I love what I do. I love the people I get to work with. I love working with students. I am not doing justice to the students I work with. I am contributing to many of them feeling stifled. I know because the professionals that worked with me did the same thing. They did nothing wrong, I am doing nothing wrong, that doesn't mean that we can't do better.
At least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Nearly one-third of American women (31%) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Three in four women (76%) who reported they had been raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 said that a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, or date committed the assault. Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women. Women are significantly more likely than men (60 percent and 30 percent, respectively) to be stalked by intimate partners. Eighty percent of women who are stalked by former husbands are physically assaulted by that partner and 30 percent are sexually assaulted by that partner.
Just let those statistics sink in. Really read them! Now take a deep breathe. Cause this is stuff that gets at our guts and it hurts and it is real!
I have lived these statistics. I have cringed as someone telling me "it's a safe space, we're here for you" but yet I have kept my mouth shut and have gone along with calling it "safe space" because I didn't want to out myself. I feared how people would treat me and what they would say when they found out I was a part of those statistics. Often we forget that outspoken, social justice warriors of women and men can be the victims of abuse and rape. We forget that those that are advocating for change and carry themselves with the confidence of ten people can be the victims of abuse and rape. We forget that people who are strong independent men and women can be victimized and can break down. We forget that we cannot be strong all the time and that in times where we are trapped we are ALLOWED to reach out and ask for help, ask for someone to get us out of the situation we are in. We forget that we are also vulnerable.
I always thought it wouldn't happen to me. I always thought that I would conquer the world and I would be the advocate that would save others. I never thought I would need saving. I never thought my best friend, someone who had been like an older brother to me most of my childhood would get me drunk, take advantage of me, then drop me off at the end of my street in the pouring rain like I was trash. I never thought I would fall for a man that would cut me off from all my friends leaving me with only my family and him. A man who would pick me up from work, and from school, so that I could go no where without him watching. A man who waited for my 18th birthday to ask me out so that he would be within the law. A man who once a friend FINALLY came to pull me out would stalk me and show up at my work and at my school trying to find me. A man who would find each address I lived at until I moved out of Portland.
For this reason I have never felt safe. It has been nearly 8 years since I walked away from one of the most trying times in my life and I have never felt safe. It is not because I am not strong, or confident, or resilient. It is because some asshole took that away from me. My heart still stops for a moment when an unknown number pops up on my phone. I still feel the need to hide in my room when someone knocks on my front door when I am not expecting anyone. I still freeze in my tracks when I see bald white men from behind at my work for fear it could be him. The day my neighbor made me homemade cookies and left them in a package on my front step with a flower taped to the top of the box I almost vomited. This does not stop me from being a strong independent woman but it is the reality that I have lived for 8 years.
This is why having "Safe Spaces" on college campuses is not inclusive. It does not include me. It does not include many men and women who identify as survivors, as thrivers, as individuals who have fought their way our of domestic and sexual abuse and have won. For those of us that don't ever feel safe don't have anything wrong with us, we just have a different lived experience and are stronger because of it.
This is why having "Safe Spaces" on college campuses is not accessible. I walk through life knowing that he could find me. Knowing that putting my name and photo on my departments website made me searchable on the internet. Knowing that I chose to make myself vulnerable. Safety isn't something I have access to and anyone that thinks I do has never stood where I stood in the shoes that I'm wearing with my feet on the ground. They have never lived in my skin.
There is currently a movement away from calling them "safe spaces" and an introduction to "brave spaces". I know it may be cheesy but it's a more accurate depiction of reality. "Safe Spaces" were originally created as an identifier that an institution or student body would not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating safe space for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. Referring to it as a Brave Space or Supported Space (as I used to think of it in my undergrad) does not discredit that but enhances that. Those in the LGBT community stand brave and firm in the face of adversity on a daily basis. It is time for us to change and embrace verbage that is inclusive and accessible to all our students. It is time that we put our words and our programs where our money is. It's time to rise up and change. As a Student Affairs Professional I owe this to my students, and my coworkers but mostly I owe it to myself to be the advocate that I didn't know I needed as a student. To be the person my mentors have all risen to be. To be an advocate that I can be proud of. The time is now.
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