Doin’ It Well

Dear Kim and Ross,

I wanted to take some time to respond to a couple of points you made in your columns during April. … [A]s you said in your first installment, “there are still some myths about survivors that impact how survivors may view themselves as well as how others may view them.” It is in the spirit of continuing to address these myths that I write you today.

[Your column said,] “Doin’ It Well would like to dedicate this column to the powerful, resilient and amazing survivors and the people who love them!” First things first, survivors do not need to be coddled. The misfortune of being a victim of sexual violence does not make someone powerful, resilient and/or amazing. The fact of sexual abuse in my past does not make me amazing. … These empty kudos to survivors come off as condescending and fail to address the complexity of the trauma experience.

I appreciate what you both do and look forward to more Doin’ It Well in the future.

Best, AK 

Dear AK,

First, thank you for taking the time to write us. We wish that more readers would take the time to provide their perspective on our column. Remember, the e-mail address is buzzdoinitwell@yahoo.com!

Second, we really appreciated your feedback on language that may feel patronizing for survivors of sexual violence. Our intent was not to “coddle” survivors, but we understand how it may feel that way. Although we have both have a lot of experience working in the sexual violence prevention field, this doesn’t mean that we have everything figured out. Moreover, your feedback is helpful, as it allows us to see how our support of survivors may feel insincere. When we said that survivors are “amazing,” we were thinking about survivors we know, rather than one generic survivor.

 Isn’t That Special?

The point that AK raises is an excellent one; survivors do receive some “special” treatment by people and institutions around them. Perhaps this is fair; survivors of sexual violence have experienced something which may feel traumatic, and certainly impacts them in some way. However, the treatment survivors experience frequently tends to be “feast or famine,” a faulty empowerment or a disbelieving blame. If those are our only two options (which they’re not), we aren’t sure which we’d prefer.

On the other hand, it isn’t fair to treat survivors differently. Sexual violence is unwanted by the survivor, which means that it should say a whole lot more about the perpetrator of that violence than about the survivor. Being an ally to someone who has experienced sexual violence means recognizing that they may be affected in many ways, while also waiting for the survivor to define those effects for themselves.

Falling Down

We expect survivors to crumble, to collapse. As Vanessa Veselka says in Bitch magazine, “A violated woman is expected to fall apart, and not just privately, either; she must disintegrate publicly, in front of friends, in front of professionals, in front of Starbucks. It satiates our craving for arena-style pathos.” Society – including the past ten years of television – has provided us with numerous examples of what a “good victim” should look like. She should be pure, and she should be profoundly affected.

This creates a story about what rape or other forms of sexual violence should look like and, as AK suggests, fails to address the complexity of survivors’ experiences. Moreover, it negates “other” stories that fall outside of this norm such as survivors who maintain a relationship with the perpetrator, survivors who refuse to label themselves as “survivors,” or survivors who work in the sex industry. Each of these survivors’ stories makes sense on its own terms, but our belief in a helpless, weak survivor limits the ways that we can celebrate the strength of all survivors.

Surviving

In some ways, this mirrors the shift in language we’ve seen in the rape crisis movement. The term “victim” has been replaced with “survivor,” to move from a passive experience of the violence to a more active resistance to the violence. But when the language of “survivor” becomes simple PC jargon that we use because we “should” rather than because we genuinely believe it, it can become a hollow kudos to survivors. Several survivors we have worked with have at various points in time labeled themselves as “victims,” “survivors,” or even refused to label the experience as sexual violence. We have to be careful not to take control away from the survivor further by labeling the experience for them.

Allies in Healing

Being an ally means working alongside, not working on behalf of, survivors. This can be awkward at times, but it is also critical that we listen to survivors in our lives, survivors who may be amazing – not simply because they are survivors, but because they are.

Sex 411:

The title and many of the points herein are inspired by “The Collapsible Woman” by Vanessa Veselka, which can be found in Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine.

Kim Rice and Ross Wantland are professionals in the field of sexuality and violence prevention. Write to them at buzzdoinitwell@yahoo.com