Everyone knows about it — the first “V” in V-Day: the valentine, the heart. The pleasure of being in love, all the way from the casual one-night hook-up for fun to shameless flirting to being in love for the long haul; the ecstatic highs, the melt-down heartbreaks and everything in between. The thing that helps me deal with the coursework stress at Cal, the thing that takes up way too much time when I’m trying to get the group project done by 8:00 a.m. class tomorrow. Valentine’s Day is partly about love and its thrills, in all types of relationships.
But it’s the other “V” we might not talk about so much: “V” for violence, sometimes in the name of love. The kind of thing that happens when in relationships, from the casual to the long haul — one partner puts down, criticizes, humiliates, stalks offline or online, harasses, isolates, hits or has coerced sex without consent. Whether it happens while the relationship is going on, right after a breakup, or long after a breakup, the other “V” is also a fact of life at UC Berkeley for anywhere from a quarter to a half to more of us while we’re here.
Studies show a predominance of violence against all genders and sexual orientations. However, the rates are high for women, especially in communities of color, while gay men, lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer (LGBTQ) communities of color, LGBTQ youth and transgender communities experienced the most severe forms of intimate partner violence.
That brings about emotional and physical injury, self-hate, depression and dropouts. And in case you follow the recent media headlines — sexual assault, partner abuse, suicide and homicide, a fact of life at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Virginia, the University of Indiana, Yale University, Amherst College and right on back to high school at Steubenville, Ohio, and all the way across the world to India. And the U.S. House of Representatives refusing to renew the Violence Against Women Act because it adds support for LGBT, Native American and immigrant survivors of abuse breaks our hearts.
If you caught the sold-out 12th annual campus performance of the Vagina Monologues last week, you got to see both “V”s: wild exuberant sexy love and angry, principled fights back against hurt. This year’s production highlighted the theme of “Race, Ethnicity and Culture” by including original monologues written by student community members focused on the intersectionality of the experiences of women of color and women from various and diverse cultural backgrounds.
V-Day at UC Berkeley is one of the largest university productions of VM, raising more than $26,000 in 2012 for non-profit agencies. As a student group, it is dedicated to ending violence against women by promoting community awareness. Later this semester, the group is organizing a teach-in; please contact [email protected] for more info.
More and more, UC Berkeley students are taking the stage to speak out against the violence. For the second year in a row, all entering students at UC Berkeley are required to take the empowerU violence prevention session.
When students clearly understand what stalking, sexual assault and abuse in relationships at college amount to, everyone says and means, loudly and clearly, that they don’t want these things to happen to their friends, their classmates or labmates their casual contacts … or any other student at UC Berkeley. Period. We don’t want it. We don’t want to put up with it. So let’s stop it. There’s a lot we can do.
To start locally: If you just want anonymously to talk over what’s going on in your relationship, you can blog with Mama Luv at the Love Cafe: uhs.berkeley.edu/students/healthpromotion/lovecafe.shtml. Or if you want to find out more about how to handle sex, you can find resources and student speakers at uhs.berkeley.edu/students/healthpromotion/shep/shep.shtml.
But beyond this, if you or a friend is dealing — or think you might be dealing — with abuse in a relationship, you don’t have to go through it alone. It’s not worth it, for you or your friend. At uhs.berkeley.edu/students/medical/sexualassaultresources.shtml you can find resources — people who can help you — targeted to students from different sexual orientations, cultures and countries. For more information on the issues and details on what to do, you can check out the Gender Equity Resource Center at 202 Chavez or GenEq and Health Promotion’s Keep It Real brochure at www.uhs.berkeley.edu/real.
If you want to meet some other great people and get involved, go to GenEq’s calendar to find out about Spectrum and the upcoming Take Back the Night to end the silence around sexual and relationship violence (Mar. 14, 2013 5-7 p.m. at Upper Sproul — resource fair starting at 4:30 p.m.).
And finally, if you really want to celebrate V-Day the way people are going to do it across the world on Thursday, check out One Billion Rising at Boalt Hall (Feb. 14, 5:30 p.m. in Steinhart Courtyard) or in Oakland (bayarearising.org), a one-night event to take V-Day away from the violence, all the way back to the first “V,” Valentine. That’s what love’s got to do with it.
Christine Ambrosio is the director of women’s resources and sexual harassment/assault resource specialist at the Gender Equity Resource Center. Allan Creighton is the social justice/violence prevention health educator and public health instructor for University Health Services.
Contact the opinion desk at [email protected]