Sexual Assault and Instagram Activism: Thinking About Word Choice
By Anonymous
Trigger Warning: This article contains explicit mentions of sexual assault and related triggers.
Please note that this article is not intended to speak for the entire community of sexual assault survivors, but is rather the viewpoint of one such survivor.
As many of you know, it felt as if a bomb had exploded on social media this past Thursday at Villanova. Every post was talking about the email that had been sent out, most people specifically utilizing the tweet from Dr. Jill McCorkel as a way to express their anger. For me, it felt like a bomb had exploded in my chest. As a survivor of sexual assault, to go onto Instagram and suddenly be confronted with dozens of posts without warning was overwhelming, and I spent my Thursday crying on the bathroom floor.
I’ve never felt comfortable using the word “rape” to describe what happened to me. Being cognizant of the fact that Dr. McCorkel’s point about the words chosen by others is a different point than the issue of choosing words oneself as a survivor, going on Instagram and having friends say that not calling these incidents “rape” was “disgusting” and “pathetic” made me feel like I was weak or wrong for not using that word. I found myself caught in a difficult situation of not wanting to reveal that I was a survivor to my friends, but also wanting to ask them to be more mindful of what they posted.
I have never reported what happened to me to any sort of authorities, because I was scared about everyone in my life knowing about it and talking about it, that people would treat me differently or simply see me as the girl who had been sexually assaulted instead of myself. After the social media posts began on Thursday, a fellow survivor texted me, “This is why I’ll never report.”
I do not think that what happened on social media was inherently wrong, and I know that intentions were not meant to harm. I agree, Villanova needs to do better about informing and giving support to students when it comes to sexual assault. And Villanova’s use of the phrase “non-consensual sexual intercourse” in the email is problematic. The use of “sex” or “sexual intercourse” to describe assault doesn’t make sense, as sex and assault do not equate. But the sudden wave of Instagram activism felt as though people forgot the survivors in their own life who could have been impacted by what happened. No one posted about whether the survivors were the ones who asked for the word “rape” to not be used, as in cases like this the survivors give explicit consent of the message before the email is sent out. No one considered if the time in between when the incident was reported and the message went out was to provide protection and comfort to the survivors. The point is that if it was the survivors who asked for “rape” to not be used, that is something that we should all respect. And of course, if the survivors in this case do want to use the word “rape,” we should respect that, too, and call on Villanova to do so as well. Putting the Villanova email aside, I want to use this opportunity to ask us all more generally to respect the words survivors use to describe their own experiences, no matter what they are.
It is important to raise the experiences of other survivors than myself, who might have asked those in their life or authority figures to call what happened to them “rape,” and were not believed, or whose experiences of assault were purposefully minimized by a refusal to respect their word choice. That is also a seriously traumatizing experience. I am not advocating for the abandonment of the word “rape,” but am providing my own perspective as a reminder that every survivor’s experience is different. The seriousness of sexual assault and the steps we need to take to heal as individuals and a community do not hinge on whether or not the word “rape” is chosen by the survivors. The point is that the survivor is in charge of the words, no matter what they are. The survivor should be in control of their own narrative and the words they choose to describe their trauma. The words we choose are important, and we should follow the lead of survivors in each individual case.
In the future, I hope that students pause before choosing their words on social media, and at least consider adding a trigger warning to what they post. Of the dozens of posts I saw on Thursday, maybe two had trigger warnings. I say this not only for myself, but for the other survivors I know who have had a really hard last few days, for the people I don’t know who have been impacted by sexual assault, and for the survivors, who I am sure were not expecting to go onto Instagram and find their story passed around. Furthermore, Villanovans, I ask you to extend your actions beyond an Instagram post. If you want to create a change on campus and hold Villanova accountable, you should go further in supporting survivors’ choice to come forward, no matter what words they use, and seek justice with survivors at the center of our attempts to do so.
