SFCC Statement in Solidarity with Survivors of Campus Sexualized Violence Everywhere
We at Students for Consent Culture (SFCC) are horrified by the numerous reports of drugging, sexual assault, and physical assault emerging on campuses across the country. Students and survivors at Western University and Fanshawe College in London, ON, at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, NS, and at the University of Alberta in Edmonton have come forward in the past week to make public incidents and threats of sexualized violence and drugging on their campuses. As we have seen in the past, the Canadian news media has been overly cautious in their coverage deferring to official statements and liberal platitudes from university administration, further silencing survivors and witnesses from these socially legitimate forms of sharing their stories.
As a collective of survivors and activists, SFCC works in solidarity with survivors and we know that students at Western, St. FX, University of Alberta, and Fanshawe are not alone. Sexualized violence is an issue of pandemic proportions at post-secondary institutions across Canada. Far too many students experience sexualized violence and harassment during their time on campus. Far too many students will experience these harms more than once during their time on campus. Far too many students will experience secondary harm and institutional betrayal from campuses who fail to take a trauma-informed and survivor-centered approach to responding to sexualized violence. Far too many students stay silent about their experiences after witnessing the widespread victim-blaming, minimizing, dismissal, and even joking that happens at the expense of survivors on our campuses.
We must be clear in our assertion that sexualized violence is about power and control. Acts of sexualized violence are tools used to create and maintain oppressive and hierarchical power relations on our campuses and in broader society. Sexualized violence is one of the main ways that misogyny, white-supremacy, ableism, colonialism, hetero and cis-normativity, and other oppressive social relations are asserted and reinforced. These violent events on our campuses are not isolated incidents caused by “bad apples.” They are the result of a settler-colonial, capitalist society that is deeply invested in denying and delegitimizing consent, in normalizing sexualized violence and harassment, and in upholding the entitlement of the privileged to the land, bodies and resources of the oppressed.
Rape culture is not only a problem at post-secondary institutions, we see it in the way that extractive industries aided by the Canadian government loot and exploit the lands and resources of Indigenous communities. We see it in the high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. We see it in the everyday experiences of women, girls, trans and gender non-conforming folks in the workplace, school, and in their own homes.
In order to end sexualized violence on our campuses, we need more than sexualized violence policies and consent 101 training. We need more than increased securitization of our campuses. We need more than recognition that post-secondary institutions are failing students and survivors. We need more than task forces. We must address the root causes of sexualized violence by redistributing power, wealth, and resources in a more equitable fashion. Sexualized violence will only end with a total transformation of post-secondary institutions and broader Canadian society through decolonization and the abolishment of all forms of systemic oppression.
For all survivors of gender-based and sexualized violence on campuses across the country, we extend our solidarity, care, and support. To those who have stayed silent with your story for too long, we hear you and we believe you. To those who have spoken out and faced the backlash, the blame, and the gaslighting, know that you have led the way for so many of us. To those supporting survivors on your own campuses or in your own communities, we are grateful for all that you do. To those beginning to organize and to channel their legitimate rage into activism, we are here for you. We invite you to reach out to us so that we can share our solidarity, resources, and experiences with you. You are not alone, we are with you.
We all deserve campuses, and a world, free from sexualized violence. True learning can only happen when all members of the community are safe and able to flourish. Change is possible, but only if we come together and demand it.
SFCC National Team