00:00We perpetrate rape culture in very clear ways and rape culture creates a climate
00:05for sexual violence to happen. I was six years old when I decided not to tell my
00:11father, my stepfather, what happened to me. I knew my father what he was gonna do
00:15if I told him who it was and what happened. I was scared of two things. I
00:19was gonna get in trouble because I shouldn't have been in these places or
00:22whatever and then my father was gonna do something. So I just was quiet.
00:30The world responds to the vulnerability of white women. Our narrative has never
00:34been centered in mainstream media. Our stories don't get told and as a result
00:38it makes us feel like we're not as valuable. The way Me Too rolled out right
00:43it rolled out being viral online within white women's circles and so you saw
00:49white actresses, you saw white stories, you saw white perpetrators and so it can
00:54feel very much like well that's not me this is this is something about white
00:58women. But what we also know is in every single community where sexual violence
01:03happens except for native community it's interracial. So Asian women are being
01:08raped by Asian men. White women are being raped by white men largely. Latino you know
01:12down the line. Now in native community they still have a large number of people
01:16coming from outside of their community into it to commit those crimes. But black
01:21women are dealing with sexual violence at alarming numbers and it is largely
01:27happening at the hands of black men. That is something that we have to deal
01:30with in our community. We have to face it. We have to be honest. And sexual
01:33violence is not something that the black community has embraced as an issue the
01:38same way as police violence or economic disparity and other things that we rally
01:43around. One I think because we don't see ourselves so it's still very much taboo topic
01:49and it's still something that's really difficult to have big meaningful
01:53conversations in our community about. What Me Too did and what I've watched it do
01:59for years is give people language to have the hard conversations right. It gives you
02:04a starting point. It gives you some kind of framework. Because it's in the
02:08popular narrative right now it makes people feel a little more safe to have
02:12these conversations. So that's great.
02:14A trauma happens to you particularly around sexual violence. It becomes so
02:20defining for so many people. So you build your life around the trauma. The way I
02:25lived was that joyous things would happen, wonderful things would happen and I'd
02:29be like this is great but I'm actually this person so I can only enjoy it a
02:33little bit. So when I was pregnant I was frantic about I gotta figure out how to
02:37like I need authentic joy because I need this baby to be joyous. And I started to
02:41write down the times when I felt joy. All these little ways when I get in a
02:48circle with my girlfriends and we laugh until we got to pee on ourselves like so
02:52your stomach hurts. That's joy. My daughter when I would pick her up from daycare when
02:58she was little I wear these bracelets and I would get out the car and come into the
03:01daycare and she could hear my bracelets jingle. And from the back of the building
03:05you would hear mommy! My mommy's here! And then this long hallway she would come
03:10running down the hallway running down this is every day. And I realized this
03:14moment brings me so much joy. And so what what I figured out is that if I curate
03:20that if I just collect it and hold on to it whether I document it or I put it in my
03:25memory when the time comes when the trauma eats you up because it comes right I'm
03:30not I'm not in any way saying the trauma goes away but I have evidence that I don't have
03:35to live here. Whatever it is the things that you know make you really really deeply happy
03:40we deserve that. And I think we turn it over all the time. They become fleeting moments.
03:45We forget and I'm just I'm trying to encourage survivors of sexual violence to flip that
03:50around and build your life around this other thing because we all have it and we don't
03:55have it we have the opportunity to build it.
04:00you
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