LIBERATE
Gender Violence Edition
Gender Violence Edition
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Liberate<br />
Gender violence edition
Content in this edition increases the voice and agency of people of<br />
color and their eperiences with sexual assualt and gender violence.<br />
Material may be especially triggering, please take the necessary<br />
measures to take care of yourself. In the back of this edition,<br />
there are<br />
resources should you want to seek help.
Gender Violence<br />
Gender violence includes rape, sexual assault, relationship violence<br />
in heterosexual and same sex partnerships, sexual harassment,<br />
stalking, prostitution and sex trafficking. The term “gender<br />
violence” reflects the idea that violence often serves to maintain<br />
structural gender inequalities, and includes all types of violence<br />
against men, women, children, adolescents, gay, transgender<br />
people and gender non conforming. This type of violence in some<br />
way influences or is influenced by gender relations. To adequately<br />
address this violence, we have to address cultural issues that<br />
encourage violence as part of masculinity.<br />
Sexual Harassment<br />
uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical behavior of a sexual<br />
nature especially by a person in authority toward a subordinate<br />
(such as an employee or student)<br />
Sexual Assualt<br />
illegal sexual contact that usually involves force upon a person<br />
without consent or is inflicted upon a person who is incapable of<br />
giving consent (as because of age or physical or mental incapacity)<br />
or who places the assailant (such as a doctor) in a position of<br />
trust or authority
liberate<br />
verb lib-er-ate<br />
1 :to set free
Visual - Yemi Kolawole<br />
Visual - Ashleigh Smith<br />
Black Duke, We Need to do Better - Mumbi Kanyogo<br />
Visual - Naomi Lilly<br />
Done. - Anonymous<br />
A’s Story - Anonymous<br />
Poem - anonymous<br />
Standbys - Adriana Parker<br />
Resources<br />
A Word From Krystal George
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
ME TOO<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
TIME’S UP<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
BELIEVE HER<br />
Have A Nice Day
Black Duke, we need to do<br />
better<br />
“There is really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are<br />
only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard”<br />
Arundhati Roy<br />
Mumbi Kanyogo
The #Metoo Reckoning<br />
In a period of about 6 months we have witnessed numerous women come forward<br />
to publicly document their trauma and expose the abusers who have violated them.<br />
What began as Tarana Burke’s call for “mass healing” amongst sexual assault survivors<br />
almost 10 years ago has turned into a global reckoning with the pervasiveness<br />
of gender violence and societal complicity. We have been forced to contend with<br />
how rape culture penetrates both public andprivate life in ways that morph even our<br />
most intimate memories of family and childhood into painful reminders of the power<br />
structures that govern our quotidian existence. The #metoo movement has shown<br />
us that sexual abuse and rape are not faceless crimes with countless numbers of<br />
statistical victims. It has taught us that sexual abuse and rape DO have perpetrators<br />
who exist in the forms of both abusers and those who make their abuse possible.<br />
It names silences as violence - it implicates those who prefer to unsee abuse and<br />
promote a politics of respectability.<br />
Yet, even while the frequency with which these men’s abusive actions are being exposed<br />
appears to be high, these public revelations do not at all account for a statistic<br />
that documents 1 in 5 women as having been sexually violated in their lifetimes<br />
– it does not even dent it. And so we must ask ourselves: who is being deliberately<br />
silenced? Who are we rendering preferably<br />
unheard?
Some Black Lives Matter<br />
On my worst days here, the black community has been a source of joy and rejuvenation<br />
that has kept me sane in a fast-paced, emotionally draining environment.<br />
And on my best days, my black peers have celebrated me and loved me in ways<br />
that I am not even able to account for. At a predominantly white institution where<br />
blackness has been under threat from racist institutional violence and quotidian<br />
microaggressions since our forebears set foot on this campus in 1963, our excellence<br />
and happiness have always been our greatest offences against racist histories<br />
and realities that are constantly working to displace us.<br />
And yet it would be a lie for us to posit that the only threat to black life on this<br />
campus exists as a result of white racism; it would be facetious for us to say<br />
“Black lives matter” in opposition to racism, and not repeat the same for black<br />
women and black queer, trans, poor, and disabled people in opposition to the cisheterosexism,<br />
classism, and abelism that pervades this black community. And yet<br />
we do not say the latter nearly as much as the former.<br />
In the spring of 2016, the Chronicle published a statistical report on sexual violence,<br />
which reported that 42% of black women on campus had been the victims<br />
of some sort of sexual violence. In the aftermath of that release, I expected there<br />
to be a wave of indignant outrage within our community. Faced with the evidence<br />
that so many of our fellow black woman peers had been violated, I was waiting for<br />
our community leaders to mobilize - to be angry. Instead, only a handful of women<br />
made their outrage known in both online and physical spaces, and when I brought<br />
up the statistics with one black man he simply replied, “don’t you know that women<br />
will cry rape when a man so much as hugs them?”
Even though silence around sexual violence has always been pervasive in our<br />
community, the type of indifference and lack of concern that was displayed in the<br />
wake of that report has continued to astound me to this day. In a moment when<br />
we were presented with statistical evidence of black women’s pillaging; in a moment<br />
when we had the opportunity to begin a process of disavowing silence and<br />
creating safe spaces for the most vulnerable in our community, the prevailing instinct<br />
seemed to be to avoid responsibility and instead maintain silence.<br />
That gendered erasure served to remind me that the realities of rape have never<br />
been transformative or revolutionary for the majority of individuals. Afterall, we<br />
live on a campus where stories of rape are heard at spoken word events and then<br />
forgotten swiftly thereafter; on a campus where known abusers are permitted to<br />
earn degrees and thrive socially within our communities. We live and learn on a<br />
campus where sexual assault is a whitewashed idea – the archetypical victims<br />
framed as white, cis, straight, panhellenic women. Therefore, our black woman<br />
pain, laid out bare and raw on stages and blog posts, has never been enough to<br />
convince everyone around us that our bodies matter. That report, and the lack of<br />
action in its wake, served to make it abundantly clear that in the appraisal of reputation<br />
and power versus the safety of black women’s bodies, black women, more<br />
often than not, lose.<br />
Therefore, I want to interrogate why this type of silence and the larger structure of<br />
rape culture continue to exist within our community.
How does this erasure manifest?<br />
Embedded in this community is a dangerous desire to maintain black unity at all<br />
costs. It is almost impossible to critique certain organizations or individuals, and<br />
those who do so are often ostracized, even when one is rightfully criticizing the<br />
highly elitist, cisheteronormative, and sexist behaviors that push many of us further<br />
into the margins. It is uncritical and facetious to believe that we are all marginalized<br />
in the same ways – to ignore the fact that many of us cannot breathe in<br />
this community that is supposed to be our safest space.<br />
As black women, our genders and sexualities are treated as negligible and divisible<br />
from our experiences of blackness. The fact that we are the ones charged with<br />
both healing from trauma and then correcting the same violent behaviors that hurt<br />
and disrupt our lives is indication enough that a singular blackness that is detached<br />
from other manifestations of systemic violence, determines the disposition<br />
of black life on campus – the type of oppression that we are willing to mobilize<br />
against.<br />
This illogical approach to systemic violence results in the privileging of black,<br />
heterosexual men’s wellbeing and this has been prominently exposed in the few<br />
conversations around sexual assault that we have had. At one particular talk that<br />
I hosted, as the discussion progressed, it became clear that the central concern<br />
around sexual violence is how men can best avoid culpability as opposed to a<br />
victim-centered approach that encourages ethical and mutually beneficial sexual<br />
encounters. To put it more bluntly, the dominating concern seems to be “how<br />
much access men can get to black women’s bodies without being held legally accountable<br />
for their actions” when it should be “how best can we listen to women<br />
and ensure that we are making our community safe for them.” At worst, this is a<br />
violent erasure that sees black women’s bodies as collateral damage to men’s unnecessary<br />
technical gymnastics in negotiating the clearly outlined parameters of<br />
ethical sexual behavior.
At this critical moment when it is becoming painfully clear that this community<br />
is not safe for all of us, we need to engage in a process of constructive critique<br />
that ensures that those who are perpetuating violence, indirectly or directly, take<br />
responsibility for their actions or lack thereof. It is not enough to hold event after<br />
event about consent, even when we know that patriarchy is a fortuitous system<br />
that manifests in diverse and normative forms in our daily lives. Breaking down<br />
this system will require self-implication; it will require continued self-reflection<br />
and critique as well as sustained community dialogue focused on creating accountability<br />
and centering the voices of those who have been ravaged by sexual<br />
violence. We need to undermine the oppressive systems that make it possible for<br />
abuse to occur, the abnormal silence that makes it possible for men to pillage<br />
without any fear of consequence. As feminist scholar Pumla Dineo Gqola makes<br />
clear, this will require serious social sanctions that see us calling out violence just<br />
as much as we call it in. We cannot continue to negotiate our safety using gentle<br />
discourse when our loved ones continue to suffer silently. We cannot continue to<br />
engage in a politics of respectability when 42% of the black women in our midst<br />
exist on the margins, ignored and disrespected by a community that should be<br />
fighting for them relentlessly and fearlessly.<br />
Black Duke, we need to do better.
Video & Photography by<br />
Naomi Lilly
Done.<br />
Where do I begin?<br />
Thank you for saving me, time and time again<br />
Thank you for guiding me, for teaching me how to pray<br />
. But I can’t stand to watch you continue this way<br />
You stress and toil daily<br />
For a man who calls you“baby”<br />
Yet constantly treats you like a slave<br />
You slowly enter through the front door,
Knowing what little peace you had left is no more<br />
And the monster emerges from his cave<br />
He begins yelling and screaming, dragging you by your hair<br />
With all of his might, and he doesn’t care<br />
That two young children are broken, watching from the stairs<br />
Your eldest child dials 9-1-1<br />
Crying through the phone, “Please hurry, he has a gun.”<br />
Where do I begin?<br />
Please let this be the end.<br />
Anonymous
A’s Story<br />
A’s story begins in Europe, on a Duke sponsored research project last summer. She was<br />
the only Duke undergraduate student there with their research team, which included<br />
a doctor from Duke Medicine. During a cultural festival, A, the doctor, and a few other<br />
friends went to participate in the festivities—everyone was drunk, and the crowds<br />
were so big that A got separated from the people she went out with. As she were trying<br />
to make her way back to their friends, two local men groped her. She was shaken and<br />
afraid, and when she finally found everyone, she insisted on going home. When they<br />
questioned her, she told them what happened. Her European project partner didn’t believe<br />
her, saying that she was being overly sensitive and that the men hadn’t meant any<br />
harm. However, the doctor from her team believed her and insisted that the group should<br />
accompany her home. She was relieved and grateful for his support, and they went back<br />
home. When the group began to drink more, she thought, “Fuck it,” and got really, really<br />
drunk. She wanted an escape from what had happened earlier. She doesn’t remember<br />
much from the rest of the night, but later on began to remember flashes of the doctor<br />
kissing her on the forehead in a hotel room later that night —but she dismissed those<br />
memories, shaking them off.<br />
A week later, the doctor asked her to hang out. She said yes, remembering his kindness<br />
during the festival and nervous-excited to date an older man. They began seeing each,<br />
and things were shiny, new, bubbly in the way that new relationships are. They kept in<br />
touch other even after returning to Duke, but as the relationship progressed, A noticed<br />
some things about the doctor that made her uncomfortable: he was very pushy, physically.<br />
As their relationship became more physically intimate, she began to feel as though he<br />
was only interested in his own sexual satisfaction, and not in her as a person. They would<br />
have sex, and then he would sleep on the floor, saying he couldn’t sleep next to people.<br />
He began to go into depressive and full of rage, and she would urge him to consider his<br />
mental health. But when she brought up her concerns, he claimed he knew what he was<br />
doing. The age differential led her to accept what he said. One night, she told him she<br />
was having a rough time, and he invited her over to his apartment. He rolled a joint, and<br />
told her they would share it, but kept pushing it onto her, insisting she smoke more. She<br />
got so high she couldn’t move, uncomfortably high. He ignored her discomfort for two<br />
hours and then when she was falling asleep, the doctor took the opportunity to force<br />
himself on her, violating her body in new and painful ways.<br />
Afterwards, A began to distance herself from the doctor. He started gas-lighting her,<br />
telling her that she would fail in her career, that he was sleeping with other people anyways,<br />
that he was horrified by her and attracted to her at the same time. When she finally<br />
told him she wasn’t interested in hanging out with him anymore over dinner, with no<br />
explanation he dragged her to the rooftop of the building they were dining in, telling her<br />
there that she would regret leaving him, that she was the vindictive and defensive one.<br />
Even after she cut off contact, he kept texting her – to insult her, to demean her, and<br />
most often, to ask where she was.
A can’t tell her research team, because it would be her word<br />
against his.<br />
She also can’t share what happened to her with her family.<br />
They would probably blame her.<br />
So such things must remain secret.
I did not gift you my mind.<br />
In a perfect world, you<br />
would acknowledge that<br />
there is no home for you<br />
here—<br />
No pillow on which to lay<br />
your head,<br />
No mat for you at the<br />
head of the table—<br />
You would acknowledge<br />
the absence of welcome<br />
and<br />
You would not overstay<br />
your welcome.<br />
Instead,<br />
You gaze upon these<br />
brittle bones and you belly<br />
laugh.<br />
You plant your flag in the<br />
thin of my resistance.<br />
This is not the way to take<br />
up space, my love.<br />
This is not the way to love,<br />
my love.
Know that I gifted you my<br />
body in a<br />
self-celebratory<br />
practice.<br />
I presented you with my<br />
skins because<br />
I<br />
Am<br />
Woman<br />
And<br />
I<br />
Can<br />
Do<br />
That<br />
But this was never about<br />
you, my love.<br />
Why must you make it<br />
about you, my love?<br />
Why must you keep me<br />
enthralled by<br />
pretty-whispered lies,<br />
By soft-spoken<br />
insinuations that this was<br />
my fault?<br />
That is not the way to<br />
love, my love.<br />
Anonymous
STANDBYS<br />
By Adriana Parker<br />
Warning:<br />
This poem may contain vulgar language and references to sexual assault<br />
But don’t cover your ears<br />
Y’all need to hear this shit<br />
—<br />
To the room full of bystanders who just stood by:<br />
I hereby declare you garbage cans<br />
Cowardly<br />
And just downright disrespectful<br />
Fuck all y’all<br />
Ain’t no friends of mine<br />
As if I needed your protection<br />
I thought we been through this before<br />
When the real work starts y’all quiet<br />
I shouldn’t NEED your protection<br />
But your snake ass homeboys<br />
And one-off acquaintances should not try to slide their way between my legs<br />
I mean, best not to be so finger lickin’ good right?<br />
Best not to move too sexy and tickle his fancy<br />
Don’t give him. no twerk when your song is on<br />
Best not to have a drink<br />
Or two<br />
Or three<br />
Or however many<br />
I lost count<br />
Best not to go out<br />
Leave the comfort of my house<br />
Celebrate<br />
Just have a damn good time<br />
And y’all wonder why I’m always inside myself<br />
Lucky me I could fight it this time<br />
Lucky me the blood only rushed to his second head<br />
Lucky me I was only an almost not again<br />
I swear #MeToo JUST left my lips so why do the bodies keep rising?<br />
Now my curves feel more like curses<br />
Having a pussy is automatic invitation to fuck right?<br />
Let them prop you on a counter<br />
Feel you up<br />
Shake you down<br />
Don’t dare fight back
Swallow this objectification and may it not burn your throat<br />
May it be the sweetest sin you ever tasted<br />
Now how is that for justification?<br />
Well my ass was shaking I must have wanted it right?<br />
“Yo shit fat ma let me get inside / You making me hard / Let us see what you look like”<br />
Nigga your name ain’t Kanye<br />
I ain’t ask for these flashing lights<br />
Just trying to throw it back after a long week without you behind me<br />
I didn’t want this<br />
Bass too heavy like his hands around my neck<br />
Like his niggas creeping up behind me even though I said no all night<br />
But back to these bystanders<br />
Would you have seen it if I were your sister?<br />
Your Mother?<br />
Your Homie-lover-friend?<br />
Would you have checked it?<br />
Checked him?<br />
Would you have cast them out?<br />
And now here I am again<br />
Letting you know I’m fed the fuck up with smelling the bricks in this house named<br />
patriarchy<br />
Or rape culture<br />
But what’s really in a name?<br />
They all the same right?<br />
I mean, y’all befriend rapists every day<br />
Your girl probably a survivor and never told you<br />
And I’m sick of this silence<br />
Yours, theirs and even mine sometimes<br />
I’m tired of the all talk and no action<br />
No listen<br />
Of the “we support the 1 in 5” but you always on standby with clean hands<br />
Ain’t it funny?<br />
I feel safer in the company of strangers than this prison we call home sometimes<br />
Don’t you know I’ve worn tape around my body labelled trigger warning for years?<br />
Can’t wash off this stink of humiliation no matter how hard I try<br />
Tell me... can you smell it?<br />
Is the reek appealing?<br />
Or is it noseblind ignorance?<br />
Is rape too bitter a pill?<br />
Tell me... if for the first, second, almost third time around what would the bystanders do<br />
had it been...<br />
you?
If you or a loved one has experienced or is currently<br />
experiencing gender violence, the<br />
following resources are available.<br />
Dirham Crisis Response Center<br />
919.403.6562<br />
Orange County Crisis Center<br />
919.968.4647<br />
Durham Coalition Against Gender Violence<br />
919.956.9124<br />
National Sexual Assualt Hotline<br />
800.656.HOPE<br />
Cousenling and Psychological Services Duke<br />
919.660.1000<br />
Cousenling and Psychological Services UNC<br />
919.966.2281<br />
Duke Reach<br />
919.684.1161<br />
Visual By Asheligh Smith<br />
Women’s Cter Duke<br />
919.684.3897<br />
Women’s Center Chapel Hill<br />
919.962.8305
Shifting the Culture By: Krystal George, MPA, CHES<br />
What is sexual assault? What is consent? “Yes means Yes!” “Consent is<br />
Sexy!” These are all questions and phrases that we ask, answer, and shout in<br />
the world of gender violence prevention. On a college campus it is vital to educate<br />
and make students aware of gender violence, with the hopes of preventing<br />
it from occurring. Unfortunately, the national statistic “1 in 5 women and 1 in 16<br />
men are sexually assaulted while in college (Christopher P. Krebs, 2007) ” has<br />
not changed much in the last 20 years. Here at Duke, based on the most recent<br />
Student Experience Survey, “40% of undergraduate women reported they were<br />
sexually assaulted since enrolling” (Duke University, 2017). Also, based on this<br />
survey, “Black/African American and Hispanic female students reported higher<br />
percentages than other race/ethnic groups among undergraduates” (Duke University,<br />
2017). Women of color are often forgotten about in the discussions of gender<br />
violence prevention. Prevention has advanced tremendously; and while students<br />
understand sexual assault and consent and are aware that it happens, we still<br />
have practically the same amount of assaults happening on college campuses<br />
around the world.<br />
There is a need for the voices of women of color on campus to have a place<br />
at the table when discussing the issues of sexual violence, intimate partner violence,<br />
sexual harassment, and stalking. The prevention work that the Women’s<br />
Center does is steeped in intersectionality and Womanism; however nothing<br />
speaks volumes like the voices of the female students of color. Not only do we<br />
need the voices of the female students of color, but we also need for our male<br />
students of color to be a part of this movement as well. Discussions about gender<br />
violence are a great place to start, but we also need action on campus. This<br />
means taking a look at ourselves, and holding ourselves accountable for changing<br />
the culture on campus. Shifting the culture on campus for students of color<br />
comes in many forms. Here are a few to start with:<br />
1. Being an active bystander.<br />
2. Attending a sexual misconduct taskforce meeting, so that students of<br />
color are represented.<br />
3. Creating a taskforce within your organization.<br />
4. Collaborating with the Women’s Center.<br />
5. Calling out inappropriate behavior of peers.<br />
6. Using your voice!<br />
Works Cited<br />
Christopher P. Krebs, C. H. (2007). The Campus Sexual (CSA) Study: Final Report. National Institute of Justice.<br />
Emilie Buchwald, P. R. (1993). Transforming A Rape Culture. Minneapolis, MN, US: Milkweed Editions.<br />
University, D. (2017, February 20). Duke Student Affairs. Retrieved February 18, 2018, from Sexual Misconduct Prevention & Response:<br />
https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/sites/default/files/2017-07/Student_Experience_Survey_1.pdf