A group
of Indians have worked together to create www.howrevealing.com in the hope
that it will be a safe space to deal with these feelings. Anyone can post their
stories on their platform, so that writing about them will legitimize these
feelings and people know they are not alone. Here’s an interview with Urmila,
one of the founders.
Let's start with something about
you. Could you talk about yourself, your work, growing years and education to
the extent you feel comfortable sharing?
I
am Urmila and a lawyer and I, like many women in this country, have grown up
hearing (from various quarters) that one must not invite attention or ‘ask for
it’, one must dress ‘decently’, be less angry, not so argumentative, that if a
leaf falls on a thorn or a thorn falls on a leaf, it’s the leaf that gets
hurt…. I could go on but I think my
anger and despair at this normalization of apportioning blame, and, shaming the
person who experiences sexual abuse and sexual assault, are
major factors behind having initiated How Revealing
What inspired the creation of
"How Revealing"? Was there a particular reason?
I realised that a lot of friends and family go through
experiences that happen so often that they felt that there was no value in
talking about it or they were ashamed/guilty/embarrassed/apathetic or scared
etc to do so. One of the main reasons is the constant blaming and shaming,
continuously hearing that one is wholly or partly responsible for being assaulted.
So, the idea was to create a safe space and an inclusive platform where people
can share these experiences, whether so-called minor ones or major ones in an
environment of no judgment. Experiences of sexual assault are common but they
should not be 'normal', anywhere in the world. Also, the ‘small’ and ‘casual’
incidents of sexism we encounter regularly, when we are made to feel ‘touchy’
for raising our voices – we want to record these experiences as well because it
is all part of and contributes to the same, larger problem. We also
realized that men who haven’t had experiences of sexual assault sometimes know
of them from people close to them – friends, family, partners etc but also,
more crucially, have absolutely no idea how bad it could be. I have had this
idea for over two years now, since early 2014. I was mulling over it, thinking
of different ways to do it and how best to go forward with it while
simultaneously looking for the right people to take it forward with. I found
that in Pigeon & Co. and Penguin Thoughts, the two studios I have partnered
with. Pigeon & Co. and I have had multiple conversations over the last year
regarding the form the website would take and how we can make it as easy and as
welcoming a forum as possible. We decided that it would be a dedicated platform
for people to share and that would be its sole focus, along with the links to
Support organisations. We are not a forum to 'report' incidents of sexual
assault but we are a platform to share, to let it out of your system, to speak
out. The reason for the name How revealing can be found here http://howrevealing.com/about - our attempt at
reclaiming a common victim-blaming and shaming refrain, and to show ‘how
revealing’ attitudes and behaviours are towards sexual assault in India.
What are your goals for the
project, and what defined these goals?
The
goals of the project are multiple. We want to reduce the normalization of
victim-blaming and shaming and to that end, the stories speak for themselves.
Along with that we want to have the immediate impact of helping survivors know
that they are not alone. Simply put, the
message is – You never ask for it, you are not alone, you can speak about it
and you can seek help.
In
time, and with enough stories, we hope this will be a movement for change that
can impact policy changes in the country, especially in areas of survivor
support and justice mechanisms. There is an information vacuum in the
country with respect to incidents of sexual assault and sexual violence due to
under-reporting and stigmatization, and hopefully, the website will be able to
fill that vacuum and create awareness about the issue, show that it is so
complex, yet so universal.
The
more people share, the more we can understand its scale and depth, and the
better we can try to solve this issue, find different solutions, better
solutions. In a country like India where this is so much stigma surrounding the
issue, speaking openly and fearlessly will hopefully help reduce it, even if
through an online platform like ours. We also hope to destigmatize seeking
support and assistance if someone needs it by making it a little bit easier
through the links to organizations gathered and provided on our Support page.
In
the medium to long term, we also need to think about how to reach more people,
the non-English-speaking, non-urban, non-Internet connected sections of the
Indian populace who will have experiences that they want to share.
Having put up a bunch of stories
already, where do you see this going? Do you have more ideas / campaigns in the
pipeline that you want to take off the floors with this?
The
response has been positive and heartening and we have about 65 stories already.
It’s early days yet and we launched only on Jan 13, 2017 so it’s barely been a
month. We have been brainstorming ideas on how to take this forward using
different mechanisms and will do so in due course.
What are some of your major
challenges in the journey so far? Have you had a lot of resistance? How
have you dealt with these challenges?
The
major challenge – how best to get the message across to people that this is an
inclusive platform and that it’s not only for women. We want anyone who has had
an experience in India to post, whatever the gender identity, sexual
orientation, age, nationality – we also want people who haven’t had a direct
experience of sexual assault to write about their emotions associated with it.
We deal with this by reiterating it at every step, with every interview we give
and we are in the process of getting the message across in other ways as well,
by getting in touch with organizations working in the space. To solve this
issue, India’s ‘rape problem’, we need everyone .
Right now, storytelling seems to
be one of the most significant factors in addressing abuse and trauma related
to abuse. What, in your opinion, makes the mechanism so effective?
How
Revealing as a platform allows people a chance to anonymously tell their story,
break the silence and let it out and in the process, understand that you are
not alone. That is a powerful mechanism because writing is cathartic and one of
the ways in which a person can begin to deal with trauma relating to abuse. The
other side to this is that not everyone is experiencing trauma but still want
to write, to share, to get it out of their system ,whatever the emotions be it
anger, fear, apathy, shame, guilt… so story-telling as a mechanism allows for
that too. Once people share their stories, we want to get the message across
that your journey need not end here and if you so wish to get help or support,
there are avenues for that.
What inspires you? What keeps
you going?
We
get messages expressing profound gratitude for the platform from people who
have never spoken about their experience of sexual abuse with anyone and many
times, the first time they are letting it out is on How Revealing. This is what
keeps us going and from the response we have got we know that there is a need
for a dedicated platform like this. In about a month we have had about 60
thousand page views which is great.
9.
What is a typical day in the life of How Revealing? How do you receive the
stories, vet it and share them? Do you edit stories, do you tone down any
graphic descriptions?
Yes,
I am the only one who receives, reviews, edits and publishes the stories. So,
they are carefully curated. I edit out identifiers i.e names of abusers or
places or other details that can make identification easy. I also make other
minor edits like spelling errors to keep the flow of the story intact. We are
not a platform to report incidents , we are not a platform to discuss or
comment on stories – How Revealing is a dedicated platform so people can share
in a safe space so it can serve as a repository, for people to know, to learn
from and to understand how sexual abuse and sexual assault happens and can
affect people.
