So it's official -- I've joined the UBC Pussy Posse Team, T-shirt 'n all. (No, it wasn't the t-shirt that got me into it.) I was touched by the passion and strength of everyone in the room and nothing I can say will do justice to it, so I won't even try. Want to find out? join the VDay movement yourself.
I feel like this is something I should have done sooner; somehow I wonder why it had taken me so long. (I know, it's never too late, and I am ONLY 21 -- people who keep saying I'm old: shut up!) But each has her own path to walk, and I think that just like with many other things, I wish I had arrived at this point in my life sooner than I had. But you know, there was learning and growing to do. Yeah, those things kinda get in the way sometimes.
I remember for a while in the summer when I volunteered at the Crisis Centre I kept getting phone calls from women who either called because they were recently sexually assaulted, or because they were still haunted by past experiences of being sexually assaulted. Those were calls that really got to me, and at one point I felt that if I got just one more sexual assault call, I'd go crazy.
I wasn't sure I really had a place in this. A REAL place. I have never been sexually assaulted or subjected to violence, and I felt that lacking that experience somehow disqualifies me from being genuinely a part of this. There might be something that I just won't get, something that I won't be able to understand. That failing to be where so many (too many) others have gone, the deep, horrible darkness, that having been in a safe place all my life, I am not in a position to speak out.
But then I realized I'm not free from this either.
I have never been sexually violated
nor have I ever been subjected to violence.
I would say that I am lucky, as many would,
but it really should not have anything to do with luck.
Saying that I take my safety for granted
is to say that it can be taken away anytime,
that it's not something that everyone has.
And the fact is even though I have never been raped,
I live constantly in fear that I might one day
cross the statistical line between the victims and the not-yet victims.
It's not about luck or privilege;
it should be a RIGHT,
and the attempt to end sexual violence
should be a moral imperative,
not a charitable cause.
Because as long as some women live in the shadow of past violence,
we all live in that shadow;
as long as one woman is still being raped today,
we all live in the same fear of possibly being the next one.
It would be naive to think that anyone's immune,
or that you can avoid it simply by pretending that it isn't there.
Being able to feel safe isn't being lucky,
because being lucky implies that we are sitting here
waiting for our luck to run out.
And while this may be true today,
I refuse to do nothing and wait for my time and my luck to run out;
I vow to stop violence before violence comes to me.
inside joke p.s.: and NO! my blog isn't going to turn into a VDAY persona