Welcome to PA Centered, a podcast designed to help listeners be a part of the solution to end sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. Each episode, we will take on a topic or current event to help spark conversation and break down barriers to building communities free from sexual violence. Hi everyone, I'm Jackie Strohm, the Prevention and Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. I'll be your host today as we're joined by Tatiana Piper, community advocacy coordinator, to talk about the intersections between racial and sexual violence. Hi, Tatiana. Hi, Jackie. I'm so glad that you're here to join us to have this conversation today. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background? Sure. My name is Tatiana Piper, and I'm the Community Advocacy Coordinator at PCAR. I am a cisgender black woman. I came into this work and to the anti-sexual violence movement in college, just trying to figure out how to best serve and educate my college community, and then I went into working with individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities and also individuals with mental illness, and realized that there was something missing, and that was really how to provide services to those underserved communities, and so that brought me to PCAR and I've been here ever since. So Jackie, for the benefit of our conversation today, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what brought you to this work? Sure, I'd be happy to. So like I said in the intro, I am Jackie Strohm. I use she and her pronouns. I am a cisgender white woman, and I have been working at PCAR for about the last five years. I started here as an intern when I was getting my master's in social work, and before that, I really wanted to work in sex education, and in college, found my way into the anti-sexual violence movement. And so I've just stuck around at PCAR ever since, and love getting to work on prevention and talking about the intersection between our movement and anti-oppression, which is what we're gonna be talking about today. So Tatiana and I really get to work together on a lot of different projects, but specifically, we are the co-conveners of a work group at PCAR called BACH, which stands for building accountability and cultural humility, and our work group is meant to hold our organization accountable in a bunch of different ways, but we spend a lot of time talking about anti-oppression and anti-racism, and how that needs to be a core part of our mission and services in order to end sexual violence. And so, just as a little bit of history, PCAR has been working on our racial justice efforts for the last couple of years, trying to become an anti-racist work place. We do lots of different things to try and work on that. And we definitely have some struggles and missteps that we've had along the way, and so one of the ways that Tatiana and I wanted to try and help our own organization make better sense between the connection between racial violence and sexual violence is we ended up developing this tool or pyramid that we're gonna talk about in a little bit, but we always like to give credit where credit is due, and this really got started in conversations that we were just having in our organization. And the chief operating officer of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, Yolanda Edrington, she really was making the connection for us by equating instances of sexual violence to racist actions and behaviors, and something really clicked for us, and we thought this could be a really helpful way to explain this connection in a really easy to understand way, since lots of people understand that sexual violence is awful, and a lot of people understand racial violence is awful, but do they understand the overlap and the intersections and how we talk about this matters. And we could be doing a better job of it. Right, and that really helped with just how we were able to frame and keep pushing forward and helping people understand the importance of why we needed to keep having these conversations, why we needed to keep having trainings, why we needed to just keep going, why just having a baseline understanding wasn't enough, that in order to do our work effectively and to serve all survivors that we had to continue in this journey. So the racial violence and sexual violence pyramid, it's not a cure-all, fix-all tool. It's just something to add to your toolbox. It's not a one-size fits-all approach. We really wanted to give people... Well, we wanted to give ourselves something and give our co-workers something that they could use to build off of and to have hard conversations, and then also give it to the rest of the field so that we can keep propelling our work forward because that's what's most important. And so one of the things that I think that we often get stuck in is the history of the anti-sexual violence movement and knowing that it was popularized by the second-wave feminist movement, and therefore, a lot of mainstream anti-sexual violence focuses in on middle-class white women as a default victim, which obviously excludes everyone else, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation. And that's not effective in our efforts to serve all survivors of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. The example that I often give is, even myself as a black cisgender woman was preparing for training and coming up with scenarios. And in doing so, the scenarios were all about victims who were white women, and my coworker and I had to take a step back and be like, "Oh crap, what are we doing? We're still centering what the default is, and we're not acknowledging that survivors come in all facets." That's important, even when we are training, even when we're talking about what does survivorship look like. And so I think a important thing also is kind of goes to how identity and intersectionality are important to preventing and responding to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. So whenever we do this training, I feel like I end up telling this story, and it was a few years ago. All PCAR and NSVRC staff were in a room together. And it was shortly after the launch of the organization Reliance, whose tagline is "Ending sexual violence in one generation," which is a really awesome goal and something that we're striving for. But the facilitator of the training looked at us all and said, "Does that mean that you're also going to end racism in one generation?" And I just have a very clear memory of us all getting quiet, and realizing, "Oh, it's not just about ending sexual violence. It's about much more than that. And we have to be wider in our scope." And I think for me, that was one of the first times honestly, that I had really made the connection between understanding how racism and sexual violence are intertwined and interconnected and cannot be separated. And so as we think about making sure that our movement is prioritizing the identities of all survivors in this work, we really do have to be broadening our lens and the way that we think about and talk about all of these forms of violence so that we can eventually hopefully end it and prevent it, right? So I know Tatiana has a quote that she wanted to share that I think really relates to this idea of making sure that identity and intersectionality are brought to the forefront of our conversations. Yeah, so in some book Intersectionality by Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, they included a quote from one of the Combahee River Collective's members who was Barbara Smith, and she had said that, "The Combahee was really so wonderful because it was the first time that I could be all of who I was in the same place, that I didn't have to leave my feminism outside the door to be accepted as I would in a conservative black political context. I didn't have to leave my lesbianism outside, I didn't have to leave my race outside, as I might in an all-white women's context, where they didn't want to know all of that. And so it was really just wonderful to be able to be our whole selves and to be accepted in that way." She went on to say the Combahee created a place where we could be ourselves and where we were valued, a place without homophobia, a place without racism, and a place without sexism. And for those of you that don't know, the Combahee River Collective crafted a statement in the 1970s that really gave the first depiction of what intersectionality was. And they were... It was a collective of lesbian socialist, black women, who were derivative of different organizations that came together to really find a home for themselves where they could be authentic in that space. And that quote really is so powerful because ideally as advocate, as people that are serving survivors, we wanna ensure that they have a space where they can authentically be all of themselves. But if we're not approaching our prevention efforts, and we're not approaching our response efforts in an intersectional way, then it's not gonna be possible to acknowledge and have and create a space where a survivor can come in and be authentically all of themselves and then also get the healing that they deserve. And so I think just for the sake of our conversation today and for always, and even when Jackie and I were developing the pyramid that took us lots of fun, silly hours of trying to figure out how do we make a 3D-looking pyramid on a piece of paper in PowerPoint or Word? It's so important because it all goes back to survivors, and all survivors and how can we make sure that we are reaching all survivors and ensuring that they are getting the hope, help, and healing that they all deserve? I also wanna say that I think now more than ever, we're having conversations about making sure that the staff who work at rape crisis centers are also able to bring their authentic whole selves and all parts of their identity into this work. And so I think it's a broader conversation than just talking about the survivors that we serve and their significant others. But making sure that our staff, especially staff of color, feel supported in this work. And sometimes we aren't even sure as staff if it's okay to talk about survivorship. And so I really encourage you all who do work at rape crisis centers to be thinking about, "Are we creating an environment where all staff feel safe and comfortable to speak up and have their needs met? And what can we be doing differently or better to make that happen?" So I just wanna uplift the idea that it's more than just survivors but also so that we don't burn out in doing this work, we wanna make sure that staff are feeling supported and can really be themselves in this work too. Thanks, Jackie, that's a really great thing to uplift. Because it's also very true that if we can treat, it's not just about treating survivors in the best way possible, but it's also about treating every person that we run or come across in the best way possible. So thanks, Jackie. So I'd love for us to talk about this pyramid that we keep alluding to. And so, we are gonna add a link in the notes from this episode so that you can see what we're referencing, 'cause I think it's a little hard to imagine, but we're gonna do our best to try and explain what this pyramid looks like. But just know that there is a link in the description where you can download a PDF of the pyramid. So as we said before, we really developed this pyramid because we were having a hard time verbalizing how racial violence and sexual violence overlap and intersect and show up at the same time. And we wanted people to be able to see the connection and importance of these intersections. So the pyramid itself has four different layers, I guess you would say. And at the... Actually, it has five. And at the very base of the pyramid, we're talking about attitudes and beliefs. Next up, we're talking about individual acts of prejudice. In the middle, we're talking about institutional discrimination. Further up, we're talking about acts of violence. And then at the very top, we're talking about death. And so the way that this looks is that on the right side of the pyramid, we describe different actions and ways that these behaviors and actions show up, I guess, about racial violence. And then on the left side of the pyramid, we're talking about actions and behaviors of how sexual violence shows up. And what I really like about this is that all the way on the right of the image, what we did was try and combine, I guess, where those overlaps are happening. So you're getting examples of when sexual violence occurs in the context of attitudes and beliefs, individual acts of prejudice, etcetera, where racial violence is occurring in those categories and then also where it's happening at the same time. Does that make sense the way I described that, Tatiana? Yes, that does make complete sense. I think you did a very good job. And I think also the biggest thing for us when we were going through this was there are such parallels between sexual and racial violence and the five different categories between death all the way down to attitudes and belief. And I think it's incredibly important when we're having conversations and people were having such a hard time grasping, well, we're talking about sexual violence. We're not talking about racial violence, we're not talking about racism. Those are separate things. And then what this pyramid really shows is that, actually, they're extremely similar, they're extremely both relying on violence to oppress, violence to harm individuals, and it shows up a lot in a lot of the same ways. I think one of the... I'm trying to think of a good example, Jackie, to show that parallel, but probably individual acts of prejudice. One of the things that is parallel is problematic language that you hear in regards to sexual violence and racial violence, or even jokes. Victim blaming is a huge one, I think, that shows up for both sexual and racial violence. How many times as advocates do we have to explain to people that a victim is not at fault for the violence that is perpetrated against them. The same thing happens when someone is a victim of racial violence as well. What do we see on the news if someone... "Oh, well, they did all these bad things in their life, so that's why this horrible assault happened to them," and that's victim-blaming. Yeah, I think that's a great example. And along the same lines, the idea of rape jokes and racial slurs. Both of those are, I think, pivotal to how we need to better understand how the language that we use can cause a lot of harm to individuals. But then as we kind of go up on this pyramid, how that can really also show up in institutions and other forms of violence, right? Some of the other examples that we have here on the sexual violence side is around traditional gender roles and gender-based stereotypes. But then when you look at racial violence, we have racial profiling, gentrification, red-lining, mass incarceration, and anti-immigration laws. And then we look at those things together and how they have some overlap, we're looking at things like employment discrimination, English-only services, what services get funded, how this shows up in healthcare, in homelessness, in our judicial system. And so there's countless examples. And I think that's one thing we wanna be clear about in this pyramid is there's only so much space on the pyramid, and there are, unfortunately, a lot of different acts of violence that we couldn't fit all on here, but this is really meant to be a starting point for people to grasp the connection. And I think what is really important here, if you take anything away from this pyramid, is that when we look at the very bottom of the pyramid, when we're talking about attitudes and beliefs, this is really where it's all rooted in. I view it as the foundation that kind of upholds and uplifts all these other individual acts of prejudice, discrimination, violence, and ultimately death. And so in our work in trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence and racial violence, we need to be trying to help people understand their own biases, beliefs, and prejudices that they have, help them unlearn some of those things so that it doesn't contribute to those systems that continue to perpetuate all of these different forms of violence. Exactly, because the idea is that if we can dismantle... I think right now we talk a lot. There's just a lot of talk about dismantling different systems, and I think when... I know for myself, and Jackie can chime in if she thinks also, but I think we kind of get stuck into, Well, if we can dismantle and figure out a way to hijack, change the way that people, of people's attitudes and beliefs, then there's a really good chance that all of the things that are layered on top of in this pyramid will also slowly but surely just go away as well. And so that's kind of where our thinking is. I think in our process of making the pyramid, I don't think that's where we initially were going with it, but it was something that was visually awakening for both of us of like, this is really where we need to focus a lot of our time and energy is in these attitudes and beliefs, because this is really is what's upholding the structure for violence. Yeah, I would totally agree. And I think both/and, we can be also at the same time trying to dismantle those systems while also actively educating ourselves, our family and friends, our community members. This is a key role for prevention educators out there who are listening, being able to talk to the school districts that you work with about what kind of harassment policies do they have, what kind of dress code policies do they have. So many of these things are rooted in those attitudes and beliefs that people don't even understand that they ultimately are oppressive, and we need to be having those frank conversations with people so that they understand how they're contributing to these systems, and then trying to get in touch with the people who have the power to dismantle those systems and get them to do the right thing. Right, 'cause so much of our work is a both/and situation, and also the other thing that when you were talking, Jackie, that I thought of was a lot of the attitudes and beliefs in the individual acts of prejudice, those things are such micro aggressions, that really nit-pick at people. People refer to micro aggressions as mosquito bites. And usually if you just get one, it's kind of just annoying, but once you have a whole bunch of different mosquito bites, that really... I don't know. For some reason mosquitoes really like me, maybe it's 'cause I'm a black woman, so I'm at the intersections of all of it, but it's definitely overwhelming if you have a cluster of mosquito bites. So if you are at the intersections of racial and sexual violence, or even at the intersections of ableist violence and racial violence and sexual violence or we could just keep going and adding on identities that are oppressed by our society, then you are really by those attitudes in place accumulating so many different mosquito bites that you're really gonna be overwhelmed by it all. And it's really up to all of us, especially those who are working in such a role, to advocate for others, to really work at how can I, within myself, within others, look at what are the attitudes and beliefs that I hold, what are the attitudes and beliefs that people around me are holding and how can I interrupt those? How can I be an active bystander in preventing mosquitoes? I really like that analogy. I think it's something really tangible that people can think about, and I hadn't heard that before, so thank you for sharing that with us. And we don't have time today to really dive into how to have those really difficult conversations and how to call people in or call people out, or give and receive feedback, but we are hoping to have some trainings here for Pennsylvania Rape Crisis Center staff, hopefully in the fall of 2020, where we can have more conversations and help build those skills because it really is skill building, it takes practice. And it's not always easy, but we can start, I think, by educating ourselves and others and keep working towards trying to dismantle those systems that are ultimately upholding all these forms of oppression. So we wanted to just reiterate again that this is just one tool in your toolbox that we hope is helpful for you to understand the connection and the overlap and intersection between racial violence and sexual violence, and we made this so that we could better understand it ourselves, so that our colleagues could better understand it, and we hope that you use it as a tool for yourself and to share with other people. Alright, well, it looks like we are out of time today, but Tatiana, I wanna say thank you so much for joining us to talk about these intersections, and I want to thank everyone for listening to this episode of PA Centered. So to find more resources about the connection between racial violence and sexual violence, you can visit PCAR.org. Thanks so much, Tatiana. Thank you, Jackie. [music] If you or a loved one needs help, a local Sexual Assault Center is available, 24/7. Call 1-888-772-7227 for more information, or find your local center online at PCAR.org. Together, we can end sexual violence. Any views or opinions expressed on PA Centered by staff or their guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PCAR or PCAR's funders.