Why I launched a new anti-sexual assault campaign called Fearless
‘Everyone can be a campaigner against sexual violence — you don’t have to fit the traditional profile’
An Anthropology major has helped launch a brand new viral project to address sexual assault at Yale.
Sophomore Helen Price, 20, has brought The Fearless Campaign onto campus to include everyone in the national conversation to confront sexual violence.
Just as a new survey revealed 46.5 per cent of senior women at Yale have experienced some form of sexual assault, we spoke to Welsh organizer Helen about her work with Fearless and as the Vice-President of The Reproductive Rights Action League – and what it means to her.
Sophomore Helen Price
What is The Fearless Campaign?
The Fearless Campaign is centered around The Fearless Conference [directly run and organized by Stanford sophomore Maddie Lippey] which took place on September 18th this year. Basically it’s an attempt to hold a conference which isn’t just the same people talking about sexual violence in the same kind of way. The conference is really making an attempt to be more intersectional and have a different approach — to be more inclusive.
How is it different from past conversations and conferences?
In the past it’s been a lot of white female academics getting together and talking about sexual assault. There have been exclusions of people of color and there haven’t really been that many attempts to get men in on the conversation and that sort of thing.
So really this conference has workshops on how men can get involved as allies, bystander intervention, how parents can speak to their kids about sexual assault, workshops on university policy and how people can get involved. Really it’s just an attempt to look at things in a different way and have a new approach to it.
Anabel: ‘To me, fearlessness means freedom. It means laughing loudly, dancing uninhibitedly, living passionately. And if someone else thinks they have a right to me or my body, they infringe on those rights’
What is the aim of this campaign?
I really think the aim of the campaign is to firstly raise awareness about sexual violence as a problem, because it’s very easy to not think about it or not have it as a priority or a major concern for you if you haven’t been personally affected or someone you love hasn’t been personally affected.
And I think that’s particularly the case for a lot of men, so if you ask them about sexual violence or sexual assault on college campuses, they would say it’s a terrible thing and it should definitely stop, but a lot of them perhaps don’t see a way in which they could contribute or they’re worried about saying something wrong or being not really sure about what they can do.
So it’s really just about showing everyone can be a campaigner against sexual violence — you don’t have to fit the traditional profile and the way to end sexual violence is for everyone to be able to get involved.
Holly: ‘Sexual violence is a culture built by each and every one of us. It’s only through each and every one of us actively thinking about improving this culture and engaging in open dialogue that any progress will be made, this is a fight everyone has a stake in’
What has the response been like so far at Yale?
The response has been absolutely overwhelming. We’ve had so many people who have been interested. And again, a lot of people who you wouldn’t really normally consider as sexual violence campaigners.
When we organized the Fearless Campaign, which was the photo campaign on Facebook where people had a picture of themselves and then talked about what “fearless” meant to them and why they were passionate about ending sexual violence, 50 per cent of the respondents were men without us even having to prompt them additionally.
And it’s wonderful there are so many dedicated, passionate men at Yale who are really getting involved in this. It’s a really wide range of people, like varsity athletes, loads of people in frats, in sororities, so we’ve just had a really wonderful, positive response to it. We’re really happy with how the Yale campus has responded.
Ron: ‘Fearless means not being afraid of rejection, and then respecting that “no” when you hear it’
Do you think Yale has a different perspective on these kind of campaigns and sexual assault since we’re a high profile school?
I think it’s something that’s definitely a bigger part of the conversation at Yale than it is probably at other schools, partly because we are a high profile school. Yale students are all very intelligent, engaged and for the most part, very liberal.
And also because Yale has had troubles in this area — we were the subject of a Title IX suit a few years ago after DKE pledges were chanting horrible things outside the Women’s Center, and a few things like that. There’s been a recognition, I think, by the University authorities that Yale’s policies on dealing with sexual assault in the past were totally inadequate and actually there has been a consistent effort by the Yale administration to improve those policies.
They’ve actually been pretty receptive to student concerns and since the Title IX suit there’s really been a good conversation fueled by student activists on campus about campus sexual assault.
Raquel: ‘Being “fearless” is having power and confidence in your decisions, in expressing your feelings, and in speaking out at times of struggle’
Where do you want the Facebook campaign to go? Do you see it going viral?
You know, obviously it would be lovely if as many people saw it as possible, but really I think the aim of it was just to get people to think about the issue and also recognize it’s something everyone can get involved in. So if they see someone who is, you know, a really popular frat bro who’s on a sports team coming out and saying he is against sexual violence, then that makes a big statement and it sends a big message to people.
What does “fearless” mean to you?
For me, sexual violence is a very personal issue. It was very difficult — it’s not been easy getting involved in activism about it, you know, to the extent I have. There have been hard parts on that journey, but it’s something very important to me.
And I think Fearless is trying to do the right thing and speak about things like sexual violence, to take action against them, even when it’s not the easiest path — even when your teammates would rather not hear you talking about it, or when people think you’re a little bit weird for bringing it up, or when you have to maybe intervene when your friend is being a bit creepy to a girl at a party or something.
There are so many ways people can be fearless and speak up against sexual violence and I think that each one of those little actions adds up to a wonderful result where we can hopefully and significantly reduce and ultimately end sexual violence.
Jess: ‘Taking a stance against sexual assault is paramount because society mistakenly correlates assault with promiscuity, and there is nothing about removing someone’s agency over their own body that should allow society to judge in that way’
Have you had any in-person responses, and what have they been like?
Absolutely, I’ve had a lot of people get in touch with me, people who you wouldn’t really suspect, and say they’ve been affected by sexual violence in some kind of way, and say how supportive they are of the campaign. That’s not an easy part of running a campaign like this, when you realize how many people have been affected by this and feel like they still aren’t able to say something, but also, it really highlights the importance of activism like this and making sure the conversation continues.
Responses to The Fearless Campaign
An earlier version of this story named another frat involved chanting outside the Women’s Center. This has been amended..