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We believe that the victim of an assault is never responsible for the assault. A great deal of our work is in helping women begin to look at whose actions lead to her injuries or trauma. To do this, women must begin challenging a lifetime of socialization.....of believing that they are always responsible for the actions of everyone around them. Women need to learn to re-think their experiences and learn to value our own worth.
We put energy into working with women and children survivors. Sometimes the anti-rape movement is criticized for becoming a bandaid operation: some believe we are not challenging the root cause of sexual assault, that we only mop of the broken pieces of women’s lives. We choose to focus on women and children survivors because:
-Women can heal (abuse does not destroy, ruin them for life, or make them hopeless).
-We work to help women learn to prevent a pattern of responding to familiar behaviour patterns, and continuing to be trapped in abusive relationships.
-Sexual assault is within the experiences of every woman. This common ground enables women to speak of and work through their differences.
-Assertive, self-caring women uniting together are the foundations of changing our society. As women together, we demand that men stop raping, that society stop men from raping and that the ideology of male sexuality stop teaching men to rape.
Women together are getting out the message (to families, friends, classes, co-workers, the legal system) that rape is wrong. Violence is wrong. Sexual assault is learned behaviour connected to men believing that they have the right to control women. As we change that behaviour, as we change those beliefs, rape and sexual assault will be stopped.
Women are demanding that all forms of violence be stopped. As sexual violence acts out male domination, racial violence supports white domination; gay/lesbian bashing support heterosexism, etc. Women demand a violence free, domination free world.
