SAAM 2021
11/04/21 18:08
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) and last year I took part in the Instagram Challenge where I posted something in response to a prompt everyday throughout April. I haven’t taken part in it this year, or even looked at what the prompts are. The reason behind this is a difficult thing to admit but I feel like I have lost my voice. I don’t know what to say anymore. After the BLM protests in 2020, the #IWantToSeeNyome campaign, and starting my MSc in Gender, Media and Culture at the LSE, I’ve realised how disturbed I am by the world we live in and I just don’t know how to express this anymore. After experiencing and processing my most recent trauma related to my rape, I feel helpless. If I can’t educate the people I thought were my allies, how can I say something that will touch those who don’t even know me? How can I convince people that rape culture exists and that rape myths are rife? How can I articulate the issues in the world to people who don’t understand them and who refuse to listen?
My little sister is struggling with this very same thing, we talked about it recently and said how much we appreciate the space we create for ourselves to have conversations about the issues we feel most passionate about. We actively learn and share the knowledge between us. We explain things we hadn’t thought of before and talk through new information. We keep space for our fuck-ups and we talk about how we can take this knowledge outside of ourselves. We’ve cried at the times we’ve failed, we’ve reflected on the times we haven’t expressed ourselves in a productive way and we try to talk through the times we have to step back and look after ourselves – even when this feels wrong. I am so grateful to have spaces to talk through these things with someone who understands and with someone who does not judge the fuck-ups. We both want to create more spaces like this, we both want to have these conversations with people who don’t see the world the same way that we do and we want to share the knowledge we have with people who have shielded themselves from it.
This is not easy work. I feel privileged to learn about the issues that don’t impact me and I think about the deep heart break I feel when someone refuses to listen to me about these issues and I think about how much more draining and hurtful this is for people who are directly impacted by these issues. We cannot leave the work to these people, if we want to be allies, we have to get involved. There are people out there who are sharing information from these communities, follow them and listen, read and challenge your own beliefs. Buy the books, do the google searches, listen to the podcasts. Find a way of learning that suits you and then take that knowledge and share it. Speak up when you disagree and look after yourself when people don’t listen.
The reason I feel like I can’t use my voice this SAAM, is because it’s become too much. I am tired, exhausted, and this feels too heavy to carry right now. During the run up to SAAM things at work were slowly building, I was dealing with so many colleagues and students confiding their wellbeing issues and I wasn’t sure where my role was supposed to end. How far was I supposed to go in looking out for these people? How much should I take on? How much could I take on? Who was there to support me? What was I supposed to do when the people who I am meant to refer the more serious cases to, said there was nothing further to be done or took too long to reply and I felt the urgency building up in every fibre of my body? I didn’t want anyone to feel the way I had felt in my life before. I wanted to help, and I still do. So just when all of this was piling up in an unsteady tower that could fall at any moment, International Women’s Day 2021 sparked a dominos of news stories and the inevitable backlash that shut me down. The lights went out and I was plunged into a familiar, deep darkness that frightened me and simultaneously made me numb. I remembered experiences of sexual assault that I hadn’t thought about before, I remembered the tears and screams as I attempted to call someone out and triggered myself in the process. I remembered the rape. I remembered some truly painful memories that I had kept locked away. It was like deja vu, when I first allowed myself to admit that I was raped. I read the stories of other women and felt them myself. I read the troll’s victim-blaming, racism and denial of the experiences of the people in these news stories. I got angry, I got fed up, I got helpless.
I had counselling almost the entirety of last year and I can see how much I’ve grown. I was no longer berating myself for feeling low, I was no longer telling myself that I was worthless and that the people who denied me my truth were right. I no longer cared who believed me. I know my truth and I know my experiences and they hurt like hell, so I was no longer going to let people tell me they weren’t real. That I was wrong, overreacting or plain lying. I was no longer going to care about other people’s decisions to sit back, or sit on the fence because it was easier to say nothing. I let myself feel the pain and the grief. I was proud of myself for feeling the pain of people whose experiences I could never know. It hurts but I think it shows that I am intelligent. Something I have never been able to call myself before. My uncle died by suicide before I was two years old. He suffered from depression for a long while before he died. Everyone tells me how his brain was incredible; he knew so much. My mum said that she wished we could have these conversations with him, and we could talk about all the things that make us mad because he could have productive conversations with us. I think about him a lot. I think about how I realise now that intelligence doesn’t lie in knowing the things we are told to know to be clever but in knowing the things we are taught not to know. I realise now why I am angry, why I am fighting a battle of depression, much like he was. I am intelligent in the same way. I hope for myself that I find the people who are doing the work, the people who can educate me, challenge me and open my eyes to the things I haven’t been able to see yet. The people that give me hope. The world doesn’t have to be like this. There is an army of people who are just as intelligent as I am, even more so, and they are working towards changing this world. I am too. Right now, I am doing the small things that people can’t necessarily see, I am reading, listening, learning and unlearning. I am financially supporting the causes that I care about and I will continue to have conversations with people. I will get back to organising and attending events as soon as COVID has been kicked once and for all and these things can happen again. I will find my voice and I will use it and I will continue to heal from the things that have happened to me. I will learn from my mistakes and I will grow from them.
My name is Martha Clarke, I am Privileged with a capital P. I have been sexually harassed and assaulted more times than I can count, and I am healing from these experiences. I have depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. I am looking after myself. I am using my privileged position to learn how to be an ally, how to stand up for and with the people who do not carry the privileges that I do. I am working out what I can do. I am taking the steps I believe are right. I am listening. I see you, I hear you, I believe you. I am finding my voice again and I plan to use it. I hope you will too.
My little sister is struggling with this very same thing, we talked about it recently and said how much we appreciate the space we create for ourselves to have conversations about the issues we feel most passionate about. We actively learn and share the knowledge between us. We explain things we hadn’t thought of before and talk through new information. We keep space for our fuck-ups and we talk about how we can take this knowledge outside of ourselves. We’ve cried at the times we’ve failed, we’ve reflected on the times we haven’t expressed ourselves in a productive way and we try to talk through the times we have to step back and look after ourselves – even when this feels wrong. I am so grateful to have spaces to talk through these things with someone who understands and with someone who does not judge the fuck-ups. We both want to create more spaces like this, we both want to have these conversations with people who don’t see the world the same way that we do and we want to share the knowledge we have with people who have shielded themselves from it.
This is not easy work. I feel privileged to learn about the issues that don’t impact me and I think about the deep heart break I feel when someone refuses to listen to me about these issues and I think about how much more draining and hurtful this is for people who are directly impacted by these issues. We cannot leave the work to these people, if we want to be allies, we have to get involved. There are people out there who are sharing information from these communities, follow them and listen, read and challenge your own beliefs. Buy the books, do the google searches, listen to the podcasts. Find a way of learning that suits you and then take that knowledge and share it. Speak up when you disagree and look after yourself when people don’t listen.
The reason I feel like I can’t use my voice this SAAM, is because it’s become too much. I am tired, exhausted, and this feels too heavy to carry right now. During the run up to SAAM things at work were slowly building, I was dealing with so many colleagues and students confiding their wellbeing issues and I wasn’t sure where my role was supposed to end. How far was I supposed to go in looking out for these people? How much should I take on? How much could I take on? Who was there to support me? What was I supposed to do when the people who I am meant to refer the more serious cases to, said there was nothing further to be done or took too long to reply and I felt the urgency building up in every fibre of my body? I didn’t want anyone to feel the way I had felt in my life before. I wanted to help, and I still do. So just when all of this was piling up in an unsteady tower that could fall at any moment, International Women’s Day 2021 sparked a dominos of news stories and the inevitable backlash that shut me down. The lights went out and I was plunged into a familiar, deep darkness that frightened me and simultaneously made me numb. I remembered experiences of sexual assault that I hadn’t thought about before, I remembered the tears and screams as I attempted to call someone out and triggered myself in the process. I remembered the rape. I remembered some truly painful memories that I had kept locked away. It was like deja vu, when I first allowed myself to admit that I was raped. I read the stories of other women and felt them myself. I read the troll’s victim-blaming, racism and denial of the experiences of the people in these news stories. I got angry, I got fed up, I got helpless.
I had counselling almost the entirety of last year and I can see how much I’ve grown. I was no longer berating myself for feeling low, I was no longer telling myself that I was worthless and that the people who denied me my truth were right. I no longer cared who believed me. I know my truth and I know my experiences and they hurt like hell, so I was no longer going to let people tell me they weren’t real. That I was wrong, overreacting or plain lying. I was no longer going to care about other people’s decisions to sit back, or sit on the fence because it was easier to say nothing. I let myself feel the pain and the grief. I was proud of myself for feeling the pain of people whose experiences I could never know. It hurts but I think it shows that I am intelligent. Something I have never been able to call myself before. My uncle died by suicide before I was two years old. He suffered from depression for a long while before he died. Everyone tells me how his brain was incredible; he knew so much. My mum said that she wished we could have these conversations with him, and we could talk about all the things that make us mad because he could have productive conversations with us. I think about him a lot. I think about how I realise now that intelligence doesn’t lie in knowing the things we are told to know to be clever but in knowing the things we are taught not to know. I realise now why I am angry, why I am fighting a battle of depression, much like he was. I am intelligent in the same way. I hope for myself that I find the people who are doing the work, the people who can educate me, challenge me and open my eyes to the things I haven’t been able to see yet. The people that give me hope. The world doesn’t have to be like this. There is an army of people who are just as intelligent as I am, even more so, and they are working towards changing this world. I am too. Right now, I am doing the small things that people can’t necessarily see, I am reading, listening, learning and unlearning. I am financially supporting the causes that I care about and I will continue to have conversations with people. I will get back to organising and attending events as soon as COVID has been kicked once and for all and these things can happen again. I will find my voice and I will use it and I will continue to heal from the things that have happened to me. I will learn from my mistakes and I will grow from them.
My name is Martha Clarke, I am Privileged with a capital P. I have been sexually harassed and assaulted more times than I can count, and I am healing from these experiences. I have depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. I am looking after myself. I am using my privileged position to learn how to be an ally, how to stand up for and with the people who do not carry the privileges that I do. I am working out what I can do. I am taking the steps I believe are right. I am listening. I see you, I hear you, I believe you. I am finding my voice again and I plan to use it. I hope you will too.