What you can do, from a survivor

In this election aftermath, some friends have asked me what they can do. This is my perspective as a survivor of police sexual assault.

As a queer white cis woman survivor of a sexual assault perpetrated by a police sergeant, a sexual assault perpetrated by a person in my friend group, and a few incidences of police brutality, a few friends who absolutely care but felt as though they are perhaps less directly affected by this election than I am asked what they can do. I would like to lend my anecdotes. If you are interested in working on issues relating to my experiences, here are some ideas of things you can do.

I have spent nearly five years dealing with this PTSD, compounded with prior mental health concerns. If these traumatic things had not happened to me, or even if I had been able to receive proper care after, I would like to think that I would have continued on a career trajectory that was going pretty well for me five years ago, that I would not be currently unemployed, that I would not have mental breakdowns that prevent me from doing basic responsibility things like getting places on time or at all, meeting deadlines, etc. If you care about mental health outcomes this should matter to you, but if you care about physical health outcomes or even just the damn economy this should matter to you too. Basically what I’m saying is that if these traumatic things hadn’t happened to me or even if I had been able to receive proper care I’d be way better at being a “contributing member of society.”

Here are some things I dealt with in the aftermath, while being barely able to work, and also having trouble finding work:

• four-month wait for low-cost therapy
• the legal support for survivors that i had access to didn’t cover my type of lawsuit
• being paired with a grad student therapist who wasn’t prepared for the complexity of my situation, and being then misdiagnosed and kicked out of the therapy program
• no mental health crisis center in my area
• obviously the terrible justice system that dealt with my lawsuit, which was incredibly distressing as well as ineffective in seeking justice

Here are some of the things I think you can do, if you care about the things I and others have struggled with.

Work to prevent sexual violence.

This election has put control into the hands of people who don’t give a shit about this. Ways you can work to prevent sexual violence include:

• pressure (your) schools to include evidence-based education about these issues
• call out rape culture when you see it, even if it doesn’t appear to be describing an actual rape. make it clear this shit contributes to a world in which sexual violence is not taken seriously.
• don’t just not laugh at rape jokes. tell the person they’re not funny. rape jokes include statutory rape, that is, old people joking about how they’d like to date teenagers and children. if they’re offended, it’s probably because they’re “overly sensitive” (often called “fragile masculinity,” but “overly sensitive” is ironic) and uncreative for not thinking of an actually funny joke.
• support survivors. one of the biggest risk factors for being sexually assaulted is if a person has already been sexually assaulted.
• discuss gender roles. traditional gender role attitudes are a risk factor for sexual violence. let men have feelings and don’t pressure your friends to play a particular role in their relationship if it doesn’t speak to them.
• do not let perpetrators gain power, if it’s in your power. perpetrators tend to be repeat offenders, and predators tend to prey on people they see as weaker than them, so don’t allow them access to positions in which they have an even greater power differential between them and their inferiors.
• incorporate institutional values that make it difficult for people with traits like sexism and misogyny (and racism and other forms of bigotry) to rise in the ranks, even if they are otherwise good at their job. there are lots of people in the world who could be good at that job if given the opportunity, so if you have to, be creative in your institution on how to make it harder for sexists.
• teach kids about consent as soon as they’re cognitively able to understand it.

Work to make health care effective and accessible.

Without getting super political about what is infrastructurally necessary to allow that to happen, ways you can work towards this include:

• support increased funding for and expansion of social services organizations. if they’re doing a bad job, and you’d like to remove their funding because they keep fucking up, make sure there’s something good to replace them.
• whenever developing a social service, include accessibility in its design. it’s not enough to have a service that’s been proven effective, and it’s definitely not enough for it to be “innovative.”
• if you know about services, and you know someone who could use those services, reach out to them, even if they’re annoying. a lot of us with mental health problems can be annoying sometimes. spread the word about the services anyway. care anyway.
• notice the ways different identities and groups might be prevented from accessing care. just fucking notice it. include it in your opinions of systems. don’t pretend it’s not a classed, raced, gendered problem. for people who struggle getting (mental) healthcare access, it hurts to talk with people who seem reasonable and kind but don’t see these gaps. never blame people for not getting care when it’s really fucking hard to get care. (for the record, this is a very small thing you can do.)
• this one’s kind of hard if you don’t already work in this industry. but if you do work in the industry, fight for it constantly. make it a theme of your work.

Support survivors (not just of sexual violence. of violence and oppression of various forms too).

I know I mentioned this above, but I want to delve into it more. Ways you can support survivors include:

• have your organization put out a statement of support in some way. don’t worry about whether it’s partisan or not to do so. support for survivors of sexual/racist/state/etc violence should never have been a partisan issue and anyone who thinks it’s partisan is acknowledging that Trump and Republicans dgaf about survivors.
• have your organization be forgiving on minor client messups for a little bit. like don’t worry about cancellation fees in this aftermath, or let people hand in assignments late, or other things that could otherwise increase stress to people having a hard time dealing with this shit.
• be open to and supportive of your friends. so many of them are survivors. you don’t even know. stress and trauma manifest in various ways, and there are various ways of being supportive. you can always ask them if you’re not sure how. support them even if you’re not hot on their political views.
• say nice but not belittling things. really it makes a huge difference. i’ve struggled with mental health things for a long time and most periods of my life nobody’s said a word even when it’s super obvious i’m struggling. just saying, “hey, are you like having an okay time…?” or saying, “hey, i’m not sure what’s going on for you right now but i’m glad you made it” or even just “it’s really good to see you” or sending them an email or message after you see them saying any of these things is just super encouraging and can make a difference in how mental health flares and potentially triggering events affect individuals’ lives, whether it super derails them or not. this clearly goes for people who aren’t survivors too but who are having a rough time. i’ve definitely noticed that after the election people in my life have been really good about this and I’m super grateful. it’s helped me not fall too off track.
• volunteer at places like local sexual or domestic violence hotlines, women’s shelters, etc.
• know that dealing with sexual violence through the criminal justice system is not always the best thing for survivors. do not fight for it as the main solution to this problem, even if you’re interested in reform as part of the solution. part of the problem is that there do not exist systems that take sexual violence seriously and that are also good for survivors. be creative about what those systems can look like, and in the meantime don’t pressure survivors to use systems that they feel will hurt them.
• frame the harm of sexual violence separately from a framework of criminality. criminality is not actually talking about the harm of sexual violence. it’s talking about the act. lots of harm can come from small acts, and we don’t have ways to deal with this dynamic. acknowledge that not everyone who says they’ve been harmed by sexual violence is trying to also put the perpetrator in prison. those are two separate things.

Fight police brutality and support survivors of police brutality.

• believe survivors of police brutality. police often lie. this is a truth.
• work to reduce the number of situations in which police are the responders. this means both focusing on preventing violence, and replacing police with social services that are more relevant to the situations that police tend to be tasked with addressing. create community networks as needed.
• acknowledge that the power differential that police work in informs their every move, even when they’re being nice. in every interaction with police, they have the upper hand, are more likely to be in control of the situation, and have been trained in violent escalation to the point that it comes naturally to them. this is a real dynamic that people who have been hurt by police are aware of.
• know that generalized support of police as an institution stings people who have been hurt by police, because their hurt was likely endorsed by the institution and it’s almost certain that the officers that hurt them were not reprimanded. these are dynamics embedded in the institution of policing.
• acknowledge that harm at the hands of police is not just an issue of police shooting innocent black men, just like sexual violence is not just an issue of forcible rape — it’s an issue of rape culture, and different kinds of manipulation and breaches of consent. yes, please support movements that focus on issues of police shooting people. but harm from police comes in various forms, including things like intimidation, name-calling, and plenty of things that are within protocol, such as just being rough with arrestees.
• thinking that non-police in a situation involving police and/or the people being arrested are assholes or actually dangerous criminals does not preclude you from acknowledging harm done by the party with far greater power in the situation. extending permission for police to fuck with an asshole doesn’t bode well for their treatment of anybody.

Not all of these things are super actionable. But all of them come from a place rooted in my personal experiences and trauma. The personal is political, but that’s not what I asked for. I never wanted my personal experiences to be political. I would have much rather gone about my life, having some normal job and fighting for causes I believed in because of my sense of right and wrong. But instead I have to fight for and devote my life to causes I believe in because it hurts not to. But it also hurts to. It just hurts. So if you’re able to work on any of the things above, people like me appreciate it.