Book Week 5

After finishing the book "To the Survivor" my view of sexual violence has changed. I think that I had incredible growth and maturity after reading all of these stories of survivors. Before reading the book I thought the things I were doing was helping end sexual violence but after finishing this book, I believe that what I was doing was just a very simple things in ending sexual violence. It was not enough work that would create social change and help survivors. It really showed me what true advocates and what they have to go through to help survivors. The narrator had to go through so much as male advocate against sexual violence. He had to go through discrimination as a male even though he was trying to help others. Every time he hears a story from survivor, he had to not feel sympathy but empathy for them. There are many times when he is at a rally or a group discussion or a presentation, he seems to talk but no one is listening and it looks hopeless helping these people understand sexual violence. This help me realize that the rally I made is not going to make instant change or even get people to become advocates. My attempt in bringing awareness about sexual violence is needed because if I don't do it who will do it. This work is hard and very few times I will get acknowledge for doing this but I am not doing it for the acknowledgement, I am doing it to make a better society for others. I do not want to live in world where there rape and I think everyone thinks the same exact way but thinking it will not do anything to change the issue. Someone needs to do it and the work that the narrator of the book does is very essential to creating a better society and more people have to be like him. I have these beliefs that are just like his, but I don't think I would be able to make that career my life like the narrator. I feel awful for saying it but I don't think I am strong enough handle that work everyday but I can still be an advocate. This makes me appreciate this type of work and hope that his work will actually make society change.

Book Week 4

These past couple chapters of the book "To the Survivor" has been so eye opening to me. I read two stories of survivors, one was a man who was molested by a priest and one was a woman who was raped by a friend. Both of them had different stories and different journeys after being sexually assaulted but both them are good places in their lives. The man's story was very shocking to read about. This man was molested by a priest in 8th grade but never realized he was molested until 25 years later. He never connected the dots and just suppressed those memories within him. When I read this, I think about the catholic priest molester jokes I heard in middle school and I thought wow the jokes we made actually happened to people. I just had the feeling of disgust because there are people like him who suppress these memories for years and never realize it and when they do the damage has been done and there are very few things to do to get closure. He couldn't confront his molester anymore, the molester was dead. What made things worst was that their was another priest that could have stopped the event from happening but he did nothing. This lack of action or willing to make a change lead to so much pain and suffering for others. Being a bystander is the worst. But still going through all of that, he was able to speak about it and empower himself and have positive mind.
The other story was about how this woman was raped and went through years of depression and going through bad relationships. Even going through all of that, she is still able to smile and be energetic and empower herself. I would not think she would be a survivor of rape from the descriptions about her. She did not follow the stereotypes of people who have been raped. She showed me that victims of sexual assault do not have to be quiet and scared of the world. They can still have their life put together and overcome their issues. These two people really showed that their sexual assault did not have to end their normal life.

Book Week 3

I read a couple of more chapters To the Survivor. They the chapters were about survivors of sexual violence telling their story to the narrator and how they became evolved in advocacy to end sexual violence. The stories I read were so powerful that I almost cried. These survivors allowed themselves to be put in the vulnerable position of letting their private life, public to everyone. There are so many reasons to not publicized these types stories but they have the will power to share their pain to educate people and help others that are going through the same problems is amazing. As a person who still is learning more and more about the issue of sexual violence, these stories give me the closest thing to understanding a survivor's mentality. Even though it might just be a small part of the story and the feeling they experience, it is still better than feeling sympathetic and not knowing anything about the events that happened. I feel that these stories are necessary for people to learn but I feel that it is wrong for wanting them to speak about their stories. As a society we should not need to have someone hurt themselves for us to show compassion and empathy but we need to because compassion is not something everyone has. In the book, men and women all showed a lack of compassion towards these victims. It might seem disgusting but a huge part of our population is like that. I had that the same experience talking about race and class. Since I have bad experiences with race and class, it is hard to talk about it but people do not understand. My lack of speaking does not mean my issues of race and class do not matter, it means that I need to feel comfortable enough to talk about it. Since there has not been a safe space for me to speak, I have not spoken about it. My experiences are not at all like these survivors but I feel empathy towards the problems their going through.

Book Week 2

I read 4 more chapters of the book "To the Survivor."  These four chapters were very intense to read about but was very needed to understand the effects of sexual violence and how sexual violence is over looked. A couple of the chapters were about the stories of survivors speaking at a rally to end rape culture and sexual violence. After reading the story, I was disgusted by the law and the humans who commit these crimes. The law let these people, who survived a traumatic experience, go through these traumatic experiences all over again. The law are very lenient on these people who were sexually harassed. Unlike getting physically abuse, unwanted sexual touching does not leave a mark. This leaves no proof which makes it hard for the law to believe the survivor. I see this as being a huge problem of our society victim blames. As society we cannot blame the surroundings for the problem but we have to blame the person, who experienced the pain, for getting into the situation. These perpetrators are the problem of our society, they need a punishment not a slap on the wrist like $250 fine, they need go to prison or at least jail. But our society just does not make the law hard enough to really hurt these people and give them the idea that these type things are ok.

Another chapter in the book was called victim blaming and I think explained victim blaming really well. He explained the effects of it and how it is detrimental to our society especially for people who have experience sexual violence. This idea of blaming the victims for their own problems, is so illogical but we still do it. In the media their was a case of a girl getting raped at a party. Instead of blaming the rapist, the media blamed the girl for being drunk and letting herself get raped. We cannot promote this way of thinking through the media. People who have been sexually assaulted will not be able to feel comfortable in society if we keep this type of mindset.

Book Week 1

March is white ribbon month and the white ribbon is supposed to represent men showing their support to end violence against women, so I wanted to find a book about people helping women who suffer through domestic violence. I ended up finding a book about sexual violence from the point of a view from a male perspective called "To the Survivors". I had a very basic background on sexual violence towards women from my work and my learning on domestic violence. After reading the first 8 chapters of this book, I expanded my understanding on sexual violence and see a man working in this type of work.

I connect a lot with the views of the narrator and it made me feel like something I could do. The narrator is like the average guy. He has never experience sexual violence and just got into the work because he felt that morally sexual violence is wrong like everyone should but he actually took the initiative to do something about those feelings. Many people see sexual violence as a problem but never do anything about it but he did something about it even though that field is dominated by women. The rape survivor center he interned had one other male intern and the rest of the interns and employees were females. 

His perspective of working here shows how much work men have to do to stop these sexual violence problems. He talks about how we victim blame and how we look down on people who are raped instead of being there to support them which seem so illogical. How can people criticize rape victims instead of helping them and help normalize their life? It just does not make sense. I want to do this work to help these people who need the help the most. 

Class Week 5

This week was a little disappointed. We were unable to achieve what we wanted with the two hundred dollar project and we have to revise a lot of parts of our storefront presentation. For the two hundred dollar project, I was expecting to finish the t-shirts earlier but that ended up being pushed back. When the shirts were finally done, we only had a couple of days to sell the t-shirts. I wished we had more time to sell the t-shirts but I definitely regret not being able to help with making the t-shirts because we could have had t-shirts started being sold on Monday; instead of having to sell on just Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It is just a shame for us to be so unprepared to sell these t-shirts that we had weeks to prepare for. We still have a high quantity of t-shirts, and we still hope to be able to continue selling these t-shirts. This week I was not able to sell t-shirts with my group members because of my prior arrangements that I had. I wish I could have made selling the t-shirts a priority but I think my other commitment are more important to myself.
The storefront still need to have more edits done. I think our practice presentation went ok but there is a lot to be done. We need to finalize our roles and what we are speaking about. I think our biggest problem with speaking is the enthusiasm in our tone of voice and lacking key specifics in our speeches. We tend to speak about some vague strong point in our storefront but never really give something concrete. I our presentation has to contain more images and some key numbers to really pop out so that the audience is not bored at seeing the same thing.

Week 5 How to Change the World

After finishing this book, I have this new picture of non profit sector of the world and how amazing and ordinary how these people are who become social entrepreneurs. This book is very inspiring for me. There were so many examples of people that care about one particular issue and made an organization to solve that issue and going through numerous obstacles. Not a single person had a easy time to build up their organization. They all had doubters. They did not have the resources at first to make it big. They all started with an idea and had the motivation to keep on going with that idea. They were determine to make it a reality and had the passion to show others that it is possible. I feel that a lot of time many people can think that they can make a business out of anything and become a millionaire just by doing that. I think a lot of the time they fail because they do not have the passion to do it for the rest of their life, they think of it as a phase that can be tossed away into their past and be forgotten. Social entrepreneurs would never act like that because their goals are never to make money and a lot of time money is the reason why people give up. For social entrepreneur, money is a obstacle that must be overcome to show how much they truly care about making change. For me, I don't care about money and just care about changing the problems I see in society. My goal is not be a millionaire. My goal is not to live a life luxury. My goal is to see the future of others prosper and live a life of opportunities and freedom. I feel that I can become a social entrepreneur is very possible.