Whose Harm is It Anyways?

By David Booth, Deputy Executive Director of Black & Pink

Trigger Warning:

This wasn’t an easy post for me to write. I’ve not been all that open about my experience with sexual harm while I was incarcerated, nor have I gone into much depth about it. There are still moments where my breath catches or when I’m enjoying bedroom moments and I forget that I’m safe. Moments where the harm feels so present. I imagine many of you navigate similar moments. I am honoring that space and your healing journey with a warning for the following article. While not explicit, It might bring up uncomfortable or triggering emotions.

Please honor your boundaries and take care of your emotional needs. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, I encourage you to take a sharp inhale through your nose. Hold your breath for three seconds. Then exhale fully out of your mouth. Repeat twice more, then check in with your needs to see if you can continue reading. This article will be here later so I invite you to pause and come back to it later.

“Do you wanna be my girlfriend?”

Judging from the way he looked at me, this wasn’t a negotiation and much less an ask. Asking me to be his girlfriend told me all I needed to know. I was the weaker body here. No, this was a demand and saying no wasn’t an option. I did what I needed to escape from incarceration alive. Even all these years later I can still sometimes feel the pressure of his hand on the back of my head urging him to completion.

I never reported him. PREA standards weren’t mandated by my home state at that point. I wondered whether anyone would believe me. The laundry room, where it happened, was the only place in the facility that wasn’t monitored by cameras. Usually a CO stood guard. We slipped down there for warmth while laundry was being delivered around the unit. A part of me also wondered if I deserved the harm. What finalized my decision to keep silent was prior experience. The last time I spoke out, my voice was muted. I didn’t expect things to be different this time around either, more so because I was incarcerated.

Would there really be “justice” for someone like me?

I’ve mostly navigated through processing the experience, but there are still moments where I realize this harm changed me. Some of these moments are small, but jammed with meaning, where I fear being alone with larger male bodies. Other moments are reinforced, where my body is a transaction. My worth is captured in the disbursement of pleasure granted by the transaction. Still others are more of a swirling mass of moments cascading into rivers of hurt, ebbing and flowing from past to present.

The #metoo movement illuminated so many stories like my own and exposed the harm inflicted. It created space for difficult but needed conversations across the country in ways we’ve not seen before. Powerful men were held accountable for their actions. Celebrities used their platforms to speak out. Space was carved out for more people to feel achingly comfortable in their vulnerability. Rape culture is losing its edge, but we must do more. We need to actively work to transform the narrative of shame that has privileged

people causing sexual harm and silenced those experiencing sexual harm.

This narrative transformation starts with sex education, which is failing miserably in the United States. Just over half of states require public schools teach sex education. Ten states don’t require teaching about HIV. 36 states allow parents to opt their children out of sex education. Even when sex education is taught, it is usually centered on avoiding sexual risk through abstinence. What’s worse is that far too many trans and queer art by Kate Morales, justseeds.org

youth sit in classrooms listening to curriculum that doesn’t address their experiences, identities, or behaviors. Far too many of our youth are left wondering, “What about my body? What about my needs?”

Relying on avoidance, instead of honest conversations about desire, identity, and consent, leads to shame and confusion about pleasure and a lack of agency over who we are as sexual beings. It complicates our ability to express desire in ways that respect boundaries and allows us to negotiate boundaries within relationships (both with ourselves and with other people). Instead it teaches us that our sexual feelings are wrong; and, by extension, we are “bad” or shameful for having those feelings in the first place. The result is a squirreling away of any and all sexual behavior, pleasurable or not, and letting the potential for harm germinate. Avoidance may be the root of sexual harm, but the blossom is shame.

We deserve better. Sex education should take a harm reeducation approach, meeting people where they are at in their sexual needs. Sex is a risky activity. Full stop. Not talking about the risk in healthy and affirming ways leads to all sorts of harm from coerced sex and sexually transmitted infections to unwanted pregnancies and the hyper-policing and criminalization of bodies. Instead we need to talk about how to mitigate the risk.

Risk mitigation starts with providing the tools to empower fully autonomous and liberated sexual bodies. These tools include asking before touching, creating supportive and affirming networks when a sexual experience feels uncomfortable or harmful, practicing how to say and enforce “No” as a full demand for respecting boundaries, and decoupling desire from social expectations of what is sexually and gender appropriate.

We must also learn to sit in the uncomfortability that sexual

harm doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Each of us, whether we realize or accept it or not, has also caused sexual harm. It’s not always in the form of rape or sexual abuse, but we have. Sometimes the form is in not receiving affirming consent. Other times it takes the form of subtle manipulation to fulfill a sexual desire or need. Maybe there was unprotected sex outside your relationship with someone else. It might also show up as an unwanted sexually suggestive comment about someone else. All of these forms are examples of violating boundaries, whether spoken, unspoken, or assumed. Can we really work to eliminate rape culture if we can’t first confront it in ourselves?

Interrogating our root systems of harm allows us to control what blossoms. Are you feeding your roots with attitudes of shame and blame or feeding them accountability and respect? Accountability is an intentional decision to commit to learning and growth, to set expectations and standards for your needs, and to hold space for complexity and nuance. Accountability is holding that we all are moving through experiences of harm, both as someone causing it and someone experiencing it. Accountability is recognizing your responsibility when harm happens and committing to making amends that feel like justice for the person who was harmed. Just because harm happened to you doesn’t negate the harm you caused to another person. Accountability is naming your power and privilege.

Respect is recognizing each of us as full humans with complex and diverse desires and needs that must be met without insisting on certain people holding more privilege because their bodies are socially seen as more sexually desirable and gender appropriate. Respect is meeting people where they are at with acts of care and understanding. Accountability and respect encourages open and honest dialogue on sex, sexuality, gender identity and expression, and all the intersectional nuances in between; thus allowing each of us to determine our sexual liberation. By changing the attitude around harm, we transform avoidance into action and shame into sexual liberation.

Are you ready and committed to feeding accountability and respect so sexual liberation can blossom?