TRIGGER WARNING: This piece deals with sexual violence.
“We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls.”
“So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. [It] shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘violence against women’ is problematic. It ‘s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term ‘violence against women,’ nobody is doing it to them. It just happens to them… Men aren’t even a part of it!”
– Jackson Katz
This month’s Soul Matters Theme is Courage, and it coincides with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and National Coming Out Day. Today is also the 3rd anniversary of the attack by Hamas on the people of Israel. And at the risk of preaching the sermon I plan for this coming Sunday, I wanted to pause here and address some of that which has been so prominent in the news of late, given all that has happened and continues to happen across our country related to all of this, especially the news about the Cornell Seven.
What is striking about the news reporting on the gang rape that occurred on Cornell’s campus is that those who have been implicated in this horrific act of violence have been named. As the Jackson Katz quote above suggests, this is not the norm in our culture, but it should be.
I am not a lawyer, and I do not have insight into the legal intricacies of this situation. I am, however, a minister who firmly believes that at its core, what we continue to deal with in our country amounts to a moral tragedy and an ongoing ethical failure on the part of our communities and institutions.
As a father of both a daughter and a son, I also reflect on this issue as one who has tried to instill in both my children the means by which they can maintain their own safety and that of those with whom they travel.
What it seems to me is the fundamental moral failure in our culture is that the onus to report and seek justice for acts of violence against others falls hugely and disproportionately on those who are the victims of such violence. Mostly women, but not all, as our indigenous and transgender brothers and sisters will attest. The issue of inculturated skepticism is at hand here. So I want to say without hesitation, when you tell me that you’ve been sexually assaulted, I see you, and I believe you. Period. And I will walk with you as you decide the best course of action for you.
I also believe this is the response that those who have experienced such violence should receive in the communities that hold them.
Safety is first an experience of trust. As a community and as a culture, we must make this our first response.
In addition, I believe we must work to challenge any system that places those who have experienced violence under a moral microscope. As Katz suggests above, we do not do this to those who perpetrate violence. The conversation must shift to who is responsible for creating and maintaining safe environments. And we must respond and address the way in which we perpetuate moral scrutiny on our social media, realities that largely perpetuate trauma and isolate those who have been harmed.
We cannot continue to place responsibility primarily on those who are victimized by violence for their own safety. We must create environments where that safety is a communal responsibility borne by all, especially in our culture – men.
As we honor the work of those in our community who are committed to walking with victims of domestic violence, let us also carry with us the burden of shifting the culture to address the reality that for every one who is victimized, there is at least one person who perpetrated that violence, and in fact, given our culture’s complicity in such violence, I would argue legions are responsible.
Might we, as a community, partner with those who support victims of such violence as well as advocate and create the means to educate those who so often perpetrate such violence, to teach them how to be a force for safety and care.
This is a meditation in process for me, and I’m interested in how you think and feel about all of this.
And please remember. I/We see you. I/We believe you. Period.
Blessings,
Aaron