Telling Us to Move on From Our Trauma is Abuser Language
It never ceases to amaze me that whenever Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks, she hits the nail on the head of exactly what I was thinking and feeling at the time. There is only one reason why I have an Instagram account, and it is to watch her videos.
At any rate, in AOC’s latest Instagram post, she opens up about her experience with sexual assault and trauma in order to describe how the language used by Republicans following the January 6 insurrection is classic abuser language.
I have never felt more aligned with this woman in my life — despite having a lot of shared experiences with her.
There was so much in her Instagram post that resonated with me both as survivor of sexual assault, but also as someone who recently observed Shahid Buttar, a man of color, be falsely accused of sexual assault.
· Fear of not being believed or heard is triggering and runs deep for sexual assault survivors.
· We have issues of not wanting to admit what happened to us because no one wants to say they are a victim.
· We are often told to move on when we try to seek accountability.
She said, essentially, what I have been trying to convey in a different setting for weeks now about communicating with survivors on me too issues.
First of all, just like AOC said, I don’t intend to center this around me or Shahid, for that matter, but I am sure that is how it will come across to some people who are refusing to see the bigger message about the me too movement.
Yet, it’s hard for me not to make the correlation when so much is so similar in terms of how people in the San Francisco progressive clubs have used abuser language towards Shahid and me and others over the last few months.
I am not downplaying the insurrection nor centering it around myself. I used to live in Washington D.C. and work on the Hill, and when it happened, I had a panic attack and turned off the television. Many of my friends and clients were still there. I had meetings with D.C.-based clients, while it was happening and heard them describe the military-like state of the streets. Many of them had family members who they had not heard from, and they didn’t know if they would come home. It was plain terrifying. My mom, who suffers from Alzheimers and forgot that I moved, kept calling me to make sure I was safe and not in the middle of it. I was actually worried about AOC too when I hadn’t heard from her. The seriousness of the insurrection can’t be overlooked. It touched so many people, and it inflicted trauma.
But for background, I also work in media relations on social causes. I am used to people calling me about a social justice issue at any given moment and asking me to help. One thing I learned is that I have to use my power where it makes the most sense. In other words, I can’t do it all.
Of course, I am going to do what I can to hold these Republican accountable. But I also recognize that I can only do what I can about that. There are some elements of what happened on January 6 that just simply are not my battle at this time. I should work on areas where I have power to make a difference.
The area where I can make the most difference right now, in today’s atmosphere, is pointing out how the San Francisco progressive community follows the same abuser playbook that Republicans are using when it comes to Shahid Buttar and those who spoke out in his favor that he was falsely accused of sexual assault.
On January 8, just two days after the insurrection, I attended a disturbing San Francisco Berniecrats meeting where I was invited and confirmed with leadership in advance that I would be there with specific intention in speaking about how I felt the club leaders used trauma triggering language toward survivors during and after their hearing of Shahid Buttar, in which I testified.
I simply wanted to address my hurt and have a venue to address it and say how the club could be more supportive of survivors in the future. I was kicked out the meeting before I could even say anything. Like AOC, I consider myself a pretty tame and disarming person. Most people who know me know that I stay behind the scenes, tend to be quiet, and just help people. It’s rare for me to speak up like this publicly, but the conversation was so triggering I knew I had to do it.
When Shahid also tried to hold the club accountable in a twitter thread that followed a few days later, the same type of abusive language followed. He was told to move on from calling out the club’s abuse toward him. Forget about it for the sake of the movement.
Why should a person of color falsely accused of being a sexual predator just move on? That is not justice. That is not helping the movement. Way more people were hurt than Shahid in this — including women of color who observed the lies as well — and were also treated poorly by the clubs.
About a week later, I was still so triggered by what happened at that meeting that I couldn’t sleep until I wrote the following piece summing up my experience with the club. In the following days, this is the type of response I got. Once again, you will notice similar language that AOC describes.
People keep asking me why I don’t just move on from the discussion about Shahid Buttar. Like I have said a million times over. It’s not about Shahid. It’s about the fact that it will happen again on the movement. People learned nothing. And it is abuser language they keep using over and over again that hurts and disenfranchises survivors like myself from the movement. To me, this is why we have such a hard time attracting people of color to progressive movements.
Furthermore, as a survivor, I feel a kinship with Shahid in what happened to him. As Jacqueline Anne Thompson, an amazing investigative reporter who revealed much of the story said, “As a sexual assault survivor, my first instinct is to always side with survivors of any kind of abuse. In this circumstance, I believe that survivor is Shahid Buttar.” It’s not something he can say, but we will.
His wounds are just as much as those of a survivor, and what happened to him checks off all the bullets mentioned earlier.
· He wasn’t believed. He wasn’t heard.
· I observed he had a hard time admitting even to himself the extent of the racism he experienced. It reminded me of how survivors don’t want to admit what happened to themselves. There were so many elements of race that I observed happening here, and sometimes I wondered to Shahid why he didn’t speak more about race.
· He was told to move on and not hold anyone accountable.
When I watched Shahid not be believed and then people saying move on, I was triggered as a survivor. I have seen this before. It’s abuser tactics. And anyone who doesn’t get that, can’t claim to care about survivors or people of color, for whom this feeling of not being believed is all too real.
What do I want? I want accountability in the San Francisco political clubs. I want them to apologize for the harm they caused Shahid, me, and the others who spoke up. I want them to stop acting like abusers and start acting like the people concerned about race and sexual assault survivors that they purport to be.