tw: sexual assault
i
used to be really freaked out by riot porn and super not into what i
conceived to be politically "violent" tactics (mostly
property destruction, oddly most acts of interpersonal violence from
positions of subjugation that i heard about made sense to me even if
this didn't). i was even unsettled by militant feminism. looking
back, this was definitely because i still wasn't ready or able to
accept the amount of violence that i've been exposed to in my own
life. at the period in my healing process that i was starting to
encounter a lot of new political tactics (about a year and a half
ago, when Occupy started up), i was definitely still living in a much
more sensitive and emotionally evasive place than i am now.
i felt,
at that time, like exposing myself to more "violence" would
cause me to become further traumatized and scar me more.
the
interesting thing is that the more nuanced my understanding of power
became--and thus, the more i was exposed to political content that i
previously would have deemed "violent"--the less easily
triggered i became. the more i came to terms with the fact that
others in the world had been hurt and responded by lashing out, the
more enabled i was to come alive emotionally. for so long i was
frozen by the fear of violence and cloistered by my determination to
avoid it. i truly never expected that this would happen--i literally
never thought that accepting that i'd been harmed would allow me to
overcome being further hurt by it. as such, being reminded of the
trauma i carry actually did cause those references to be further
traumatizing. it was only once i started allowing myself to feel the
deep fear and sadness i carried as a result of being assaulted and
privy to emotional abuse that i was able to move out of the paralysis
that had held me for so long.
i
thought about this most recently after the panel about Patriarchy in
the Movement that was held at the Red & Black. after a surprise
callout and an offensive attempt to shut it down, things got really
heated. at one point an amazing woman named María was shouting
angrily about the way that rape culture has formed the very basis of
her existence. she was literally yelling about the fact that her
ancestry--she's mixed Latina--is a product of rape.
a
year ago, i would have likely felt like María's anger was violent in
a way that i wouldn't have been able to tolerate. It would have
terrified me, because i would have identified with it. it would have
shaken me deeply because it was so different from how i was relating
to trauma then.
after
the panel, i went up to María and thanked her for her anger. calmer,
she was shy about it. "no," i said. "thank you so
much. i'm sure you can understand--as a survivor, there is nothing
more empowering and uplifting for me to see another survivor angry
and fighting for their life instead of hopeless and sad." and
it's true. instead of scaring me, María's open display of "violence"
made me feel empowered in a way that i never have before.
it
really never ceases to amaze me that tactics and opinions that i once
thought of as destructive and violent became the vehicles of my
liberation.
