fatema writes
Bangladeshi-American Writer, Educator, and Fiber Artist
I recently rewatched one of my favorite shows to come out in the last decade: Jane the Virgin (JTV). There are many reasons to love JTV (dynamic Latinas, bilingual household, the drama and humor of an epic telenovela, phenomenal redemption arcs, and a well-plotted narrative with excellent foreshadowing to name just a few), but one of my favorite reasons is what JTV teaches us about supporting writers.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Ramadan also gave me my first entry into the secret lives of women. Menstruating aunties who weren’t fasting would pull me aside to “feed me” so they could sneak in a meal. Even if I had no interest in eating, they’d loudly announce, “Come eat this mishti,” and bite into sweets delivered by neighbors and relatives in pastel pink boxes tied with thin plastic ribbons. “Don’t tell anyone,” they’d tell me, swallowing morsels of kalojam, rasgulla, zulafi, and nimki. I’d keep their secrets, thrilled to be in on them, sneaking in bites and surreptitiously licking sweet syrup off my fingers, palm, wrist.
I want people to understand how devastating and long lasting the impact of sexual violence is. It stays with us, even when we do our best to let it go and move forward. Just because I went to therapy and spent four years actively doing healing work doesn’t mean I am all better. I am more integrated, my mind less compartmentalized. It is easier for me to be in solitude. It is easier for me to disclose my survivor status with others. I can trace the threads of trauma in how I respond to people or events. But I live with it every day.
There is something about sexual violence that distorts responsibility. We immediately shift our focus to the victim. What was she wearing, drinking, doing? Why was she there in the first place (while disregarding that the ‘there’ in question might be her own home)? Why didn’t she say no, do something to stop it (never mind that she may have been incapacitated and unable to stop it; or that an absence of ‘no’ is not consent (an enthusiastic yes); that ‘no’ can take the shape of a flinch, a whimper, a stillness)? Even our language is passive: “she was raped” instead of “he raped her,” the perpetrator forever kept invisible in our speech and deliberations, and therefore shielded from accountability.
Ryan Barrett and I discuss Andrew Yang's Washington Post opinion piece, performative patriotism, and the need to see/learn from the parallels with Black liberation movements and the spike in anti-Asian racism this moment is producing. We talk about ways to unlearn (especially the model minority myth), build support systems, and extend kindness/generosity to those experiencing acts of racism/xenophobia.
We don’t need saviors. We don’t need outsiders to come in and do the work for us. If you want to work with us, then put us in charge. Pay us for our time, intellect, and energy. Honor our agency. Get to know the community and its history. If you’re serving youth, talk to the adults, too. Don’t rely on youth to give you all the necessary information. If you’re a funder, critically analyze who you’re funding, if the leadership is from the community, if they are using community-centered practices, if they are being nuanced and thorough in their understanding of the problems they seek to address. These practices are absolutely necessary for sustainable, empowering work. If you are in the media, center people from the community.
“Binge,” a traditionally negative word that means to do something in excess, has become positive. Imagine if we were to treat binge-drinking or binge-eating the same way. Statements such as “My plans for the weekend are to binge drink” or “I was binge-drinking for two weeks straight” would never be socially acceptable; if anything, it would signal that there’s a problem at hand, a person in need of an intervention. Yet, the same does not apply for binge-watching. Why?
To my brothers who are afraid to go to therapy, who have only seen therapy or help-seeking stigmatized, who think they aren’t going to go share their business to some stranger, who think that therapy = anti-depression and anti-anxiety meds, who worry that it’ll just be one more person who tells them they’re doing it wrong and need to change: here are some truths about therapy.