Day of Blogs

When wondering what the hell I’m going to write about for 24 hours (still working on it), one of the things I considered I ought to write about first is why I’m doing this crazy thing, and why I’m doing it for RAINN.

I came up with many answers for this. I strongly considered two different charities before making a decision: RAINN and the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families (the group fighting the SD abortion ban initiative). In the end it came down to two things. 1. SD Campaign for Healthy Families is a 501(c)(4) charity, which made it ineligible and 2. I do an awful lot of work surrounding reproductive rights every week.

Now, I do actually believe that sexual violence is a reproductive justice issue (there’s a post!). But those who regularly read my blog will know from my sheer frequency of writing about the topic and the passion with which I do so that it’s an issue very dear to my heart. The question is why, and I have no simple answer.

The most obvious answer is my own history with sexual violence. Would I still have passion for the issue otherwise? I certainly hope so, and since I don’t think about my own experiences every time I write on the topic, I believe so too. But I’d be lying if I said that I was certain it would be as dramatically as important to me as it is now. A second answer is that I’m a feminist, and I believe that sexual violence is perhaps the most harmful, blatant, and yet insidious manifestations of patriarchal power. Further, I truly believe that we can (and must) find a way to end it.

I remember when I first heard the “one in three” statistic: one in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime (note: some say one in four. RAINN says one in six will experience rape or attempted rape). I was in high school, and I undertook the practice of thinking about this whenever I was in groups with more than one woman. And all I could conclude was that it was true, even taking myself out of the mix. One in three.  This was, of course, simply from my knowledge of the women at hand — meaning that there were certainly more. It also of course wasn’t taking into account the women who would later be sexually assaulted. At the time, I was best friends with two other girls. And I vividly remember the moment (it was math class, 11th grade) when I realized that all three of us were survivors of sexual violence. All three of us.

In the end, I decided that the easiest and best answer is this one:

Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower is a tribute to John Lennon, a “wishing well” from which a very strong vertical light emerges. Anyone can send in wishes, and the wish can be for anything. Anything? That doesn’t make it come true, but what a freeing thought all the same. Hell, I could wish that John Lennon had never been murdered, indeed one of my happiest dreams. But no, that was not the wish that came to mind. I haven’t submitted my wish yet, because I hope to do it in person in a couple of months. But still, and despite the wishes being private, I will share mine with you now:

a world without sexual violence