Earlier in the week, we shared our president’s thank you to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Today, we share the response from another member of our team, Jenn Pantoja. If you read these two responses, you will see how remarkably similar they are. While ordinarily, we wouldn’t publish two such similar articles, we thought it was important to show how deeply AOC’s courage has resonated with two young survivors on our own staff. They each speak about the efforts to silence survivors and how finding their own voices has been scary. Each time a survivor speaks up and shares their story, they break down one more piece of the wall that keeps so many silent. We hope you will find these responses, in themselves, to be a testament to the power of finding one’s voice.
I’ve always admired AOC. I feel like representation is very important, and she is very inspiring to me as a young Latina person who would like to work in politics someday. Watching her speak about being a survivor made me feel so understood and proud. It takes so much courage to be vulnerable about being a survivor. I couldn’t imagine doing it at the scale that she did.
Watching her speak brought me back to how vulnerable I felt writing my first article. The Internet is forever, and not even my parents knew I had been raped. I knew it was risky and that someday it might come back to haunt me. However, I knew it was necessary to speak about. I believe there is power in sharing the trauma you have endured and how you are not a victim, but rather a survivor.
While writing this response, a hashtag on Twitter began trending calling AOC a liar as well as multiple news articles of people trying to discredit her. One journalist even accused her of using it as a manipulation tactic. This is too reminiscent of the slander Christine Blasey Ford received during the Brett Kavaungah trial, as well as many other survivors who have come forward with their stories. Not everyone will process trauma the same way. For some, it may take many years and a certain trigger for the trauma to resurface.
The question I see being thrown around is the one we see too many times when a survivor shares their story, “Why are you just coming forward now?” It’s met with skepticism, which is why often many survivors of sexual violence do not report or share their stories. This is why we don’t come forward. It’s hard enough to recount the details of what happened, but to be met with invalidating and condescending remarks? Not to mention, even if we do report it “out of every 1000 sexual assaults 995 perpetrators will walk free (Department of Justice 2016).”
There is still an excessive amount of stigma surrounding sexual assault survivors sharing their stories. By discrediting or invalidating these experiences, you are silencing survivors. I think this is a step in the long road that is deconstructing the stigma of coming forward. The blame needs to stop being placed on survivors, and we must hold perpetrators accountable. I applaud AOC’s bravery for coming forward, and I am hopeful that we will keep making strides forward.
Photo credit: New York Times
Jenni Pantoja
My name is Jenn, but I also go by Jenni. I am a Liberal Studies major at SUNY Purchase College. I was contacted by Julia with an opportunity to join Survivors to Superheroes and was inspired by the mission. As a survivor, I believe it is important to be supported and know you are not alone. I found solace in writing and hearing the stories of other survivors. My goal is for my writing to encourage and give a voice to survivors as well as educate others about what it means to be a survivor. In my spare time, I enjoy playing video games, writing music and creating new makeup looks.
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