Feminist blogger Rachael Goodman-Williams recently create a website designed to help end the silence surrounding sexual assault and help women and men recognize that sexual assault is a significant issue and that its perpetrators are in the wrong. Goodman-Williams’s website includes an overview of the project and an avenue for women to submit their experiences of sexually assault. Goodman-Williams requests that all experiences submitted end in “and it was wrong” to reinforce this simple, yet often overlooked and masked fact. So often, Goodman notes, women are made to feel as if what men do to them, the abuse they suffer, is not significant or does not warrant outrage or resistance. The creator of this website plans to compile the experiences shared into a book that she will make available to men and women. In addition, she reads excerpts of the experiences she receives at speak-outs, rally’s and women’s centers. Goodman-Williams hopes that this project will enable women to join together to recognize that sexual assault is a systemic issue that requires collective resistance to dismantle.
This website has a lot of transformative potential. Though Goodman-Williams has not made the experiences available to read on this website, her discussion of the project, which is featured on the website frames sexual assault in such a way that encourages women to break the silence, not only by submitting their experiences, but also by allowing themselves to recognize and name, if only for themselves their experiences with sexual assault, rather than continuing to belittle their experiences or making excuses for their assailants. This project illumines the ways in which women have been taught to be complicit in their own oppression and provides ways in which collective consciousness can be transformed and used to propel social change around sexual assault.
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