Tag: LGBTQ

Why Bystander Intervention is Still Worth the Risk

Bystander intervention is always on our minds, and even more so after the horrific violence in Portland this past weekend.

While we don’t know all the details of this tragic incident, here’s what we do know:

Violence is a tool of social control. When people are made to fear being their authentic selves or be out in public (as a woman, as an “out” LGBTQ person, wearing a hijab), their lives become smaller. The impact they make on the world around them is diminished for fear of too much negative attention. The change that they can uniquely affect because of who they are is shuttered. The constant threat of violence naturally has that effect on those who are targeted for violence and hate crimes, which is the intention – conscious or not.

When people act as bystanders, or allies, they agree to share that risk. It hardly ever means shouldering the burden in place of the person affected, but hopefully means diminishing the impact for the target through an act of solidarity. Young people know this when talking about helping someone who is being bullied. Fear that the person will turn on them next is always in the forefront of their minds. As it should be.

Most opportunities for bystander intervention and acts of allyship expose us to less harm than what we witnessed in Portland this past weekend – but all do involve taking on some level of risk. And when we navigate our own levels of risk tolerance, what we’re really exploring is “How much am I willing to let this affect how I navigate the world? How much am I willing to consider worrying about speaking, worry about taking public transportation and having to choose between guilt and danger? How much am I willing to let this affect my life in order to help this person live more freely?”

If violence is a tool of social control, we must acknowledge that it wants us to stay silent, even as bystanders. It’s designed to divide us, to make us not ride public transportation, to avoid eye contact when someone is being harassed, to change the topic when someone makes a hurtful comment or “joke.” Liberation demands that we resist – that we find ways to persist and act in an unsafe world, to connect and speak up when someone is being hurt – whether they are present or not.

What Can I Do?

Practice for action: When watching these viral videos or TV shows featuring violence or hate crimes, imagine what you could do. If you practice creating plans instead of practicing being stuck in overwhelm, it can help prepare you for moments in your own life.

Confront denial: Acknowledge what is happening without minimizing the situation.

Create a risk assessment & safety plan: Assess the level of threat. Create a plan with contingencies to navigate an inherently volatile situation.

Determine your approach:

    • De-escalate the aggressor: What words could you say to create a shift? What body language might be helpful?
      Support the person targeted: Check in, if possible, about what they need; see that their safety and/or emotional needs are being met. Even sitting beside the person target can help them feel supported.
    • Mobilize others: Are there others that could act to help also? Providing them with clear direction can help activate them.
    • Create a distraction: This could release the pressure in an intense situation, allowing some amount of de-escalation to happen naturally, or for the person targeted to get away.
    • Aftercare for the person targeted or others: Oftentimes forgotten in these situations, caring for someone’s emotional or physical needs after an attack is just as important as intervention. Oftentimes in a situation involving more than one bystander, people take on different roles. All of these roles are necessary.
    • Support accountability: People who act aggressively oftentimes attempt to avoid responsibility for their actions. Supporting accountability could be retelling what you witnessed to other community members, or helping maintain their presence in the area while others arrive.

Violent Acts Aren’t Committed in Isolation

How do we cope, how do we respond when overwhelmed with the grief of the past weeks? Orlando. Brock Turner. The man who allegedly murdered his wife and four daughters in Roswell last week.

For some, it seems that we have to choose a focus. That’s simply not true. Homophobic violence and gender-based violence have everything to do with one another. Studies show how deeply connected they are. They are connected in the people who commit these crimes and hold these beliefs, and they’re connected for those of us who feel doubly hurt after these past weeks. Survivors and LGBT people have had our vulnerability to violence confirmed this past week. For most of us, and especially for people of color, this is something we live with and navigate every day, but it is now intensified.

Violence is never just the act of a single person. This is hard to accept when we want to pin the blame, understandably so, on the person who doesn’t even understand what he did was rape and was wrong. It’s hard to accept when we know that a single person walked into a club and committed so many murders in our Latinx LGBT community in a single night. We want evil to be something separate from us. We want to be able to take a quick action – blame – and be done with it. Accepting the idea that the sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism rampant in our society created these acts is difficult to bear, and the responsibility of prevention is overwhelming.
But we know these acts are not isolated incidents. When 1 in 5 women experience rape, and 1 in 3 transgender women of color is murdered – the acts committed in these last two weeks are connected to larger systems of violence and oppression. Fear shapes the daily choices of women and LGBT people of color, and it is our responsibility as a society to change this.
How? Intervention. Intervention is not only acting when we see a man on top of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Intervention cannot only be stopping a man in Los Angeles with explosives and guns driving to a Pride celebration. Intervention and prevention must occur earlier.
Slurs, disguised as jokes, teasing and “edgy” comments, are commonplace. Say something. When you hear these things at the dinner table with family, in the school hallway, locker room, church or other religious gathering place – say something. Write a letter when you see a TV show or commercial promoting sexism, homophobia, transphobia or racism.
Tell them you won’t watch or buy their product anymore. Ask schools and teachers what they are doing to proactively address these themes, not just react after an act of bullying or sexual harassment or assault has occurred.
We can absolutely expect this violence – everyday incidents and national news – to continue if we don’t change these beliefs that are rampant in our society.
Finally, I join others in asking you to stay present to the pain of this moment and avoid moving into xenophobia. Please consider reaching out to those in your life who might be more affected by this – including our Muslim and Sikh neighbors and friends, who we fear might be at greater risk during this time.

It is extremely difficult to talk about and bear witness to violence. Remembering our outrage, shock and pain six months from now and working to make sustained change is even harder. Please remember. Please continue working to create change. Some do not have the privilege of forgetting the threat of events like these.

Ending Violence, Achieving Justice

Today, IMPACT is participating in One Billion Rising, a global movement to speak out against violence against women. Below are the statements Alena is making outside and inside the Capitol.

What a powerful day to be speaking with so many others across the world about violence against women!

The reality is that prevention efforts aimed at keeping women and others who experience violence safe is most frequently packaged in language that blames victims and perpetuates patriarchy and other systems of oppression. Told to not drink, not wear that skirt, not go out at night, to that neighborhood – as if our actions alone can prevent sexual assault.

Individual action might work if violence were the only issue. If violence against women were the only issue, maybe-

However, at IMPACT, we find it important to call out violence for what it is: a tool of oppression. When we recognize violence as a tool of oppression, that means that we MUST come together as a community. Individual avoidance or action is not enough.

It means that we must recognize violence against women is not the only issue that needs addressing. We must address racism, classism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, transphobia… all of the factors that we know put individuals in our community at greater risk for violence. It means we must acknowledge that patriarchy hurts not just women, but also our boys and men who are victimized at home or hurt because how they act or dress does not fit into stereotypes of traditional masculinity.

I’m proud to be a part of a community that has so many quality agencies working on these issues. When people need to reach out about sexual violence and/or domestic violence, Solace and Esperanza are there. Increasingly, medical teams throughout the city know how to respond to and compassionately invite disclosure about domestic violence. At IMPACT, we work to provide strategies to both prevent violence in our communities and help survivors heal and feel safer in their daily lives and relationships.

All of these are ways to develop individual and community safety and resilience. Meanwhile, if we are to really develop safer communities, we must consider issues from immigration reform to access to public bathrooms for transgender people and others. We need to investigate every issue that arises and consider: does it have implications for whether our communities are safer?

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We need a solution to violence that does not sell us the prospect of safety packaged in language that blames victims and perpetuates systems of oppression.

We are told to stand up for ourselves, yet many of us already know the risk inherent in that “solution.”

Instead of being supported by the judicial system like George Zimmerman was when he felt needlessly threatened by a young black boy, women, people of color and LGBT people regularly go to prison for defending themselves when faced with violence. Whether it is Marissa Alexander, a young black mother who stopped her abusive ex-husband from possibly killing her; or CeCe McDonald, a young transgender woman who defended herself when attacked in a transphobic and racist hate crime, people across the nation go to prison for “standing up for themselves.”

As long as our prevention efforts and judicial systems use bias as the basis for advice and decisions, we will not end violence and we will not achieve justice.

Empowering Youth to Prevent Violence

A week ago I taught a Gay-Straight Alliance in Albuquerque. It was great timing, as they’d been talking about the “gay suicides” that have been all over the news. I felt for them – they’re so upset about what they see going on in the world, that bullying has driven some of their far-away peers to suicide, and they don’t have the tools to stop it.

Without tools to even identify why this is happening, it is so difficult to prevent it from re-occurring.  I asked the students what they did when they heard someone use the word “gay” as an insult or call someone a “fag.”  I expected that they would say it depended on who it was and that they would tell them how hurt and/or offended they were by those words.

I didn’t expect that they would say it wasn’t a big deal.

That day, I taught our “Investigating the Roots of Violence” class that explores the connection between bias, language, and violence. We looked at the names people are called and violence that happens to them based on race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. to keep them in the “boxes” that society dictates.  We explore: What are accepted stereotypes of a latino man?  What does a woman get called when she is assertive?  What range of violence is committed so that different people will not claim their individuality and their power?

It is not surprising that teenagers don’t see the connection between language, politics and violence.  It is also not surprising that everyone will work on the issue most important to them, whether it is violence against women, racially motivated violence, GLBTQ rights, or any other social issue that inherently involves addressing power imbalances.  However, until we teach our youth about and are willing to see the connection between all these manifestations of violence, and start working together at addressing the origins, we will struggle to make profound change.

My hope for the coverage of GLBTQ suicides is that it will help us find more ways to work together to make the world a more desirable place to live for all of our youth.

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