A Crack in the Homefront Line

We live in a culture that has popularized the virtuous, upstanding damsel in distress like those Disney princesses. So, when a survivor’s reality is more complicated—as with Margo and her active sex life—people often use their flawed moral lens to blame the survivor for her own assault. What I want to emphasize here is that consent is not dictated by a person’s sexual history and trauma isn’t measured by our previous consensual encounters. Whether you relate to Margo’s sexual experience or not, your consent matters. So does your trauma. We’re all complex characters who are naturally traumatized by the shock and pain of an assault. It doesn’t matter what your sexual ethics are. To be the heroine in your own recovery story, just come dressed as yourself. No need to wear any shame others try to impose on you because of your lifestyle choices or anything that happened to you without your consent.

a crack in The hoMefronT Line

What if I told you there’s a war going on? This war is not waged by power-hungry entities and the armed soldiers they recruit to lay down their lives for the cause. Though a driving force in this war is a desire for power and sometimes weapons are involved. The war I reference is so close to home, it might be in your bedroom, outside your front door, in your school or workplace, or on your way to any of these places. It might even be glaring at you from your backlit screen. Maybe the real war is the one raging inside your head—the battleground the places you once found safe, sacred.

Acts of war in this scenario are waged in any variety of abusive or violent actions committed by one person against another in their living environments. While this sounds a lot like domestic violence, these war crimes are not limited to domestic living settings or relationships. The casualties in these wars often do not live with their assailants. Sometimes they don’t even know the attacker. There is a phrase I use to label these types of assault situations: home-front violence. Home-front violence is defined as the physical and/or mental assaults perpetuated by one person against another in places that make up a person’s living environment, including the victim’s home, community, and region.