Call out to get involved in a research project on sexual violence in activist communities

Was your sex­u­al abuser a high-pro­file activist? Have you felt unable to speak out about it?

Was your sex­u­al abuser a high-pro­file activist? Have you felt unable to speak out about it? Or have you spo­ken out about it only to be accused of mak­ing it up and/or divid­ing the move­ment? Did your anti-state activism and/or expe­ri­ence of police bru­tal­i­ty rule out going to the police? Were you able to kick out your abuser using oth­er meth­ods? Did the account­abil­i­ty process back­fire? Did your abuser just move on to a dif­fer­ent group and do the same thing to some­one else? Was the trans com­mu­ni­ty so small that you didn’t want your part­ner to lose it? Do you want to be involved in tak­ing action and chal­leng­ing sex­u­al vio­lence in activist com­mu­ni­ties?

We want to hear from sur­vivors who iden­ti­fy as women, gen­der-queer or trans who are ready to talk about their expe­ri­ences of sex­u­al vio­lence with­in cur­rent or past organ­is­ing in rad­i­cal social jus­tice move­ments in the UK. This may have hap­pened once or mul­ti­ple times, we are inter­est­ed in hear­ing from folks with a vari­ety of expe­ri­ences of sex­u­al vio­lence includ­ing unwant­ed touch­ing, flash­ing, harass­ment, stalk­ing, sex­u­al assault and rape.

Sal­vage is a col­lec­tive of aca­d­e­m­ic-activists, sur­vivors and activists. We got togeth­er through a work­shop on sur­vivor-led approach­es to gen­dered vio­lence and abuse at AFem 2014. This is our first research project. We aim to devel­op resources, infor­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal rec­om­men­da­tions to work towards cre­at­ing effec­tive chal­lenges to gen­dered vio­lence, abuse and harms with­in social jus­tice move­ments and com­mu­ni­ties.

If you are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved and/or want more infor­ma­tion about this research project:

Web: https://projectsalvage.wordpress.com/research

Twit­ter: @Project_Salvage