Trigger Warning: The Twitter feed linked features written first-hand accounts of rape and varying degrees of sexual violence.
Canadian author and screenwriter Kelly Oxford has recently asked women and men on Twitter to share their stories of the first time they were sexually harassed or assaulted, tagged with #NotOkay.
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I won't blame if you don't click and read the stories right away, their frequency is somehow both alarming yet not at all surprising, the various levels of description chilling and horrendous.
Despite being very well aware of the statistics of sexual assault, and being cognizant of how many incidents go unreported and are covered up, perusing through these tweets was a wretched, heart-rending experience which formed a lump in my throat and made my blood run cold. Fuck.
These incidents have become so normalized, occurring to boys and girls as young as five or six years old, whether it be lewd comments or rape, every single one of these instances of sexual violence erodes the safety and agency of individuals in society.
As stories and stats indicate, women in particular are disproportionately afflicted by persistent abuse and violence, which as a very visibly male person, I know I take for for granted. I was aware of my discomfort during the few instances of sexual harassment I experienced, but I can barely conceive of how painful it must be to endure an onslaught of those incidents, or possibly worse, on a more frequent basis.
And I feel a tremendous shame.
And when I think back to how Trump, his surrogates, his supporters cover up his shitty rhetoric as "locker room talk", it demeans women and men. Their attempts to smooth over rape culturereduce women to playthings and subjects of demeaning dialogue and attempt to transmute the chronic disease that is sexual violence into an acceptable form of interaction. It embodiestoxic masculinity and hetero-normativity, ignoring that men also experience sexual violence but are too afraid to speak up due to the additional stigma, ignoring the reinforcement of homophobia and transphobia, ignoring that men are also beings of empathy and vulnerability who are not proud of the sexual violence other men commit.
So even though as I scrolled through those narratives, the bags under my eyes drooped lower, my brow was furrowed and I was imbued with unrelenting sadness, I do not regret it. I really don't. To be aware of the suffering endured by a large percentage of a population is a duty, it grants perspective which supplements the already tragic numbers.
Just as these Tweets have emboldened me to become even more of an ally, even with the shame I face in being complicit, I know they have contributed to granting these men and women more agency. Silence is violence, it allows those who reinforce this system to manipulate the popular image, that rape culture doesn't exist or isn't much of a problem.
But this isn't to fault survivors for not always speaking up, there are of course so many variables to consider. But allies and fellow survivors must do their best to be trusting and open to hearing as many of these experiences as possible, their accumulation will aid in dismantling the wretched system we are in.
So that we can make our world more #Okay.
