projectunbreakable:

The poster reads:

“I’m going to fuck you”

he held my face under a pillow while I cried.

—

Photographed in Williamstown, MA on October 1st.

Having worked with the Project Unbreakable team for the past few months, it was easy for complacency to sink in especially with school piling things up on my plate. I got caught up in fulfilling my role, slowly forgetting about why I was cut to the heart when I first encountered the blog.

I started forgetting about how my heart wrenched violently as I read each poster. 

Today, I’m pleading with you as a friend, a sister, a daughter, and a woman. I’m begging you to open your eyes and see. To listen - because no relationship, no amount of intoxication, and no form of superiority should give someone the green light to “help himself or herself to another’s body.” The slurs and the jokes are not okay. My friendship with you does not make it okay for you to ask me if “it would be funny if you took out your dick and slapped it across my face.” It’s also not okay for you to laugh it off as if it were a joke. It’s downright mortifying.

It’s not okay for anyone to spew words that render any man or woman to feel like nothing - what frustrates me the most is when they eventually do believe the words of their abuser. You are nothing. Worthless. A piece of flesh. A body to exploit and to feed my masculinity.  

I end up getting riled up for feeling so helpless in the face of the society I’m embedded in - one that has garnered too much hurt and not enough love to go around. It is a society to challenge, and while I’m running out of words to even begin illustrating how heavy my heart is, this post puts it in perspective:

“We need to challenge how shockingly commonplace sexual domination is in our culture.

We need to stop excusing domination, aggression, and sexual entitlement as just part of “boys being boys”.

We need to celebrate boys and men who respect women and go against the grain of “traditional” masculinity.

We need to hear these survivor stories and make them louder and more powerful than the victim-blaming narratives, which persistently shame victims into isolated silence and encourage perpetrators to carry on without consequence.”

So yes, today I’m reminded of why I’m on board with my team. And I’m asking of you to simply listen to the voices of these survivors - to go against the grain and to make these voices louder than the victim-blaming cacophony that the world perpetrates.