Sunflower Voices

 

 

Trauma is a process. Trauma is an environment. It’s time to stop thinking of trauma as just an event and an individual experience. Trauma is the drip drip drip of smirks and leers, of foot tapping and silencing, of cutting remarks and impatience with “attention seekers”.  Trauma is an onslaught of moments in which you don’t count.

 

And that’s why community responses are so critical.

 

There’s lots of good evidence that the long term impact of sexual assault is deeply affected by community responses in the aftermath. All adverse impacts, such as depression, anxiety, suicidality, social isolation, chronic illness, lowered income, and more, are reduced if survivors receive support and care from those around them – family, friends, and service-providers – after an asssault or disclosure.

 

That is because humans above all are social, communicative beings, and our brains are wired to sort out feeling good, feeling bad, feeling safe or at risk based on the messages and behaviours of those around us.

 

If we don’t understand trauma and healing as an environmental, social process, we can make damaging mistakes. We can expect individuals to “get over it” on our timeline, reinforcing the idea that they alone are responsible for a return to strength. Instead communities should collectively prioritize what survivors say they need for safety and wholeness.

 

We might think of trauma as something just contained within the heads of the survivors, rather than taking responsibility for increasing safety and peace of mind for all people of a targeted class: women, youth, persons of color, persons with disabilities, and others.

 

In fact, in environments where sexualized violence, abuse or harassment have taken place, many people will be retraumatized and vulnerable, not just the direct targets of the latest aggressions.

 

Time and time again women bringing forward complaints are told just to avoid, ignore, assuage, humour or comply with those engaging in harassment. This was apparently the dynamic around Jian Ghomeshi at the CBC right up to the end. The result was a toxic workplace with many more people severely stressed in addition to the direct targets.

 

Halifax is a small place, and hearing from friends of friends about what staff and students in the Dentistry building are being expected to tolerate is concerning. I am hearing that the supposedly segregated Dalhousie Gentlemen are still coming into the building for certain purposes. Is this just OK?

 

Many many women are traumatized by sexualized aggression. Given that 50% of females will experience unwanted sexual touching (i.e. an assault) by the age of 16, and that 1 in 4 will have experienced childhood sexual abuse, as well as all the threats and dangers that go along with being a woman in a high rape society – do we not owe all women in the building a guarantee they will not have to encounter one of the haters? I know from my own experiences and many years of speaking with survivors, that having to enter the same building as a harasser or abuser can be overwhelming. Add to this the uncertainty of not really knowing who is who and who said what online, and an atmosphere of stress, fear, and abandonment is created.

 

Female staff working in the dentistry building are like most women: highly likely to be survivors of sexual aggressions, whose potential retraumatization by encountering extreme sexists should be considered seriously. But upon reporting their stress in having to deal with the Gentlemen, they have been told to “treat them like anyone else.” They have been told to “use their stress management techniques” if they feel triggered by working near those who were laughing about chloroforming and “hatef—king” other women in the building, about “correcting” lesbians sexually. Some staff, I am told, are grieving and want to speak out but feel oppressed by subtle messages enforcing their silence. Overly cheery briefings are adding to the sense of denial and unreality. Would Dalhousie expect Jewish or New Afrikan staff to pleasantly continue social interactions, serving men who were busy burning crosses last month? (Maybe! But I think it’s worth contemplating.)

 

To uproot rape culture, we must start considering women as a group with common interests, not artificially divided between present victims, and others. We should collaborate broadly in creating a psychologically safe environment so women can continue as much as possible in their ordinary routines in the aftermath of hate. (In this case, without a suspension pending the conclusion of investigation, the Gentlemen’s ordinary routines seem to be prioritized.) We need to understand the total environmental impacts of decisions. Why haven’t all women in the building as a group been offered a safe way to indicate for themselves what they need to feel secure? Why are staff in the building feeling a message of “suck it up, Buttercup” even while Dalhousie is offering individuals “counselling?”

 

Many of us have yet to truly understand our interdependence and mutual responsibilities to each other around stopping and healing from sexism, racism and classism. Until then, it may seem more convenient to act like such offenses can purely be “settled between the parties” in a quiet back room somewhere. But when we do realize our interdependence, our creativity can soar. We will construct social and physical environments that are much better at valuing women. No one will be asked to run the gauntlet just to show up for work or get their education.

 

 

A short video explaining why private victim-offender mediation will never solve community problems: http://www.lionsroar.com/wrong-paradigm/

 

 

 Photo by thecoolspringpack