Jellie Froots

Of their own organization and of others in the early anti-rape movement, the authors write: "We were critics of the police, the courts, and the hospitals, the institutions that traditionally dealt with rape victims."

After reading the letter, I spent some time journaling about my own experience with rape and the kinds of institutional "support" I was offered. I remember my own powerlessness and the feeling that there were no options available that would help me to move towards healing.

The societal conditions that led to my experiencing rape have not changed. Today, many years from my last experience of sexual violence, that is what hurts the most. The institutions that many of us have been told to put our faith in can do almost nothing for us.

And they do almost nothing for us while also asking us to sustain them, at the cost of our complicity in the rampant racism, sexism, and other oppressions that they directly enact on our communities and neighbors.

I think about the work Survived & Punished (@survivepunish) is doing. I consider all the people who fought for the own lives and survival in the face of sexual and interpersonal violence and who reaped carceral, institutional violence in response. https://survivedandpunished.org 

Consider donating to Survived & Punished if you can. https://survivedandpunished.org/donate/  Consider joining in their 30 days of #TowardAbolition action items if you can. And let's think about what our own communities need, how we can take care of each other without prisons and police.

We must be "critics of the police, the courts, and the hospitals". To end sexual violence, we need to demonstrate our care as individuals and community members. We can't rely on institutions to disappear our problems for us.