Category: survivor activists

‘my incurable anger’

The liminal space of airports can take me one of two ways: either I feel elated by the possibilities that travel may hold, or I feel lost, rudderless, unmoored.

It’s not surprising I guess that what with everything happening in the world right now — the latter pulled me in deep last night, as I traveled back from Germany after seeing our (beautiful, precious, smiling and laughing, curious) grandson. Thank goodness for new life, right now especially, truly.

In the airport I found myself surrounded by businessmen while waiting for my flight. All men. All working. All seemingly contained, professional.

And for the first time in years and years, I was furious at all of them — so furious that I struggled not to cry. I wanted them to be up in arms. I wanted them to show that they noticed what was happening in the world. That they knew they were privileged. That they understood their positions of power — and that they rejected this power, wholesale. Then I wondered how many of them were abusers. I wondered about the women and girls and boys in their lives: were these men good people?

Who knows. All I could see, all I could read in their faces, was that they were unperturbed. Contrary to the triggering and beyond I was going through: they felt safe. They had no reason not to feel safe.

Let’s say that again: they had no reason not to feel safe.

Then I actually did cry as the plane taxied and took flight over Cologne. I saw the lights of the city below, and knew there were thousands of abused people there — the vast majority abused at the hands of men.

We have every reason not to feel safe. I have every reason not to feel safe. I want to scream: look, why don’t you — just open your eyes! You have done this. You run the world so you always win, so you are safe, happy, prosperous — and so you can bask however you choose in the entitlement bestowed upon you by being born male, into a patriarchy.

But they are not looking. Not those men. Not then, and possibly not ever. They don’t have to.

Which is why I cried: I must look. My eyes are stuck open. Every day, and especially right now. Millions of us have to look. We have no choice but to know about all of this, from the inside — and none of us, not a single one, wants to.

We are flayed raw. We are so tired. We are so heartsore.

***

This morning the words that circled my mind in the airport at last found their poem: one of Twenty-One Love Poems, a sequence by Adrienne Rich, the great activist feminist writer, one of only two or three writers whose work has echoed through my life. I first read her poems in 1980.

I’ve added emphasis to the lines I’ve been hearing over and over….

IV.


I come home from you through the early light of spring
flashing off ordinary walls, the Pez Dorado,
the Discount Wares, the shoe-store… I’m lugging my sack
of groceries, I dash for the elevator
where a man, taut, elderly, carefully composed
lets the door almost close on me.—For god’s sake hold it!
I croak at him.—Hysterical, he breathes my way.
I let myself into the kitchen, unload my bundles,
make coffee, open the window, put on Nina Simone
singing Here comes the sun… I open the mail,
drinking delicious coffee, delicious music,
my body still both light and heavy with you. The mail
lets fall a Xerox of something written by a man
aged 27, a hostage, tortured in prison:
My genitals have been the object of such a sadistic display
they keep me constantly awake with the pain…
Do whatever you can to survive.
You know, I think that men love wars…
And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds
break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly,
and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.

will we get there?

So many are asking this question right now: survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, allies of survivors, and the general public.

Who will be charged? Who will be prosecuted? And importantly: will this global explosion around sexual abuse and sex trafficking change anything?

***

I was up at the University of York this week, diving into a set of materials gathered by relatives of a long-term survivor activist in the UK. She was clearly an incredible woman, and built her huge network brick by brick through paper, telephone, personal relationships (before connectivity of any sort). This work is a fundamental part of a larger project I am working on with some colleagues, and it’s very exciting — here’s the LinkedIn page. The project only officially started this month, but we have done work around it now for the last six months. I can go into details once the website is up, in about two weeks!

Meanwhile, the archive material around this amazing survivor activist blew me away:

  • she worked so hard. She ran support groups, distributed leaflets, lobbied politicians and attorneys. She involved much of London, and had strong connections throughout the UK. Against all odds, she kept going for decades. I am only now, after about five years of doing this myself, beginning to understand how much this will have cost her.

  • toward the end of her life, she wrote about how ‘nothing had changed’, in all her 40 years of campaigning. Her voice was as strong as ever, but she didn’t and couldn’t understand why what she and others were screaming about CSA wasn’t being acted upon. Sound familiar? I cried.

  • I cried too because she knew everything we know now — in the 70’s. She had statistics (which haven’t changed), questionnaires, testimonies. She wrote plainly and directly, no sugar-coating. She understood and distributed leaflets about how to keep safe. She understood manipulation, coercion, and taboo. She shouted about it all — but to what end? I am heartbroken by how painful this must have been for her.

  • I cried the hardest because: in the 70’s and 80’s I knew very little about sexual abuse. I had no words for what was happening/had happened to me. I thought I was the only one. I was terrified and ashamed. All I knew was that I hated it. Sitting in the archives with her vast materials, I just kept thinking if only I’d known, if only someone had said something to me, if only I’d seen a leaflet, if only I’d had someone to turn to.

And now I say: if only any of her work (and the work of many others) had been acted upon, think how many potential victims might have been saved.

***

Basically, the project above is about developing a way to archive survivor activist materials — to record past activisms, make connections, and to build upon it all going forward. So we know who has come before us, so we can consolidate their work, honour them, and effect change — rather than what we too often do now: seemingly invent the wheel era after era, and risk getting precisely nowhere therefore.

Do I think the global Epstein ‘scandal’ will lead to change? Will society begin to understand that the root of abuse is power? Will we stop blaming victims? Will we believe them? Will we change what constitutes ‘evidence’ in cases of CSA and SA? Will we acknowledge the sheer prevalence of CSA? Will we open our ears and eyes? Will we help the children — and succeed in imprisoning more than the current 2% of men and women who perpetrate abuse?

We have SUCH a very long way to go. The materials I poured through this week turned me inside out. She fought with all she had — and over 40 years later, devastatingly, almost nothing has changed.

We have to do better. We have to do better for not only the millions upon millions of survivors of CSA, but for the millions upon millions of potential victims of CSA.

So please don’t stop talking about CSA, now that the ball is truly rolling. Please be an ally. Please don’t turn away. Please accept that children are being abused all around you: that is, at least 1 in 6, 15% of the population. These are FACTS, as difficult as they are to accept.

Please raise your voices. Please commit to advocating for cultural and social change at the deepest levels. Otherwise — I’m pretty sure that everything will die down, and continue as it was. It’s the path of least resistance after all, and I have witnessed now how easily so much can be lost.

So please: let’s be the change. We need every one of you.