To gain inspiration for my second blog entry I decided to visit the feminist site, feministing. One of the entries that caught my eye was posted March 29, 2011 about sexual activism month, so I wanted to expand upon this and write about sexual assault activism month as well since it is during the month of April coming up. I decided to take the SAAM pledge, this includes listing what you are going to do to help take action against sexual assault, which I listed as spreading the word through this blog entry (by posting it on my blog site).
When I was thinking about why I am writing about this it is because I feel no one deserves to be sexually assaulted, which is simple but to the point. No one DESERVES to be sexually assaulted. At the pandora’s project website it shows the stages of sexual violence and grieving, where it uses a good metaphor. Sexual assault starts out as a boulder you must carry but eventually the boulder becomes smaller as time goes on and healing begins. This boulder turns into a pebble that will never go away, but at this size it is easier to manage, though still a part of you will never define you. While reading the article “Surviving Rape,” by Andrea Rushing I can see her going through the stages of grief, mostly focusing on victim to survivor. She says she needs to remind herself that she is the “victim, not the criminal,” because so many people feel ashamed about what happened and tend to blame themselves when it is out of their control. I wanted to see what resources were available to people victimized by sexual assault in the St. Cloud community, there are a few including the Women’s Center at St. Cloud State University and also Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center. Sexual assault should not be as prominent as it is but it is important to know that there are organizations and help services out there that are available if it does happen. If this blog reaches one million people or even one person, I hope that it is getting the word out about sexual assault activism month and how important it is to even make the slightest action. I challenge everyone to make a take a small step; what will you do to spread the word about Sexual Assault Activism Month?
"She says she needs to remind herself that she is the 'victim, not the criminal'."
ReplyDeleteFirst off, kudos to you for spreading the word about Sexual Assault Activism Month. If you hadn't posted this blog, I probably would have never even heard about it!. The little excerpt that I posted above reminded me of something that we talked about in one of my other Women's Studies classes. We talked about sexual assault and how in raising awareness about it and working toward prevention you see signs about how to "Prevent Sexual Assault" and how to protect yourself from being susceptible to rape. From a feminist perspective and to me, it seems that a majority of efforts are proliferating the "self-hate" and "self-blame" feelings of many victims. Why is it on the victim to make sure he/she doesn't get raped? Why don't our efforts focus on people not raping at all. I, for one, have never seen a poster that says, "Don't Rape!". Perhaps, if we saw more posters like that those feelings of guilt might be lessened. What do you think?