5 years ago on this weekend 2 different men assaulted me on 2 different nights on my campus. It's weird to say that on both these nights on that Halloween weekend, I was having fun, until I wasn't. I was safe, until I wasn't. So much can happen in one night, and so much happened in that weekend. The fond memories blur into the traumatic ones, like an actual Halloween nightmare.
I was on a campus that I loved surrounded by peers I thought would keep me safe. So often in the past 6 years I've assumed safety in spaces that have proven dangerous. So often in the past 6 years I have realized that few are truly safe in any space while living in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, and few thrive in a society in which rape culture is embedded in the structure of every institution. The campus that I love, and long for every day with perpetual homesickness, is the place I've felt most safe, but also where I was most hurt. The people who laughed and cried with me belonged to the same campus community the people who hurt me belonged to. Love and hate consumed me in the same home.
I used to be baffled that I found myself in such danger in what felt like an instant. A fuzzy night turned threatening. A dance party turned destructive. But now I know I was never safe. I never am safe. Sure, I have many privileges, which afford me ways in which I am much safer than others-- my white privilege, my good health, my middle class background, my education, my access to housing. But I'm reminded that many of these privileges are precarious. I'm reminded of something Veronica Popp said when analyzing her own privilege as a university instructor:
"I have no power except within the classroom. Once I leave the classroom, I am another woman living in a rape culture."
All of my privileges didn't protect me from sexual assault at an elite university. They didn't protect me from agism, sexism, microaggressions, and straight up aggressions in grad school. It does allow me more resources to move on-- I'm able to receive counseling and psychiatry services. My job doesn't pay much but I have one. My apartment's not big but it's warm. I know that there are others who suffer through the same crises with access to much less.
I'm reminded of a comment thread from scholar Yasmin Nair, someone who I follow on social media and learn much from, but who disappointed me in her thread about trigger warnings and safe spaces following the controversy surrounding the University of Chicago's letter against "safe spaces." Like I said, I don't ever feel truly safe anymore. I applaud and appreciate those who fight for safer spaces, and I have been one of those people. And in my own experiences, I've found that the students and activists who fight for these safer spaces are those whose lives intersect with trauma-- who have been abused in spaces they thought were comfortable, around people they considered friends, family, and allies. Nair made the following comment in her thread on her Facebook page:
"But, again, I think we really need to pay attention to *which* students in I'm *which* universities are demanding TWs. To put it as bluntly as possible, if you need a trigger warning for material you encounter in a classroom, you probably shouldn't be in that classroom for at least a little while. The same is true of activist spaces -- if you can't handle difficult issues and fraught matters, why are you here? "
I was on campus when I was assaulted because it was my campus. It was my hometown. It was a place I deserved access to as much as anybody who had also been accepted into the campus community. I didn't leave the classroom immediately even though I failed a Spanish quiz the following Monday because I didn't have the words or the memory to describe what had happened to me. It didn't make sense to leave the space of the classroom when it was over halfway through the semester. It didn't make sense for me to be outcasted when I was the one who'd been wronged (something I was able to articulate much more aptly when I was harassed and then felt outcasted in grad school). It never occurred to me that I was a burden to my home and that I needed to leave. I felt like trash but I was still bright and talented and able to pull myself through my workload. And even if I struggled much more than I had, would that still be a reason to push me out?
I personally knew as well as knew of students on campus who took leaves of absences for mental health, some voluntarily, some coercively (meaning admin encouraged them to take a break without being transparent about how difficult the return process becomes). My undergrad, my home, the one that I love, often requires its students to prove themselves capable of returning through taking and passing courses at local colleges, which can prove costly for students on scholarships. Furthermore, even in cases where this doesn't happen, and the return process isn't made so steep, capitalism doesn't afford people unlimited time to go somewhere to hide and heal. If you have 1, 2, 3, or more years unaccounted for on your transcript and resume, with no "study abroad" or internship or anything else to show for it, employers are going to ask you uncomfortable questions. Was it wrong that I pushed through the trauma and healed while also taking 21 credit semesters at an Ivy League college? Should I have left to heal in isolation to only prolong my discomfort until a later date?
Tonight I'm going to a Halloween party, surrounded by some friends, and many acquaintances. I often walk into spaces just like this one feeling safe, until I'm not. I walked into a space a few months ago I expected to be fun and silly, even though there was some underlying anxiety walking into a largely white, straight space, and heard a white man on stage make jokes about trans people using the tr*nny slur. I spoke out in protest to make the space safer, and was yelled to stop complaining and essentially silenced and ostracized. It was painful, even though I acknowledge my cis privilege makes this incident much easier for me to bear than for trans people.
So on Halloween weekend, when I'm surrounded by people who are blackout drunk, many of them never thinking in the back of their minds of the threat of physical violence, feeling triggered as I watch these drunk people unworried about becoming too far gone to be protected or believed, I wonder how to have fun and trust people when I feel unsafe. I wonder why I go to parties when, though I know I need to get out of my house and be social to shirk off my depression, I will feel so anxious and uneasy the entire time. I feel both relieved and gross that I feel so much safer with my male partner who affords me his male privilege by proxy because people see us together and don't feel ownership over my body (relieved because he's fun and I love him but gross because people fuck with me less because they presume his ownership over my body). I see well meaning friends post "stay safe this Halloween!" when I think of all the times I've felt safe walking around my campus at night alone but most at risk just being at parties with peers no more drunk than myself.
What if instead of telling each other to "stay safe" we reminded ourselves to "protect each other?"