Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement

Reina Gossett

If uniforms are replaced with civilian clothes —the guard’s and the prisoner’s—then the act of strip searching would look exactly like the sexual violence that is experienced by the prisoner who is ordered to remove her clothing, stoop, and spread her buttocks. In the case of vaginal and rectal searches, routinely performed on women prisoners in the US, this continuum of sexual violence is even more obvious. Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy

Last year, shortly after I wrote a piece about the legacy trans activist Marsha Pay it No Mind Johnson in honor of the role she played in the Stonewall rebellion, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project sent out the piece to members of SRLP’s Prison Advisory Committee, a group of trans, gender non conforming, and intersex people currently incarcerated in various institutions throughout New York state. One of the members of PAC wrote me the following response:

Much like Sylvia Rivera. And Bambi. Marsha was my good good girl girlfriend. I met her in 1977 when I was 13 years old and I was with her the night that she was murdered. She was supposed to be at the Anvil later that night! But never did. When Marsha’s body was found all bloated! Floating in the water of her 2nd home. The West Side Highway. Several of the working girls, queens came forward to report seeing a car full of boys with Jersey plates pick Ms Marsha up and drive off with her okay. The 6th Pct, who at the time had the most notorious fag bashers in their employ—POs Big John and Jimbo Fleming—never went above and beyond to investigate it simply because it was Marsha.

I relate this story in detail to give a historical context for the importance surrounding this anthology and its function as interrupting long-held mainstream narratives about what sexual violence means, what communities navigate everyday sexual violence and who are the primary predators for communities most impacted by sexual violence. So often trans and gender non conforming lives are not held, especially trans women of color who have been homeless, worked in the sex trade, have HIV/AIDS, are incarcerated, disabled, or immigrants. The tools used against our community are sterilization procedures, strip searches performed by the police or prison guards, the murdering of trans women who are in the sex trade, and the shaming and silencing of our stories within movement, direct service or survivor spaces.

Whether it is the street based violence of strangers that culminated in the death of Marsha or the institutional violence of the police that lead to many other deaths and harm, this Prisoner Advisory Committee member’s letter helps historicize the kind of sexual violence that people experiencing multiple forms of oppression, such as low income trans women, trans women of color, and trans women doing sex work, must navigate every day. And many of us are unable to survive it, as more and more people are coming to understand trans women and gender non conforming people assigned male at birth are disproportionally murdered as a form of sexual violence.

Over the last ten years I have witnessed broad cultural shifts in terms of what people understand to be sexual violence and what strategies people should use in responding to sexual violence. More and more people are naming interpersonal and institutional sexual violence as inextricably linked to other forms of oppression. More and more people are working to reframe who exactly they mean when they say survivors of sexual violence and a more focus is going towards centering strategies that work through prevention, intervention, reparations, accountability and ultimately collective liberation.

This anthology offers a crucial range of voices, experiences and wisdom drawn from people who understand ending sexual violence is inextricably linked to disability justice, sex worker rights, gender self determination, queer and trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition. Not only does this anthology present some of the most brilliant minds in the movement to end sexual violence, but Jennifer Patterson also frames this anthology in such a way as to center reflections and strategies for resistance, healing and ultimately liberation.

Queering Sexual Violence further expands the understanding of sexual violence as a tool of larger institutions such as the military and prison industrial complex. This book also challenges the reader to consider how these relationships are replicated outside of institutions and played out within families, intimate partnerships, on the street, in hotels and within the sex trade.

This book represents a tremendous contribution to this shift and takes it even further through the reframing of sexual violence through the lenses of Redefining, Reclaiming, Resisting and Reimagining. And yet the contributors in this anthology still manage something incredibly challenging: holding the multiple layers of complexity that make up sexual violence while pushing the reader towards liberation.

Queering Sexual Violence asks the reader to hold these difficult questions while pushing us to re-imagine our own contradictions and complexities as central to transforming sexual violence. This book is a vital text for anyone invested in movement where our own truths and communities are the key to creating strategies to prevent sexual violence, interrupt it when it happens, repair relationships harmed by sexual violence and create alternative forms of accountability when harm does happen, in order to inhabit a world in which all our lives matter.

Introduction

Jennifer Patterson

What is queering sexual violence?

In a broad sense, it is considering sexual violence while centering the discussion on experiences and identities that often place us in the margins, be it gender, race, sexuality, economic, immigration, and sex worker status. It's an affirmation of all of the bodies that experience violence and all the forms that violence takes rather than what I consider to be the more reductive focus of the violence against women framework. But I should start off by defining queer, though the definition changes from person to person. Queer defines me both politically and sexually—a radical position within the larger mainstream LGBT community; a commitment to exposing the systems that criminalize rather than serve. It’s a space to dream up new systems that do serve us. For me, it is a rejection of mainstream ideas around sexuality and gender and the home to critical thought organized through radical love and compassion. It’s also an umbrella term that offers more flexibility than something a bit more fixed like gay or lesbian. So, to queer sexual violence means I ventured to dig deeper into the dominant narratives around sexual violence. I want to highlight those of us whose survivorhood doesn’t follow a predictable path. I seek to shift what people consider normal. And a whole slew of amazing people are in this book doing it with me.

I came to this book as I left mainstream anti-sexual violence work—burnt-out but searching for radical queer perspectives in this work. And I came with a deep love for my communities and a desire to recommit to the work I love. I was intending to make the heterosexism and transphobia in the anti-violence non-profit industrial complex the focus. While you will definitely find people speaking towards that, this book became so much more; the contributors in this anthology thoroughly examine and critique norms, dominant narratives, ideas, and assumptions about sexual violence through sharing personal and critical writing about experiences as queer survivors.

None of us are immune to experiencing violence, perpetrating violence or to knowing of and not responding to violence. Sometimes we forget things. We forget how limiting and exclusionary binaries are: male/ female, victim/ survivor, survivor/ perpetrator, safe/ unsafe. We forget about accountability. We forget that our queer partners can abuse us. We forget that even when we try to create safe spaces, these spaces can be unsafe to members of our community. I'm thinking a lot about safe spaces and community. I'm thinking about the lessons we learn about violence outside our community, that we carry with us; lessons about who experiences it, who perpetuates it and who is allowed to heal from it.

The contributors move beyond a mainstream understanding of violence in which the victim is (assumed) to be a white, cisgender, heterosexual, virginal woman—the perfect survivor. We work to blur the binaries. We acknowledge that the survivor and perpetrator binary is not clear-cut; that many of us and those we love have complicated histories as both survivor and perpetrator. We look at interpersonal sexual violence as being but a part of the larger structural systems of violence like the military and prison industrial complex. For me, part of the issue with the violence against women framework is that sexual violence is not just a gender-based violence. And while it feels important to not only recognize that people with all different gender identities have both harmed others and have been harmed by sexual violence, it’s also recognizing that sexual violence has been, historically, and still is a tool of racism, of economic exploitation, of criminalization and state violence.

And it is increasingly frustrating to see organizing only for violence against women because when I think about all the survivors I know or have engaged with over the years, not all of them are women. And not all of the perpetrators are men. Not even close. When we expect all survivors to fit the mainstream survivor narrative, we miss opportunities to organize and mobilize in a larger capacity.

Studies have shown that people in LGBTQ relationships experience violence at the same rate as people in heterosexual relationships and this only reflects those of us who report and are actually included in studies to begin with. We are not immune to a systemic culture of rape, for example, simply because we are queer. In fact, we often experience violence because of who we are. The kinds of violence we face and how/ whether we survive is influenced by our race, ethnicity, disability, whether we do sex work and our economic status. But the amount of funding, research, non-profit prevention and advocacy work, direct care, organizing, and healing spaces centered on queer people is severely lacking. Non-profits and organizations are usually focused on and funded to address violence against (heterosexual, cisgender, middle to upper class, white) women. Beginning with the emergence of battered women shelters in the 1970's, the new legislation that came soon after intended to protect survivors but the growth of what can now be considered a full-blown industry came with a heavy reliance on and investment in the state and the criminal (in)justice system. This reliance had and continues to have a pretty detrimental effect. Some communities look to the state for justice but many other communities have historically experienced and continue to experience an imbalanced amount of criminalization through the prison industrial complex. Fortunately there have been growing challenges to non-profit anti-sexual violence work that relies on and assumes the state to be a site of safety and justice rather than one of the most significant sites of sexual violence, particularly in trans communities and communities of color.

Through my time working in non-profits and organizations, as a rape crisis counselor in an emergency room, and simply as a survivor, my personal experience confirms that when it comes to mainstream anti-sexual violence work and activism, the survivor receiving most of organizational attention and support is a certain type of survivor. In this anti-violence fantasy world, she is virginal, she is sober, isn’t crazy, wears the right clothing, has the right job and so forth. The centering on certain communities of survivors while erasing others has a huge impact; coupled with the reliance on the state, survivors outside the communities of mainstream focus are lacking some pretty serious resources. This means that a trans woman of color who is a sex worker will most likely be unable to come forward after experiencing violence on the job (not to mention the fact that she most likely won't be believed to be a survivor). This means that a gay man or a person who is gender non-conforming or someone who is trans or someone who is read as a man will feel —and might actually be— physically or verbally shut out of support groups. This means that a survivor who is undocumented will be unable to receive even basic forms of medical care and support because of language barriers or fear of deportation. And this also means that queer people who are incarcerated are rarely counted as survivors.

As a white queer woman working in the anti-violence movement, I saw women who looked just like me demanding space, going over other peoples' heads and making decisions that affected the larger group, all the while relying on racist, classist, homophobic and transphobic assumptions about sexual violence, survivors, and those imagined to be committing forms of violence. I also remember how small I tried to make myself when I felt shutdown in these spaces, shifting away from my queerness, my survivorhood or my radical ideas.

This narrow focus on what is considered sexual violence and who is considered a legitimate victim has historical roots and has played out for decades, not only in non-profits but activist spaces as well. The politics of respectability and assimilation within feminist, gay and lesbian, and anti-violence activism and work has erased activists for being too queer, too radical. Looking back to the 1970’s, organizers like Stonewall veteran Sylvia Rivera, who spoke out about the violence and injustice that she and her trans sisters experienced, were quickly pushed aside in order for the gay rights agenda to appeal to a heterosexual majority.

In a video of Sylvia's speech at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day, archived by Reina Gossett, the exclusion of trans women, low-income queer and trans people, those in the sex work and incarcerated survivors is on full display. In the speech Rivera asks the crowd (that boos her and works to violently tear her off the stage) to remember your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail saying:

They're writing me every motherfucking week asking for your help and you don't do a damn thing for them. Have you ever been beaten up and raped and jailed? Now think about it. They've been beaten up and raped and then have to spend much of their money in jail to get theirself home... I have been to jail. I have been beaten and raped many times... You want to tell me go and hide my tail between my legs. I will no longer put up with this shit. I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken, I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job, I have lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way?

In the speech, she also asserts that women and lesbian groups were unreliable, that trans women seeking care didn't write the womens' group for help; instead they wrote Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR), the activist organization Sylvia began with Marsha P. Johnson. After Rivera worked alongside the gay and lesbian community for collective liberation, it’s heartbreaking to see the booing, violence and dismissals that she experiences. And it’s very telling. This response from the mainstream gay and lesbian community doesn’t exist only in the past; the pushing out of trans women, people in the sex trade, queer and trans people who are low-income and people who are incarcerated continues in the movement to this day.

Once I realized the myriad ways we, as queer and trans people, continue to be shut out of mainstream anti-sexual violence activism, to varying degrees, it was all that I could see. I was left with so many questions: Where was the acknowledgment of those of us that fell outside of the rigid gender binary? Recognition of the violence that gay men encounter on the street or at home with partners? Where were the connections between the criminalization of queer people, people of color, and institutionalized state violence by the police or the prison industrial complex? When were we going to acknowledge that sexual violence is used as a tool of intimidation and control within the prison system? Where was the recognition of trans womens' vital contributions in anti-violence work? Who rallied around sex workers experiencing violence? When would mainstream activism and organizing embrace those of us that have historically been dismissed and erased? Who is allowed to seek justice and what is justice for our many varied communities?

After months of frustration, I left the community-based project I belonged to knowing that it wasn’t doing the radical work I believed was necessary. I left angry and disappointed. It became clear to me that anti-sexual violence work is not only ineffective in the long run but also shortsighted when it doesn't intentionally include and center the experiences of queer people, trans women, people who are gender non-conforming, sex workers, trans men, people of color, gay men, those that have been previously incarcerated, lesbians, bisexual-identified people and the myriad of intersections in between.

While inequities and harm in mainstream anti-sexual violence work serves as the genesis for this anthology, my own personal frustration as a survivor played a part too. As I began identifying as queer, I noticed how my survivorhood was challenged by those around me. Having been out as a survivor for years, I didn't shy away from being vocal. But I soon learned that being queer and a survivor was different than when I was straight and a survivor. My sexual identity suddenly made sense to people as they connected invented dots between survivor and queer. The stereotype of queer as deviant is pervasive and occurs both outside and inside the queer communities. Within my larger LGBT community, over the years, I have felt the push back from other queer people who would rather I be silent because my experiences could potentially confirm those stereotypes. At their root, the ideas that sexual violence and queer identity are always linked is homophobic, transphobic and heterosexist in that they centralize heterosexual cisgender survivor experiences as normal. But as I write that, it is also important to note that queer survivors are not a monolith; some of us believe that our experiences with sexual violence have impacted our sexuality or gender identity and then we find ourselves pushed to legitimize our queer identities. The ways that we have to fight to simply claim ourselves in the face of violence are endless.

As I quit the community organizing group I was involved in, I told myself that it was essential that I next picked a project that made space for all that I considered to be missing from mainstream anti-sexual violence work. I wanted to immerse myself in work that mirrored my beliefs, practices and political ideology that I believed needed to be front and center. I drafted the call for submissions for this book and then I tried to figure out how the fuck I was going to edit a book, and get it published, having no experience with either. I knew there were already so many other people doing this radical work. I contacted organizations, bloggers, activists, and writers who I knew were already deep in radical community organizing. I thought about the dominant systems and narratives I hoped we could collectively challenge and how a collection of voices could impact the direction of anti-sexual violence work. Then submissions came pouring in. There were so many people ready that I couldn't even accept all of the pieces submitted.

The contributors to this book are a feral but wildly compassionate collection of writers, bartenders, professors, students, therapists, sex workers, healers, sex positive educators, organizers, musicians, bloggers, activists, academics, filmmakers and rabble rousers. We celebrate the imperfection in our stories. Our strengths lie in our resiliency, our contradictions, the questions we ask ourselves and then the answers we demand from others. It's in the way we hold ourselves accountable to something bigger than us. We are cunning crafters of something more whole and healing for ourselves, our partners, our communities, and yes, even those that violate us. It's the messy stories, the drunk stories, the ones complicated by mental health and a quest for wellness, the stories complicated by racism, classism, fatphobia, transmisogyny, disability. We have our eyes and hearts fixed on something bigger: radical, affirming, accountable prevention work, activism and direct care, collective healing, and a release from a culture that shames, disbelieves, and erases our lived experiences. We believe that until we, as a culture, acknowledge that all genders experience and perpetuate violence, we will be working on only a small piece of the larger puzzle.

Collectively, we aren't the white, cisgender, straight, virginal, class privileged, English speaking, able-bodied survivors held up by the mainstream anti-sexual violence movement as legitimate survivors. Collectively, we are visionaries— intellectually aggressive, queer, conflicted, messy and complicated. Many of us are people of color, transgender, disabled, and/ or poor and working class. We feel the way our identities impact our survival. We know what it means to live in the margins, to have our experiences challenged. And we are demanding more from a movement that affects our very lives and communities.

This book elevates us, it disrupts the conversation, it re-centers on those frequently excluded by the laws, the non-profit industrial complex, the academic community and the organizing that is central to the mainstream anti-sexual violence work. Every person in this anthology is doing vital and radical work. We are filling in the gaps where systems, institutions, families, communities and partners have failed us. We are speaking our truths even when they aren't welcomed. Or even asked for. But while this book challenges so much, it's also focused on profound healing and liberation and actively choosing to work towards that every day, for ourselves and our communities.

Through the work of the contributors, a space was created for us to dig into our roots, heal, resist and seek new forms of collective liberation, one untethered to that which has never served us. To get into the marrow of this work is to imagine that there is a better, safer community in which we all can thrive.

This anthology is organized into four sections: Redefining, Reclaiming, Resisting and Reimagining. In the first section, Redefining, the pieces look at how sexual violence and survivorhood are normatively defined. You'll find explorations of living with what are considered complicated survivor stories and the way a focus on certain survivors impact a richer understanding of familial, community and societal dynamics. We revisit how we came to this work, how our personal history as well as history in the movement helped to give us direction.

The next section, Reclaiming takes a closer look at what it takes to move towards personal and collective healing. You'll find reclamations and release; of bodies, of stories, of labels. These pieces revisit how we came to this work, how both our personal history and history in the movement helps ground us. You will find the ways we integrate our fragmented selves. You will find us fucking, breathing, sobbing, challenging, offering, loving, sitting in the stillness, hoping, relearning.

In Resisting, there is push-back. In this section in particular, you will find the ways we say no: to violence, to being excluded from healing spaces, to being misidentified and erased as survivors. You will find us creating our own solutions.

And finally, Reimagining celebrates what is possible. It's knowing that we need to interrogate and rethink the current anti-sexual violence movement and any resistance in our way. It's believing in ourselves as well as our communities; it's knowing we can do this work. You will find strong examples of the fearlessness needed to live, work and love in spaces that are not ready to affirm us.

What we share in these pieces are our hearts, disappointments, our experiences, our successes, our multiple and intersecting identities and our ideas for moving into sustainable and transformative anti-sexual violence work. We don't believe we have all the answers but are very ready to explore and further the work that impacts so many of us.

There is a legacy of voices in this work; this anthology wouldn't be possible without the organizations, communities, and activism that paved the way, inspired us endlessly and transformed how we think, organize, work and love. In no particular order, I am indebted to GenerationFIVE, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the Anti-Violence Project, the book The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (edited by Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ching-In Chen), Persist Health Project, UBUNTU, Generative Somatics, Philly's Pissed, The Audre Lorde Project (and Safe Outside the System), Red Umbrella Project and really, too many to name. I think these examples embody the work we as queer survivors and anti-violence activists want to see replicated in the rest of the movement.

We are ready for our voices to be at the center of the anti-sexual violence movement.

Redefining

Fluctuations in Voice: A Genderqueer Response to Traumatic Violence

River Willow Fagan

My voice is probably husky, as I have been crying; either way, my voice sounds like a man's voice. Her voice, emanating from the phone, is cold. This number is only for survivors of sexual violence, she tells me.

I know, I say. I'm a survivor.

I'm sorry but this number is for people in crisis only, she says. You'll have to call the business line. She sounds angry, as if by calling I have invaded her space as egregiously as a stranger walking into