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San Francisco Women Against Rape
"Denying these organizations the money they need to do such critical and difficult work means denying support to rape survivors."
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By Belia Mayeno
When you go to a party, someone’s going to ask, “So what do you do?” Up until a few months ago, I worked as a rape prevention educator and counselor. And I came to dread that question. When I talked about my work, the response would often be, “Oh, I know someone who said she was raped once. But she was lying.” Every time I heard that, it stung like a slap. So many survivors of rape and incest have told me the reason they held their secrets for so long was because they were afraid people wouldn’t believe them. And those survivors were often right.
I found that when it comes to supporting survivors of sexual assault, one of the most powerful things you can do is just be there with them, in the room or on the phone, believing them. And that’s why it was so devastating to find out from San Francisco Women Against Rape, where I used to work, that they might lose thousands of dollars in crucial state funding. So many of California’s social services, from elder care to college bound programs, are closing down or being drastically cut due to the budget problems. Eliminating anti-violence programs will create an entirely different kind of crisis.
Once, after a classroom rape prevention presentation, a young woman walked up to me and said “I don’t know why we’re even talking about this rape stuff. That’s just how it is. Getting raped. It’s just part of being a girl.” She said it in the same tone people use when talking about an annoying hangnail, or a parking ticket. “Now,” she said, “when I want to say ‘no’, I don’t say it. And then it doesn’t count as a rape.” I wonder, with fewer educators around to say otherwise, if more young people will start to believe prevention means being so terrorized you stop saying “No.”
When anyone asked my former supervisor about the ultimate goal of San Francisco Women Against Rape, she would usually answer “We want to do enough prevention education and advocacy to put ourselves out of business.” But programs challenging sexual assault and violence against women may go out of business sooner than we think. And it won’t be because rape doesn’t exist anymore. Denying these organizations the money they need to do such critical and difficult work means denying support to rape survivors, who are our grandmothers, our little brothers, our cousins, co-workers and friends.
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