believe we would have done differently in the same situation?

In their recap of Day 2 of the trial, the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) note

many teens are afraid of intervening in sexual assault, partly due to peer pressure and other factors. In a study released this week, conducted by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, it highlighted the following: "53 percent would find it difficult to intervene, and 40 percent wouldn't even know what to do if they witnessed such a crime."

To that end, Ali Perrotto wrote an excellent blog for the NSVRC on the role of social media in prevention illuminating some of the ways that social media could be used for prevention or interventions.

And now on to the TV news. Lots of times, in trainings for professionals of various kinds, we get questions from participants who are worried that they'd be unable to respond appropriately to a survivor of a different gender than they are, and wonder whether they should stop to find someone with the same gender as the survivor. Often, it's male professionals worried about working with female survivors.

To that, I would show them to CNN's coverage* by Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow of the verdict and senencing for Richmond and Mays.

Just kidding. That would make me a snarky and ineffective facilitator. But I would say that just having the same gender (or race, or sexuality, or age, or nationality, or any identity) as a a survivor does not gift someone with the tools to say exactly the right things, and CNN and a lot of networks missed the mark spectacularly with their commentary in the process of making meaning of the sentencing. Media analyst Flavia Dzodan hit the nail on the head with her tweet:

CNN a month ago: OMG SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE FOR THOSE POOR INDIAN WOMEN! CNN today:poor defendants #Steubenville! what abt their future!

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) March 17, 2013

Now, someone once said that 75% of the commentary on Twitter and blogs basically boils down to, "You're doing it wrong." Indeed, leading media ethicist Kelly McBride, encourages us not to spend all of our righteous energy on tearing down CNN, focusing instead on highlighting the examples of journalism that were outstanding. For example, Dan Wetzel's coverage for Yahoo! was nuanced and compassionate. Full disclosure: I was a participant in one of the Poynter Institute's seminars for advocates and journalists on writing and reporting about sexual violence, which is now offered as an online course that is a huge professional development opportunity for any journalist or writer taking on the issue of sexual violence.

Door #2: Finding our common humanity

BARCC turns 40 on March 23rd, and for forty years, we've been saying something revolutonary and subversive. Rape is wrong. Always. Full stop. It's revolutionary and subversive because people will work very hard to chip away at that, to find ways where, perhaps rape could be, if not justified, then at least somewhat expected.

Over on the Huffington Post, author and political correspondent Keli Goff lurched through an argument* that was fundamentally, "Don't binge drink, because rape is an expected consequence." Binge drinking and substance use can have many negative impacts-physical, social, psychological, professional, financial--and those are strong enough to stand on their own. But every time we locate the problem in the binge drinking, and not the raping, we whittle away at "Rape is wrong. Always."

For many years, it's been a popular empathy-building strategy when working with men to ask them to envision survivors and potential survivors as a female who's important in their life: a daughter, a sister, a wife. In her blog, Anne Theriault rightly calls out that this line of thinking embues women and girls with value and a right to safety only insofar as they "belong" to a man. Not only that,

what does it say about the women who aren’t anyone’s wife, mother or daughter? What does it say about the kids who are stuck in the foster system, the kids who are shuffled from one set of foster parents to another or else living in a group home? What does it say about the little girls whose mothers surrender them, willingly or not, to the state? What does it say about the people who turn their back on their biological families for one reason or another?

That they deserve to be raped? That they are not worthy of protection? That they are not deserving of sympathy, empathy or love?

And what about the survivors who are male? Or trans*? [Ed. note: The asterisk there is meant to mean inclusive of other identities, not a trigger warning.]

Everyone deserves safety. Everyone.  All the time. Because they are human beings, and so are we.

Door #3: What is "enough"?

One of our volunteers (and former blogger in this space), Dave, posed the question on Twitter, "Wondering if we have any numbers about how many survivors want convictions of their attackers. Should we be pushing more for criminal justice?" On Facebook, a member of my extended family responded to a post about the sentencing by saying, "Promising careers? Is that why they only got a year? Very lenient, don't you think? I've heard in the news others have gotten 20 to life. Too little? Too much?"

Here's how we look at it.

Some survivors want to use and have access to the legal system for various remedies. That might mean wondering what's involved with reporting to the police, but it also might mean forensic evidence collection, and other law-related issues, like information about restraining orders or how to protect their privacy, or what options they have around their schooling or employment. Not only do we provide information and advocate for those survivors on an individual basis, but we push those systems to be more responsive and fair in their handling of sexual violence-related issues.

Many people have lamented the sentences that Richmond and Mays received: a one-year minimum for Richmond and two years for Mays, and a maximum of 5 years for Richmond and 4 years for Mays, because they will be in a juvenile facility that holds them until they are 21. But what is "enough"? 10 years? 20? 200? Does enough mean that the survivor's pain is erased and it's as though the assault never happened? To call detention facilities a "corrections" system is a misnomer of the highest order. As Mia McKenzie wrote in a thoroughly essential blog post, "On Rape, Cages, and the Steubenville Verdict,"

What they did was terrible. There is no excuse. [...] But what I know for damn sure is that jail does not fix broken people. It only breaks them harder.

The fact is that once these boys enter the prison system, even ​in juvenile detention, chances are that they will return to it. It will, with little doubt, fuck them up more than they are already fucked-up. They will not likely emerge from prison as two well-adjusted men who respect women and understand that sexual assault against them is not okay. That's not what prison does for people.

We know that detention settings--juvenile and adult--harbor their own cycles of vicious sexual violence. We're also caught in a terrible catch-22. There seems to be evidence that adolescents with sexually inappropriate behaviors who are noticed, stopped, and given developmentally appropriate treatment have good prospects for not re-offending. And, it is incredibly difficult for anyone to access appropriate therapeutic care for children, adolescents, and adults with sexual behavior problems without first going through an adjudication process. If I am a parent or adult who cares for and is concerned about a young person's behavior, there is little incentive to bring that to anyone's attention until they've harmed someone else. In order to get them care, there is always already a survivor.

Finally, the case in Steubenville highlights the total inability of the criminal legal system to fully address and hold people to account for rape.

By most accounts, the institutions of Steubenville and the adults who made them up--the coaches, the administrators, the police--supported the behavior that Mays and Richmond and others engaged in. We know this because in both the testimony and commentary, there seems to be little sense from the young people that what they did and had been doing was anything other than ordinary and commonplace.

So how do we hold those institutions, and the adults who made them up, accountable for embuing those young people with both an utter contempt and disregard for the humanity of their friends, and a sense of entitlement so deep? Do we arrest and prosecute all of them? Doing so reminds me a little of the scene in that Billy Crystal movie, Forget Paris, where he plays a professional basketball referee who goes off the deep end and ejects everyone from a game.

What now?

Interestingly, recent research indicates that institutional betrayal where sexual assaults take place (for example, at a school, or within a faith community)--things like making the experience seem like no big deal; not taking proactive steps to prevent or address experiences; making it difficult to report an experience; covering up the experience; responding inadequately; and punishing the survivor in some way--magnified the impact of the sexual trauma. That is something we've heard from survivors for 40 years. Along with this research, it points us toward concrete legislative and organizational policies that we can work with organizations to develop and implement.

Know that Steubenville has the support and expertise available of our colleagues at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. They are incredibly skilled and offer very similar services to what we offer in our communities. Know, too, that it was Steubenville that we've been hearing and talking about, but it also is and has been the experience of survivors here.

And because of that, we are called upon to come together and not just declare but embody our values as a community. We hope those of you who can will join us to Walk for Change on April 7th, to take up and hold onto a piece of our every day revolution: Everyone deserves safety from sexual violence. Everyone.  All the time.

One thing to know up front: I got engaged at the end of this past summer.  Therefore my life is currently dominated with conversations and thoughts about guest lists, decorations, wardrobe, budget, and so many other things that I can’t possibly list them out.  As anyone close to me can tell you, I didn’t believe in marriage for the longest time.  Some reasons include:  I didn’t (and still don’t) think that the validity of someone’s relationship should be determined by their marital status.  I don’t like living in a country where many of my friends, among countless others, can’t get married in many states and aren’t federally recognized even if they do happen to live in a state that recognizes same-sex relationships.  I don’t like what the wedding industry has become and how much prices are increased if you simply mention the word ‘wedding’.  I don’t like how the history of marriages and weddings are steeped in patriarchy and heteronormativism.  Truly this list can go on for pages, but I’ll stop here.

I can’t explain exactly when nor how the mindshift happened.  However, when I decided with my current partner to get married, I knew that I would have to examine the social, cultural, and gender constructs that went into everything.  Therefore on top of discussions about the color of dresses for the bridal party, we are also discussing alternative options for my friends who aren’t comfortable wearing dresses.  I’m not changing my name.  I hold my mother’s name and extremely proud of that because she has been a role model for my entire life.  When hiring people (such as the DJ or photographer) we are finding either women-owned or outwardly LGBT-friendly businesses.

As demonstrated, I am trying to make every decision conscientiously.  In order to do this for larger things than dresses and names it is critical to learn the history and reasoning behind many of the wedding traditions.  Luckily, I have an awesome partner who is willing to change any and all aspects of the wedding to match both our beliefs.

I expected to find many things about my wedding ceremony and reception to change based on a patriarchal history.  However, I did not expect to change things because of how they were based in a history of sexual violence.  I knew that historically it was legal to rape your wife because of how the marriage and vows were seen as a ‘consent-for-life’ type of deal and also because of the views of women as property.  While it is currently illegal in all 50 states to rape your partner, there were some states where it was legal up until 1993.  That’s within my lifetime and the lifetime of the majority of people that I know.  In many countries it is still legal to rape your wife and in others it is difficult to prosecute even if it is illegal because of cultural views.  Perhaps if I lived in one of these environments I would not have changed my mind about getting married; although I doubt I would have had much of a say either.

I did not know about how other traditions were related to sexual violence in one form or another until I started my wedding research.  One of the traditions that I explored was the garter/bouquet toss.  What sparked my research was how the tradition is both gendered and heteronormative: women jump for the bouquet and men jump for the garter.  Seriously?  The history behind the garter toss is even creepier than watching it at someone’s wedding.  In medieval times, it was critical for women to be virgins until marriage but it was also important for the newlyweds to prove that they consummated the marriage.  One form this took was for the bridesmaids or family members of the bride to sneak into the room (or stay and watch) and steal an undergarment of the bride, typically the garter.  This was then shown to other friends and family as proof.  The lack of consent and power present in this scenario is present on variety of different levels: the sex in general, having people in the room, stealing of undergarments.

Eventually people (read: males) decided that it was completely inappropriate for others to barge in during sex.  The husband started throwing the garter out of the room in order to avoid this interruption.  Since it was lucky to have a piece of the bride’s ensemble, (which btw is why so many older dresses are in poor condition), people would collect outside the room and fight over the garter.  After more time passed, the husband started to remove the garter (privately) during the reception and throw it during the party.  The competition for the garter at today’s weddings grew out of this history.  People have been known to try to steal the garter off the bride’s leg during the wedding and reception.  There have even been some accounts of the bride being tipped upside down to get the garter off faster.  In the entire history of removal and possession of the garter, considerations of the physical safety, power, and sexual decisions of the woman involved has been nonexistent and deliberately ignored.

Needless to say that there will not be a garter toss at my wedding.

Another tradition whose meaning has been lost or overlooked is why the groom stands to the right and the bride to the left.   In historical times, the majority of fighting men were right handed and standing on the right side of the aisle put them at the optimal position to attack anyone who came to steal the bride.  Historically, it was customary for the brides to have their dowry (jewels, coins, etc) sewn into their dresses.  Therefore it was not uncommon for brides to be kidnapped on the way to or during the wedding.  The kidnappers would then force the bride into marriage and rape her as a way to validate the kidnapping and theft.  After this happened, there was very little the bride could do to leave as the marriage had been ‘consummated’. 

Fortunately, there is little danger of women being kidnapped en route to their wedding in this country and many others.  However, it is important for me to know and recognize the lack of power that women had in previous times over their own safety, bodies, and lives. 
Since I plan to enter this social construct of marriage, I plan to learn as much as possible about the traditions, history, and meaning behind the actions that I am doing.  I respect that the decisions and choices I make may be very different from others.  I only hope that others put thought into why they are doing specific actions or traditions and make conscientious decisions rather than blindly following status quo.

WRITTEN BY: Stacey

This weekend the Oscars sparked countless pieces not because of who did and did not win awards or whose attire was the most fashionable but because of how utterly sexist it was throughout the entire production, starting right at the opening song.  If we can have a list of the 9 most sexist things that happened and none of them focus on the ingrained patriarchal and heteronormative structure of Hollywood or the lack of diverse roles for women in films, then there were some pretty huge problems.

On top of all that, the Onion was downright tasteless and deplorable when it tweeted that Quvenzhane Wallis is a c**t after a clip was rolled showing her role as a strong willed and independent child growing up in the deep South.  This is widely known as a derogatory and offensive term, and is used as a way to objectify and demoralize the subject.  It strips someone of their personality, beliefs, actions, dreams, and successes and instead portrays them only as an object and something to be penetrated.  

Quvenzhane is nine year old actress who was discovered at the age of 5 (after lying about her age) when she auditioned and was cast in the role of Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Festival. She is not part of an acting family and beat out more than 4,000 other children for the part.  She is the youngest star EVER to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and the third youngest for any category.  As if that isn’t impressive enough, remember that while she was recently nominated at the age of nine, she was only six years old when she played the part of Hushpuppy.  Since her success in her first film, she has gone on to be cast in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave, a second Sundance film: Boneshaker, and was recently named to be the title character in Annie. Without a doubt she is a child taking the film world by storm and impressing everyone with both her undeniable talent and charasmatic personality.  Instead of cutting and derogatory insults, she should be receiving praise, support and encouragement for all that she accomplished and for the greatness that is sure to come.

Quvenzhane is not just a successful and inspiring child actress – she is a successful and inspiring child actress of color. In addition to growing up in a society rooted in racism, she is starting to work for and within an industry that constantly tells women of color that they aren’t good enough, pretty enough, or even needed.  Her recent Oscar nomination for the Best Leading Actress is a feat in and of itself.  Two years ago, Octavia Spencer, who won Best Supporting Actress, became the sixth African American actress ever to win an Oscar.  In the past ten years, only three other African American women have been nominated for Best Leading Actress.  The first and only African American actress to win this award was Halle Berry in the 2001 film, Monster’s Ball.  

The roles in film available to women have not come very far in the past 7 decades and the opportunities for women of color have progressed even less.  The roles and characters that are offered often serve to bolster and reinforce stereotypes about African American women, families, and culture.  Storylines often have characters that are not fully fleshed out and focus solely on the trials, tribulations, and abuse that African American women endure rather than a full life encompassing both positive and negative experiences.  Additionally African American women are often cast into two different types of roles: the first being a maid/servant or helper/supporter and the second being an angry or hyper sexualized jezebel.  Casting women into these limited roles can have damaging effects both on and off screen especially when we consider how segregated this nation is and how many white people base many of their thoughts and beliefs about people of color on what they see in the movies.

The movie, film, TV, and modeling industry encourages people of color to present as ‘exotic’ or to ‘pass’ as different races and ethnicities, both in film and in real life. African American models face a lot of rejection based on their skin color as they are told by agents that clients don’t want them or that their skin color may be lightened between the shoot and the layout.  Recently, even when a spread called for someone to play an African Queen, a white model was covered in brown paint and toner and cast instead.  Understandably, this upset many African American models and many individuals of the general public but, it is not the first time it has been done by a popular magazine or famous actress/model.  Even though these companies are trying to mask it in the name of high fashion, this is blackface and is based in a long history of racist and derogatory images and stereotypes of African American people and culture.

The barriers identified above in addition to numerous others make it very difficult for women of color to both launch and continue careers in the entertainment industry.  On top of the structure that is in place to limit the roles and advancement of women of color, there are additional institutional structures in place to keep them from being recognized for the superb work they do within the characters they play.  As far as I can tell, there isn’t a rhyme or reason to who is a voting member for the Oscars. The members, and the process of selection, is kept secret from the public.  However an LA Times study found that of the more than 5,700 members over 75% are male, more than 90% are Caucasian, and the median age is 62.  These demographics fail to represent the majority of people who act in the movies in addition to the majority of people who flock to the theatres to see the movies.  Winning awards, especially as prestigious as an Oscar, can open doors and opportunities for actresses, directors, and studio companies.  The group’s biased and stereotypical selections of what types of movies and characters win, will continue to influence what films will be written, financed, and produced and the roles that people can expect to play. 

When people say this incident was just a joke or tasteless humor, they are forgetting that it is happening within an entire culture.  It is not just a one-time comment against Quvenzhane, it is yet another piece of the violence and racism that exists within the entertainment industry and our society in general.