On February 9, 2017, an undocumented transgender woman walked into the El Paso County, TX courthouse to get a protective order against her abusive boyfriend. She walked out in handcuffs.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who arrested the woman apparently received a report that “Ervin Gonzalez” — the woman referred to by her dead name — was in the country illegally.

The woman is still in ICE custody and will likely be deported.

*

On July 28, 2016, a 14-year-old Black girl named Bresha Meadows shot and killed her abusive father.

Her father routinely beat her mother to the point of broken bones. Despite the mountain of protective orders, police reports, and hospital records backing Bresha’s claims of domestic violence, the Warren, OH police department arrested Bresha.

Bresha remains incarcerated and faces trial for aggravated murder.

*

On December 18, 2015, a bipolar rape victim from Harris County, TX had a nervous breakdown while testifying against her rapist. Harris County prosecutors instructed the police to arrest her to ensure she would return to testify.

The woman was incarcerated in the same jail as her rapist for a month, denied psychiatric medication, and subjected to routine physical abuse.

*

The failure of the criminal justice system to address gender-based violence is not a new revelation. Often, it’s discussed in the context of criticizing the United States’ backlog of untested rape kits. National anti-violence organizations, such as the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, remind the public only 1 in 16 rapists ever spends a day in jail.

Then on March 31 of this year, 100 organizations sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding Title IX enforcement.

Title IX, the federal law outlawing sex discrimination in education, was used through President Obama’s tenure to address gender-based violence on campuses.

The new Title IX demand letter, which I had the privilege of helping draft, took the Obama administration’s vague Title IX protections a step further to protect marginalized survivors, including demands such as, “Recognize that harassment and coercion take many forms, including targeting individuals based on their immigration status …, threatening to ‘out’ someone as queer or trans, and purposefully using incorrect gender pronouns (or otherwise misgendering someone).”

As Brandee Blocker Anderson, an assault survivor and law student at Columbia University, put it in a message to me, “[The letter] calls for a strengthening of the current protections that the Office for Civil Rights guidelines have already set out, in terms of due process; OCR enforcement; mental health and academic accommodations; and protections for LGBT students, undocumented students, and students of color.”

Perhaps the most controversial demand was the one buried on the third page stating, “Investigations should remain completely independent from law enforcement as to protect Black students and students of color, undocumented students, trans students, and others who are vulnerable to state violence.”

To those who have listened to testimony from assault survivors such as myself about schools failing to address violence, a demand to separate school processes and the criminal justice system may seem strange.

However, many campus anti-violence activists still support Title IX.

“Title IX helps hold perpetrators of gender-based violence accountable without involving the police or incarceration … and highlights how gender-based violence intersects with racism, xenophobia, transphobia and other forms of oppression,” said one student at a March 31 rally in New York City supporting Title IX.

Indeed, the criminal justice system is heavily intertwined with the types of discrimination that enable violence.

Black men are six times more likely than white men to be incarcerated. The criminal justice system routinely targets queer and trans people. And undocumented people are considered criminals by virtue of their immigration status.

In addition, people of color, undocumented people, and queer and trans people are often subjected to violence at the hands of law enforcement. Some recent estimates have found Black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed by the police. And stories like those of the women sexually victimized by police officer Daniel Holzclaw serve as a reminder of the enormous latitude police officers are given on the job.

Against this backdrop, it seems we find ourselves repeatedly asking the question: how can we expect a discriminatory system to treat victims who fall within marginalized identity groups as victims?

Lisa Marie Cacho, an Associate Professor of Latina/Latino Studies and Asian American Studies, explained in her book, Social Death:

“[People of color] cannot access legal protection because they are the people against whom the law must discriminate in order to protect everyone else against discrimination. In other words, legal equality is possible for everyone else because criminalized populations of color are ineligible for rights and personhood.”

In addition to endangering victims, the criminal justice system endangers perpetrators. Incarcerated individuals often become victims of prison sexual violence, are stripped of voting rights, and are denied employment opportunities.

The appeal of Title IX to many students, especially during President Trump’s pro-policing reign, is the burden of proof — preponderance of the evidence — is attainable and the punishment for committing acts of violence centered on safety (no-contact directives, removal from campus grounds, counseling). Title IX also mandates schools provide accommodations for survivors of violence, such as psychological and academic support often inaccessible to low-income survivors.

Proponents of the criminal justice system are quick to point out schools often fall short of the ideals in the Title IX demand letter. Schools fail to promptly investigate complaints of gender-based violence, decline to provide survivors with accommodations, and saddle survivors with hefty medical bills.

Some people, like academic Laura Kipnis, assert Title IX processes are often witch hunts of sorts, despite studies finding only 2–8% of sexual violence allegations are false.

In an April 2017 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kipnis claimed:

“My inbox became a clearinghouse for depressing and infuriating tales of overblown charges, capricious verdicts, and frightening bureaucratic excess. I was introduced to an astonishing netherworld of sexual finger-pointing, rigged investigations, closed-door hearings, and Title IX officers run amok.”

In addition, some people question the validity of prevention education, which focuses on bystander intervention and obtaining consent in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cathy Young argued in a 2014 article in the Boston Globe, “While violent offenders can sometimes be reformed through learning empathy, this process not only requires intensive intervention but has a fairly modest success rate.”

However, the system Title IX aims to create — one focused on violence prevention and healing — has the potential to address the needs of marginalized survivors and promote justice. In contrast, the criminal justice system has an established lineage of failing to prevent recidivism and criminalizing people who, to reuse the words of Cacho, are considered “ineligible for rights and personhood.”

The rapist in Harris County was convicted.

Bresha Meadows’s father will never again harm her mother.

The El Paso County woman was granted her Order of Protection.

But in a criminal justice system that criminalizes marginalized survivors and exposes perpetrators to violence, their cases remind us that victories aren’t always the same thing as justice.

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on April 6, 2017.

Today, I read a story in DNAinfo about an increase in sexual assaults in Greenpoint, New York. An increase in reported assaults generally reflects survivors of violence feeling comfortable reporting, so I initially didn’t think the article would concern me. However, as I read through quotes from the New York Police Department, I began to feel sick.

Captain Peter Rose, head of the 94th Precinct for the NYPD, apparently decided stranger rapes are more legitimate than acquaintance rapes. According to DNAinfo, Captain Rose stated:

It’s not a trend that we’re too worried about because out of 13 [sex attacks], only two were true stranger rapes. If there’s a true stranger rape, a random guy picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards.

I certainly know a rapist with “no moral standards.” In fact, I’ve lived through the type of “total-abomination rapes” Captain Rose references to justify treating acquaintance rapes as less severe.

In 2015, I was the victim of two violent stranger rapes in New York City. Both occurred in my Columbia University dorm room — one with a weapon — leaving me with permanent physical scars (in contrast to how many sexual assaults don’t leave outward physical injuries). I understand how terrifying it is to wonder who the person behind your pain is, and how horrible it is to have to view everyone as a suspect.

But I think Captain Rose’s assertions that rapes like mine are more severe couldn’t be more wrong.

Yes, being assaulted by a stranger is terrifying. But there are many things I don’t have to deal with as a result of my rapes being perpetrated by a stranger that many survivors of acquaintance assaults have to deal with constantly. I’m more likely to be believed, even though only 14% of sexual assaults are committed by strangers and many, if not most, false allegations are regarding stranger assaults. I don’t have to question how I trusted someone who then hurt me, because I don’t know who it was. I don’t have to come to terms with having feelings for my assailant. I’m not pressured to minimize my pain because my rapes aren’t perceived as being “not severe.”

I’m not saying being raped by a stranger is any better than being assaulted by someone you know; I’m saying sexual assault, harassment, and dating violence of any kind is severe, worthy of attention, and can have a tremendous impact on those who experience it.

I’m outraged anyone, especially someone from the NYPD charged with protecting survivors of violence in New York City like myself, feels they have the right to use violations like mine to justify victim-blaming. No survivor deserves to be ignored. No survivor deserves to be dismissed because of a Law & Order: SVU-like view of what sexual assault looks like. No survivor deserves to suffer in silence because they fear facing comments like those made by Captain Rose (once again affirming why so many survivors don’t report in the first place).

As a survivor of two stranger rapes, I can say with conviction that I’m no more a survivor than other violence survivors. We all equally deserve validation, safety, and justice.

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on January 7, 2017.

NYPD, Don’t Use Rapes Like Mine To Justify Victim-Blaming was originally published in The IX-Files on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hotlines/Chat

National Sexual Assault Hotline (24/7): 800–656-HOPE (4673)

National Sexual Assault Hotline Chat (24/7)

Domestic Violence Hotline (24/7): 800–799-SAFE (7233)

Domestic Violence Hotline — Spanish (24/7): 800–942–6908

Deaf Hotline Advocates — Videophone (M-F: 9am-5pm EST): 855–812–1001

National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline/Chat (24/7): 866–331–9474

Anti-Violence Project Hotline — Spanish/English (24/7; LGBTQ-specific): 212–714–1141

National Suicide Lifeline (24/7): 800–273-TALK (8255)

Lifeline Crisis Chat (24/7)

The Trevor Project (24/7; ages 13–24; LGBTQ-specific): 866–488–7386

Veteran’s Crisis Line (24/7): 800–273–8255

National Eating Disorders Association (M-Th: 9am-9pm EST; F: 9am-5pm EST): 800–931–2237

Online Support

After Silence: “After Silence is an online support group, message board, and chat room for rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse survivors.”

Black Sexual Abuse Survivors: “BSAS is a non-professional, not-for-profit resource, where its participants provide support to each other online with their recovery from sexual abuse.”

Pandora’s Project: “Pandora’s Project offers peer support to anyone who has been a victim of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse through our online support group, Pandora’s Aquarium. Our online support group includes a message board, chat room, and blogs.”

Resources for Survivors was originally published in The IX-Files on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

O n April 8, 2016, I received an email in my inbox: “If anything happens to me …”

The email was mainly photographs, a bruise-and-blood collage of rape. Photos of wrists rubbed raw below the hand. Legs peppered with purple patches. Scratch marks in short red streaks.

And a Facebook profile photo. A photo of a guy with quasi-curly hair wearing a nice-looking suit and a nice-looking tie and a nice-looking smile. Picture of the guy I’m 90% sure was my rapist is attached, the email read. That part was a complete lie. It was more like 5%, if that. But she knew if anything happened to her, no one would bother to look into 5%, or even 50%. So for motivational purposes, she made it 90.

The girl who wrote the email did so from the confines of a dark, 98-square-foot Columbia University dorm room. The room had white walls littered with thumbtack bullet holes and a conspicuous tan stain on the carpet. The hallway outside the room smelled like cat pee, and slices of the smell slipped through the cracks where the door was too far from the frame.

She typed the email with shaking hands, fingers buzzing above the black keys that clicked too loudly. Tears slid down the gutters between her nose and her cheeks, finally settling in little puddles.

She was drawing a map to a murder suspect. Her murder suspect. The man she thought would finally come back and kill her.

She imagined what her body would look like if it was found. Eyes open and bloodshot? Bruises blossoming on beds of skin? Or a small pool of blood embedded under her long brown hair? That one comforted her. At least let me die with my clothes on, she thought to herself. (That only made her sob more.)

She hid the email draft and opened another email draft, a thank you letter to one of her professors. She’d been writing the letter since February, since her professor looked her in the eyes and told her it was okay she was so “spacey” and coming to school was, in and of itself, a brave act. She scanned over it again. The comma in the second paragraph looked off. She moved it, then moved it back. She knew she should work on the other email, but the thank you email felt equally important. She didn’t know why that was what she clung to, why that email was the has-to-get-done thing on the death bed that had become her everyday life, but it was that one thing magnified by the fear of her impending death. There’s always that one thing, she’d once been told.

And so she transitioned from fixing typos in the thank you letter to uploading pictures she’d taken of her violated body. She only sent one of the emails that day. It arrived in my inbox at 4:30pm on the dot.

“If anything happens to me …”

A lot had already happened to her. And a lot of her interactions with the world were altered.

The way she flinched at the faintest sound of a closing door.

The way she stopped showing up to her queer group meetings because being surrounded by queerness had begun to nauseate her, making her remember her rapist’s whispered slur.

The way the remnants of the work she used to love had been stuffed underneath her bed because god forbid her rapist saw her carrying books about queer and trans issues to the package center.

She remembered back to starting a Gay-Straight Alliance in eighth grade. Standing up in front of her middle school wearing a grey denim jacket and a NOH8 shirt. Planning what It Gets Better videos to show her classmates. Practicing a sing-along for the Muppets song, “Rainbow Connection,” with ten ukulele players in tow. Laughing hysterically when, at the end of the year, a kid came out as straight.

And she remembered back to high school, to applying to college. Eating chocolate muffins and orange juice — an odd combination, she knew — every Friday morning to cope. Hitting electric yellow badminton birdies in the gym, basketballs slamming ominously onto the floor in the background, when she should have been studying for tests. Crying in frustration over that sickening red ACT practice book because she couldn’t for the life of her raise her cumulative score above a 33, which somehow at the time didn’t seem good enough. (Now she wonders why she spent so much of her life on that stupid test.) How she so desperately wanted to go to schools she didn’t think she’d get into.

How much she wanted to be where she ultimately met her rapist.

She hated how she’d been to as many schools as rapes she’d experienced, how her life was spent fluctuating between the three violations like sane people fluctuate between TV shows.

The first time lasted twenty-seven minutes; she’d counted on the clock behind him. (Is that amount of time normal? she still wondered.) Everything got green and blurry after a little while, so it became harder to read the numbers. She remembered thinking about how she’d once seen a spider on the rug she was on, and being scared a spider would crawl onto her and she wouldn’t be able to get away. She saw a particle of dust illuminated by the streetlamp light that came through the window, and she stared at it as it floated. Floated like she so desperately wanted to.

The second time, the most Law & Order: SVU-approved time, was perhaps, in hindsight, the most physically painful. It was a stranger, it was night, and she was in her dorm room totally sober. (So she was a “real” victim, right?) She loved writing, but she still struggled to describe what it was like to wake up on her stomach only a few weeks into college to someone raping her; words like “burning” and “tearing” just didn’t seem to cut it when she tried to use them to describe what she felt. She still remembered how she kept screaming underwater when she swam the next morning, the chlorinated pool that usually gave her strength then only adding to the pain in her body.

And the third time was full of no words she could say. He made a point of being unusually gross so she couldn’t share details — that was intentional, she was sure. Everything was intentional. Intended to embarrass. Intended to hurt. Intended to destroy the parts of her identity she held nearest and dearest to her heart.

That is, if he meant for her to live at all.

And that’s the time where she lay there for a while considering whether or not she wanted to die.

She remembered the first time in life she knew she wanted to die. Like, really die. When she reached that point where everything that could go wrong seemed to and she dreamt of jumping off a bridge and slamming into salty smooth concrete below, drinking bubblegum-favored diphenhydramine for breakfast, or feel the stinging of a cold kitchen knife against her skin.

She was thirteen, her doctors flipping between the depression and bipolar disorder pages in the DSM more often than she flipped back and forth between wanting to live and not. (She knew, of course, that she really had PTSD, but how can you out yourself as having that without also outing yourself as a survivor?)

She was in the big bathroom stall at her middle school, the first day she realized she wanted to die. It was the bathroom that smelled like gym shorts, even though no one bothered to wear gym shorts for gym. She was crouched in the corner between the toilet and the wall, head leaning against the smooth white paint, hot tears rolling in slick rivers down her cheeks. She didn’t remember what the exact thing was that made her curl up in a ball, but she remembered the feeling of nothing but fog around her. Her head pounding with every mean thing anyone had ever said to her. Her body repeating her violations in overdrive. How much she just wanted to scream, Make it stop, over and over again. How much she realized she wanted to actually make it stop. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.

Years later, she had that same feeling lying on the floor of her dorm room. After the third rape, when he left her bound and bleeding on the floor. She was given the choice: try to live or be lazy and die. And she lay there pondering the latter for a while, every part of her body still in pain. It would be a fitting end to how she perceived her life after her rapes: laziness. Not making any attempt. Giving up. Worthless. (Ironically, it was the grossness of his assault that motivated her to save herself; she didn’t want anyone to know the details, so she forced herself to live to hide the evidence.)

Soon the same thing she longed for — death — simultaneously became her greatest fear.

O f course, she couldn’t think about any of what had happened to her and fears about her safety without also thinking about the Columbia University administrators who got more dollars in a day than seconds she thought she had left to live.

The first responders more interested in questioning her queerness than telling her what her rights were under Title IX.

The report about her October rape to Columbia’s Student Conduct and Community Standards office (SCCS) that lay dead, accruing as much dust as she accrued permanent scars, months before her perpetrator raped her again.

The way Columbia’s Title IX coordinator, Marjory Fisher, turned and walked away silently when she wondered aloud if she would matter more as a corpse than as a living person.

The administrators, like Jeri Henry from SCCS, who leaned forward over their fortress-like desks and “encouraged” her to leave, asking things like:

“Are you really happy here?”

She’s still pondering how she’s “really happy here.” She’s been asked why she’s still here a lot. And she still finds it hard to explain that for every person at Columbia who makes her want to leave, there are people who help her stay. The people that make life worth every tear-filled, orange-juice-chocolate-muffin day.

The professor-turned-friend who had five-hour coffee with her a couple months after her third rape, the coffee filled with more silence than anyone had ever given her to occupy. (She didn’t realize before then that there would be some quiet gaps in the world if she wasn’t alive to speak.)

The professor who paid out of pocket for her to get medical attention when she was still in physical pain long after her rapes.

The fellow activists who marched up eight flights of stairs with her to Columbia’s SCCS office in solidarity, the same people who brought her Oreos and crunchy chocolate chip cookies when Columbia told her that doing basic things to investigate her rapes was “futile.”

The girl who hugged her as she sobbed at having to tell a friend that their best option was to report their assaults to the same Columbia offices that had so wildly failed her.

The friends (and even casual acquaintances) who sent her pictures of baby animals when she was stressed or triggered.

And now, after all of that, she sits in her dorm room and braces for facing suspension or expulsion. She doesn’t know whether or not she should laugh at the fact that the “anything” that happens to her might end up being disciplinary action, not murder. Disciplinary action for audio recording meetings during the “investigation” into her rapes. For recording Columbia administrators saying they weren’t going to bother to do anything to keep her safe.

As long as Columbia is deliberating whether or not to punish her, she feels she must deliberate whether or not playing a 30-second audio clip of one of her meetings at a rally was worth risking everything she’s fought so hard for. Worth every practice test, bathroom breakdown, try-not-to-flinch-when-you-sit day.

In reading about Dean’s Discipline last week, the thing she potentially faces, she found that if Columbia tried to punish her, she’d have to write a statement of no more than five single-spaced pages (2,500 words or so) explaining herself. She knew the goal of that was apologizing for her behavior.

But upon preemptively sitting down to write 2,500 words explaining herself in the event Columbia decided to threaten her, she realized her explanation was this: a retelling of how hard she’s fought to be “here” in every sense of the word. She didn’t want to apologize; she didn’t want to hide what she’d done; she didn’t want to hide the ways in which she’d almost given up in the past.

She realized that there’s space on this planet, like the space the professor on the receiving end of her thank you email gave her, she can occupy.

If anything happens to me, know I didn’t give up; I, and all other survivors of sexual and dating violence, deserve to be here.

[Note: If you’re interested in helping prevent aforementioned disciplinary action from happening, consider signing this petition demanding Columbia allow students to record meetings with administrators during the gender-based misconduct process on campus.]

If Anything Happens to Me was originally published in The IX-Files on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

O n October 7, 2016, Columbia University closed their investigation into my rapes without interviewing a single person. They never acknowledged the fact that my rapes were hate crimes, nor the fact that my rapes happened and were not just “alleged incidents.”

The head of Student Conduct and Community Standards, Jeri Henry, did make sure to tell me to “put [my] phone down” during my meeting with her. Apparently she was less concerned about my physical safety than she was about the possibility of me recording our meeting due to a petition I helped create against Columbia.

Some important context: in New York state, where Columbia is located, we have a “one-party consent” law, which means people have the legal right to record conversations they are part of without the other person’s consent. In addition, Title IX and Enough is Enough both state schools must give students access to accurate records of all gender-based misconduct proceedings, such as transcripts, note-taking, and audio recordings.

Given the inaccurate note-taking that plagues Title IX investigations at many schools like Columbia, audio recordings are the only way to give students accurate records of proceedings.

However, before Columbia interviewed me about my rapes, they made me sign a form threatening me with disciplinary action if I recorded meetings with them.

I now fear suspension or expulsion if I record meetings with administrators.

Recording interactions is crucial for proving those in positions of power are exploiting those who lack it. Take the audio recording released on October 8, 2016 of presidential candidate Donald Trump laughing about sexually assaulting women. Or the infamous moment in the 2015 TV documentary series The Jinx when wealthy real estate heir Robert Durst admitted, when he thought his microphone was turned off in the bathroom, to murdering three people. And Donald Sterling, the now-former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, was banned from the NBA for life in 2014 after an audio recording of him going on a racist rant was made public.

In the example of universities like Columbia preventing students from recording gender-based misconduct proceedings, the unequal power dynamic between students and administrators makes recording necessary for a fair response to sexual and dating violence. Columbia in particular has a well-documented history of Title IX violations. From multiple Title IX complaints to lawsuits by students who claim they were unjustly accused of assault, the fact that Columbia’s gender-based misconduct process fails students is clear.

But until students like myself are given the right to record gender-based misconduct proceedings at Columbia and beyond, we cannot prove our schools are failing us. Ending sexual and dating violence on college campuses involves more than a fair gender-based misconduct process, but a fair process is necessary for preventing serial perpetrators from assaulting other students.

There is no reason for schools to ban recording gender-based misconduct proceedings unless they are planning on violating Title IX or hiding something.

So what are you hiding, Columbia?

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on October 8, 2016.

For years, graduate student workers at Columbia University and beyond have lived in fear of repercussions if they fought their most basic rights: fair and timely pay, protection from sexual harassment, sufficient housing stipends, medical and dental insurance, etc. And for years, graduate student workers have been the heart and soul of this university.

I wrote an op/ed last April about why undergraduates like myself should care about graduate student unions. I wrote in depth about my experience, as a first year student at Columbia last year, having an amazing grad student professor, and I will tell you that she honestly helped me feel comfortable staying at Columbia when I was considering dropping out after my assaults.

Graduate students conduct your research, teach your students, and grade your tests. They, along with adjunct faculty members and other under-compensated workers, are the ones who give us the education your admissions office advertises.

The point I am making is that this campus is run by underappreciated, under-compensated workers. If grad student workers are not protected from harassment, if they do not feel safe continuing to work, if they are not fairly compensated, my Columbia education means nothing to me. As I said in my op/ed in April:

“Despite what the colorful, laminated brochures in admissions offices tell us, many of our campuses run on the exploitation of workers — on unsafe working conditions and insufficient compensation.”

At Columbia, you and I both know that unsafe working conditions extend beyond the abhorrent treatment of graduate student workers.

Take the workers in JJ’s (one of our dining halls), who got so sick from the extreme heat due to the pizza oven in the John Jay dining hall above them years ago that we now have sushi instead of pizza.

Take the underpaid workers who spent countless hours planting flowers on the lawns by the sundial so you could post “spring has sprung” on Facebook, as if their underpaid labor never happened.

Take the graduate students who spend time meeting with undergrads for University Writing day in and day out, sometimes reading 40,000 words of first year student essays in two nights to give feedback, all while simultaneously getting their own educations.

Take the graduate students who continue to pursue their research while being sexually harassed by professors who get away with their actions because of the overarching threat of pulling a grad student’s funding for reporting harassment.

What a graduate student union would ask of you — or rather, thanks to the ruling by the National Labor Relations Board yesterday that determined graduate students in the United States have the right to unionize, will ask of you — is to treat graduate student workers like human beings. You can try to scare students, with negative emails, into thinking the NLRB decision is trying to bring an evil outside force onto our idyllic campus until you are blue in the face, but that argument is predicated upon us, as readers of your emails, trusting in you more than a random “outside organization.” It is predicated on us viewing you and our campus as idyllic as-is.

I can say, as a sexual assault survivor, queer woman, and activist, the Columbia University administration has done nothing to gain my trust and loyalty. You have done nothing to prove to me that you will do anything other than cut corners to save costs at the expense of workers’ safety and livelihoods.

I stand firmly in solidarity with graduate student workers unionizing at Columbia University and beyond, and wholly reject any ill-thought-out attempt by you or any other administrator to dissuade graduate student workers from seeking the rights, protections, and dignity they deserve.

Columbia can do better, and I am thrilled the graduate student workers at Columbia are proving that to you.

Two weeks ago, I shared a hotel room with a perpetrator. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time.

The person, who I’ll refer to as “L,” seemed so normal.

I first met L four years ago. L was an activist advocating for queer and trans people, and I was an activist advocating for queer and trans people. When L spoke, she commanded the attention of the entire room. Every word stuck in people’s minds. L wasn’t afraid to correct us if we said something wrong. It was L who taught me the importance of advocating for “liberation” and “justice,” rather than “equality.”

And L made me laugh. There was one night I remember when L and I were sitting in a hotel room before an event we were both speaking at. We went through the Facebook pages of obnoxious public figures. L read them in a funny sarcastic voice, and we collapsed laughing on the floor. I mean, we were both teenagers. It was harmless, right?

Except it wasn’t harmless. Listening to L wasn’t harmless; laughing with L wasn’t harmless.

Today, I saw a Facebook post accusing L of being abusive.

I’m a sexual assault survivor. What’s more, I’m an anti-sexual violence activist. I pride myself on standing up for survivors of violence.

Yet today, I found myself confronted with the reality that someone I laughed with, organized with, and shared hotel rooms with is a perpetrator. And I had no idea.

Assault in activist circles isn’t surprising to me. It’s so easy to hide behind activism to cover up abuse. I even know one high-profile anti-sexual violence activist is a perpetrator, and have heard two others defend her despite knowing what she did.

What it comes down to is accountability.

There’s this idea we have, as activists, that we’re accountable for a movement’s public image, and it’s our duty to protect that image.

I run an organization that donates books about queer and trans issues, and I’ve served on leadership councils for a handful of related national organizations such as GLSEN and The Trevor Project. I’m a member of No Red Tape, an anti-sexual violence group at Columbia. When I speak, I know my words are implicitly tied to queer and trans activism and anti-sexual violence activism, so writing pieces like the one I just wrote on statutory rape laws can have significant consequences.

But in fiercely protecting the public image of social justice movements, I think many activists, myself included, have forgotten what we’re fundamentally advocating for: safety, justice, and liberation.

I admit when I first saw the post about L today, my inclination was to dismiss it. I made a slew of different rationalizations. I would have known, I thought. L wouldn’t do this. She’s an amazing advocate.

However, looking back on my initial reaction, I feel somewhat horrified.

I transformed from rape victim to rape apologist.

No amount of activism — awards won, policies drafted, lives saved — excuses abuse. Sometimes the greatest way to hide is to talk the loudest (á la Trump). The irony is we should hold activists to a higher standard, not a lower one.

As put in a statement No Red Tape released during Sexual Assault Awareness Month that I’m proud of having helped write:

“The public image of an activist movement should never be prioritized over the safety and integrity of its members. Strong movements cannot be built if they perpetuate the silencing of survivors and allow violence to continue behind closed doors.”

If we don’t hold all perpetrators of violence equally accountable and call out our fellow activists who defend those perpetrators for their actions, our movements for social justice are dead.

That’s all there is to it.

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on August 1, 2016.

When I logged onto Facebook a couple weeks ago, I was prepared to see pictures of Brock Turner, a.k.a. “the Stanford rapist.” I was instead confronted with posts lauding Vice President Joe Biden for writing a letter to the girl Brock Turner assaulted.

I felt the same pain at the bottom of my stomach I felt when I read about Biden’s June 14 speech at the White House on sexual violence, watched Biden and Lady Gaga stand together at the Oscars to raise awareness about sexual assault on college campuses, and saw Biden’s face plastered all over “It’s On Us” campaign paraphernalia. It seems we’ve all embraced Biden as a spokesperson for the anti-sexual violence movement.

But have we really all forgotten about Anita Hill?

In 1991, Joe Biden, the then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over hearings regarding Justice Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The issue at hand was the allegation that Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill. Biden blatantly aided in Thomas’s nomination. Biden didn’t stop multiple senators from tearing Hill apart, wouldn’t call witnesses who could corroborate Hill’s story, and insisted Thomas had “the benefit of the doubt.”

In the end, Clarence Thomas was confirmed and remains a mediocre-at-best Supreme Court justice. Biden has yet to apologize to Anita Hill for how he treated her. And I’ll probably see more links to speeches from Biden next time a major story about sexual violence takes center stage.

You might be thinking: that was 1991, this is 2016. Why does this matter?

What Clarence Thomas did to Anita Hill didn’t just “go away” in the last 25 years, and neither did the inaction of Joe Biden. I still remember everyone who didn’t stand up for me after my rapes, no matter how many years ago they failed me. I remember the psychiatrist who told me I needed to “make myself less vulnerable to sexual violence in the future”; everyone who sat silently in my high school math class when one boy looked me in the eyes and said, “No means yes,” and laughed; and the seventh grade sex ed teachers who answered the anonymous question, “Why don’t chicken breasts have nipples?” but wouldn’t answer my anonymous question, “I was sexually assaulted. What do I do?”

It’s so easy to see Joe Biden’s actions during Clarence Thomas’s hearing as things in the past, but they’re not. Biden’s treatment of Anita Hill has made an indelible impact on her and survivors everywhere, especially Black survivors like Hill, who still face added scrutiny when they share their stories, and survivors of sexual harassment, who are still criticized for complaining about something not “severe” enough.

It’s a lot easier to support mainstream — generally white, cisgender, heterosexual — survivors of sexual violence than it is to support Black survivors and survivors of color, queer survivors, genderqueer survivors, survivors with disabilities, undocumented survivors, etc. It’s easy to stand beside high profile figures like Lady Gaga and the girl from Stanford whose stories, unlike the stories of most survivors, are taken at face value. I’ve watched Facebook friends who’ve never cared about things I’ve posted about Columbia University’s mistreatment of marginalized survivors share the Stanford survivor’s letter and call Brock Turner a rapist, whereas they’ve criticized other survivors for saying their perpetrators’ names at all.

If you throw any survivors under the bus, especially survivors who hold one or more marginalized identities, you’re not an “advocate for survivors.” In light of the recent murders of 49 queer and trans people, almost all of whom were Latinx, at a gay nightclub in Orlando, supporting survivors of color is doubly important. In continuing to compliment Biden without challenging his history of failing to support Anita Hill, we’re doing a tremendous disservice to marginalized survivors already ignored in the mainstream anti-sexual violence movement.

As a queer survivor who believes and supports survivors of all identities, you don’t speak for me, Joe Biden. You don’t speak for me unless you speak for every survivor.

Originally published at feministing.com on July 22, 2016.

You Don’t Speak for Me, Joe Biden was originally published in The IX-Files on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Everyone knows I’m queer and has known since I was in middle school. I’m an activist, so I’ve heard every homophobic comment out there. Almost none of them faze me. Being queer is a sin? Not in my belief system. Being queer just means I wasn’t loved enough as a child? Wrong. Being queer means I’ve just been brainwashed by my liberal surroundings? Okay, I grew up in San Francisco and went to my first pride parade when I was a toddler so may you have a point, but still …

Yet one comment has always gotten to me: being sexually assaulted is what makes people queer.

I first heard that comment in 8th grade in the midst of starting a middle school Gay-Straight Alliance. I tried to laugh it off. It was stupid, right? However, I discovered I couldn’t stop thinking about it. At the time, I chalked the wave of nausea I felt up to anger. But homophobic comments never made me nauseous, not like that.

It was only later I realized the comment bothered me because I couldn’t say with conviction it was wrong.

My first rape preceded my interest in romantic relationships or thoughts about my sexual orientation. It was my first sexual experience and was, despite the many ways my body reacted, tremendously negative and painful. For a while afterwards, I found even kissing repulsive, and worked tirelessly to distract our sex ed class from talking about actual sex because I associated sex with fear (much to the dismay of our sex ed teacher, who grew tired of answering questions like, “Isn’t the male reproductive system inefficient?”). Even though what happened to me was unquestionably rape, it just didn’t occur to me to attach that word to it until long after it happened. Rape was sex, and sex was painful.

As I began to realize I was attracted to other girls in 7th grade, I was able — unconsciously — to compartmentalize my rape and my sexual orientation. I wanted to kiss a girl in a way I’d never been able to imagine wanting to kiss a guy. The idea of intimacy was exciting instead of nausea-inducing. I eventually embraced my identity and soon came out very publicly, courtesy of getting too amped up and personal in an online debate over same-sex marriage.

So the idea that one of the core parts of my identity was from one of the most painful moments of my life? Terrifying.

And even though every activist part of me knew it was my job to assert to anyone who asked that rape and molestation don’t impact sexual orientation, my stomach kept tensing because I was saying something I didn’t know was true for me. I had no evidence my rape didn’t have an impact on my sexuality. I could speak with conviction, but not sincerity.

What complicated matters even more was how I was unable to talk about this fear openly. Doing so could jeopardize my legitimacy as an activist. I still fear that now, I’ll lose my “right” to call myself queer or see this quoted on hate group websites as evidence that queerness is a sickness, unnatural, or can be cured.

Another confession: I wrote an anonymous version of this piece a couple years ago. That was before I went to Columbia University last year and was raped twice more.

After the first of my Columbia rapes, it was hard not to lie there on my bed and question if being openly queer impacted my rapist’s decision to rape me. How could I not question that? What were the chances such a statistically improbable type of assault — a stranger assault at night — would randomly happen to someone who shoved queer rights down people’s throats? He didn’t say anything that I heard, so I had no idea what he was thinking, but all the homophobic words he could’ve been thinking in that silence haunted me as I showered, washed my sheets, tried to get assignment extensions, and woke up crying from nightmare after nightmare.

It was only after I was assaulted again a few months later, presumably by the same person, that I learned I was, in fact, targeted.

When you hear about “corrective rape,” or rape targeting queer and trans people with the intention of changing their sexual orientations or gender identities, your mind probably jumps to thinking about countries besides the United States — South Africa, for example, where corrective rape against lesbian women in particular is a much-discussed epidemic. You don’t think about corrective rape happening at an Ivy League school. So in the aftermath of my second Columbia assault, I insisted that, like with my first Columbia assault, my rapist didn’t say anything.

That’s not true.

Still a dyke?

Three words, yet carrying the weight of thousands. Three words that made things more confusing. There I was wondering if rape made me queer, and there was someone raping me to try to make me straight.

In the days after, I listened to people tell me about all the things I could’ve done differently to prevent my assault: Why didn’t you move? Why weren’t you carrying pepper spray? Why didn’t you report him after the first time? But no one knew to ask the question I kept asking myself: Why did you come out?

I knew from my first two assaults there are a thousand things one can blame themselves for; I never expected my identity to be one of them.

But despite my rapist’s best efforts, I’m still queer. I don’t know if I should interpret this as foolproof evidence rape doesn’t influence sexual orientation or more evidence rape might lead to queerness.

Honestly, this piece isn’t going to come to a beautiful conclusion where I announce the part of my brain that holds doubts about the origin of my sexual orientation has finally learned my sexual orientation has always been separate from the rapes that have overtaken so much of my life. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to reach that conclusion completely. I’ll never know what it’s like to be intimate with someone without having memories of rape somewhere in the back of my mind, or what I’d be like today if I hadn’t been raped.

So what is this piece about? Why have I done that whole jeopardizing-my-legitimacy-as-an-activist thing if this doesn’t have a pretty ending?

This is about coming to terms with all the uncertainty: the doubt, the fear, the shame. I’ll never know for sure if my rapes had an impact on my sexual orientation. What I do know for sure now is for whatever reason, I love girls, and that isn’t going to change. And one day, when I find an amazing partner, the source of my sexual orientation won’t matter to me — and hopefully not to her — one bit.

Note to those whose takeaway from this is sexual orientation is a choice: re-read this, because that’s not the conclusion. One of the greatest problems with rape is it forces you to question everything, from your culpability to your identity; just like my feelings of self-blame don’t mean I’m actually responsible for my rapes, my feelings of uncertainty about the origins of my sexual orientation don’t mean I was born straight.

Last week, I signed up for TrumpSingles.com in the hopes of learning about what on earth Donald Trump fans are thinking. I googled “most common Republican names” and “most common surnames in Texas.” And thus, on TrumpSingles.com and in Facebook groups for Trump supporters, Bailey Williams, a 26-year-old jogger and Texans fan, was born.

While each interaction I had may have split my soul and created Horcruxes, I learned a great deal about the people casting their votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

1. If you Facebook friend one Trump supporter, 30 more will send you friend requests in the next 10 minutes.

2. I could probably get a girlfriend faster through TrumpSingles.com than I can in real life.

3. Not all Trump supporters are white … somehow …

4. As is true across the entire online dating spectrum, Trump supporters have totally awkward pick-up lines.

5. People of color are criminals, apparently.

6. Guns don’t kill people. Muslims kill people!

7. And hurting Muslims, even Muslim children, is A-okay.

8. Oprah is racist.

9. Everything is a conspiracy.

My conclusion? I could create a profile for the dog Mitt Romney tied to the roof of his car in 1983, post a video saying Obama tried to delete the U.S. terror list because he’s friendly with ISIS, and have at least one Trump supporter like the post within five minutes. And no, I’m not just being hypothetical:

Okay, more seriously: minus the TrumpSingles.com profiles I found for an alcoholic Bernie Sanders, Brock Turner, and a not-so-stealthy person named “under cover,” these people are real and planning on voting in the November election for a racist, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, abusive guy whose hair looks like a wig made from a recently-slaughtered old Pomeranian.

So here’s where I ask something serious of you: if you have the privilege of voting (if you’re a documented U.S. citizen, a legal adult, and uninhibited by discriminatory voter I.D. laws and timing restrictions), vote in the 2016 presidential election for literally anyone other than Donald Trump.

Immersing myself in the ocean of Trump supporters for a couple weeks sucked out parts of my soul; I can’t imagine what it would be like to swim in it for a four or eight-year presidency.