Written in 2017, The Survivor Manifesto is an anthology, uplifting and honoring the voices of survivors of sexual violence.
The Survivor Manifesto is a call to action and an act of resistance to patriarchal oppression and rape culture. It is the elephant in the room stomping its feet and demanding to be heard. The aim of this project is to unite survivors and to uplift a panoply of voices. This project is a montage of written and visual expression by survivors of sexual assault. Submissions are curated in such a way that the project echoes a sense of what it is to be a healing survivor; its arrangement reflects the nonlinear nature of trauma. This body of work bears witness to the experience, the struggle, the survival, the trauma of sexual violence, and the ability to heal. This project works to flip the narrative ascribed to survivors’ bodies and minds by our society’s plague of rampant rape culture. This project illuminates the strength inherent in surviving trauma and the empowerment within vulnerability and speaking out against such injustices. It is a call for community accountability– to hold rapists accountable. It is a call for survivors to heal and to speak out; rape culture will never dismantle itself. The overarching message of this project is to assert our radical self-love and power as survivors and to make sexual assault predators / abusers / rapists afraid.
