Breaking the Silence
When it comes to fighting back against rape, resistance is not futile. So why aren’t we talking about it?
By Liz Springate
Continued from page 2
Representing resistance
A few anthologies of resistance stories have circulated since the 1980s, most notably one edited by Denise Caignon and Gail Groves, called Her Wits About Her: Self-defense Success Stories by Women (1987), as well as more recent online collections by such self-defence organizations as Wen-Do. And occasional testimonials appear in literature and websites for self-defence schools. But these stories are few and far between.
I’ve recently been following an indie-media movement called digital storytelling, in which community and activist groups produce, collect and circulate digital stories. Digital stories are three- to five-minute movies produced from found materials — such as newspaper clippings, pop culture images or such personal archival material as family photographs, video clips and drawings — that are combined with a recorded voice-over. SilenceSpeaks, a community-based media arts collective based in Oakland, California, provides media training for people to produce their own digital stories about their experiences with, and survival of, sexual violence. SilenceSpeaks has worked with survivors of child sexual assault and family violence, with youth groups involved in gang violence, women surviving intimate-partner violence and, most recently, with the Men as Partners activists in South Africa, raising awareness about sexual violence as it is intertwined with HIV/AIDS. I’ve been collaborating with SilenceSpeaks to come up with ways digital story workshops can be brought to women who have resisted sexual assault, as a way of anthologizing and circulating these stories we rarely hear. The possibilities are endless for sharing narratives in digital formats. (See the sidebar at the end of this article for more digital story sites and suggested resources.)
If you have an event in your own personal history that you choose to share — bearing in mind that you should never feel pressured to speak if you do not wish to — consider the endless ways it can be told: whisper it to your sister, your partner, your mom; draw a map of where it happened; scrawl it on a bathroom wall; write a poem, a rant, a postcard, a song. Consider the numerous private and collective venues such as blogs, online forums and zines. And take into account the abundance of easy and accessible media tools, whether it’s iMovie, a humble photocopier or two turntables and a microphone.
If you don’t have a story of resistance, make one up!
Although it’s never, ever pleasant to think about rape, one of the most powerful methods for changing beliefs about sexual violence is to visualize a scenario in which you manage to stop it. This does not mean you have to become paranoid and see danger everywhere. Neither is this strategy (or any kind of formal training) a guarantee that if you do face a violent situation, you’ll be able to prevent it. What it does mean is that you can work through a few scenarios on your own time, in your own safe space. Every so often, in my own head, I’m struttin’ around with a shiny pink Taser lashed ’round the top of some thighhigh white boots, walking a Siberian tiger and drop-kickin’ nasty guys all over town. But resisting sexual violence is usually not so spectacular — or stylin’. Sometimes, like for that young woman riding the subway, resistance unfolds in silent glances and whispers.
