[Image: Purple graphic with teal & light purple text: header of the October 2022 CW&GE Newsletter. The image has a border of autumn leaves in gold, orange, and dark red. ]

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Content warning: This section will include discussion of intimate partner violence and financial abuse. 
Language accessibility note: Throughout this introduction, the term domestic violence, relationship violence, and intimate partner violence will be used interchangeably to identify a pattern of behavior in which one person exerts power and control over another, usually in the context of a romantic relationship. We vary using these terms to be reflective of the many ways people who have been harmed may name their experiences. We will also use terms like “harm-doer” to refer to someone who has done harm, rather than using words like perpetrator or abuser, as a way of reflecting our values of transformative justice and understanding that harm does not happen outside of the many experiences of oppression and systematic violence that all people face. 

Greetings Golden Rams!

October is upon us, and that is a pretty busy time in the Center for Women & Gender Equity. Not only is October Breast Cancer Awareness Month, LGBTQ History Month, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it is also when It’s On Us will host their Week of Action and when our office will host two events: The first on 10/20, on reproductive justice in Pennsylvania, and the second on 10/25 on sexual liberation! Please see Upcoming Events below for more details. 

As we observe Domestic Violence Awareness Month in this year of so much financial turmoil across the U.S. and the globe, it feels especially prudent to reflect on the economic repercussions of relationship violence. While this feature of intimate partner violence is rarely the focus of conversation about its impact on people, in a study from FreeFrom, 92.3% of survivors surveyed reported being subjected to economic abuse, of which 36.5% said it got worse during COVID-19. FreeFrom is an organization which seeks to reframe intimate partner violence as a structural economic issue that intersects with other systems of oppression and aims to build an ecosystem of support to ensure that survivors have the resources to get safe, heal, and prevent future harm. In this study, FreeFrom identified that economic insecurity is the number one obstacle to safety for folks in harmful relationships.

In a study conducted by FreeFrom, they pulled these data points from the folks that they surveyed regarding financial insecurities.

• Survivors only have $288.90 they alone can access on average.
• Survivors only have $10 in savings on average.
• Survivors report they need an average of $1,567 to make ends meet and stay safe. 
• Survivors’ financial well-being is in the bottom 10th percentile for adults in the U.S. 
• Disabled survivors are subjected to almost 2x the types of systemic harm that survivors without a disability are subjected to. 
• Survivors who are not cisgender reported being subjected to an average of 9.5 types of systemic harm, compared to cisgender survivors who reported an average of 6.1 types of harm. 
• BIPOC survivors report needing support with covering the cost of food and household costs at higher rates than white survivors. 
• Queer+ survivors, disabled survivors, and survivors who are not cisgender are more likely to report needing support with health costs. 
• Only 38.5% of survivors would call the police in a moment of crisis or danger involving their harm-doer. When asked who they would call in a crisis, the number one response was a family member or friend (62.8%)
• Survivors reported an average of $10,120 in abuse-related costs (e.g. medical bills, therapy/therapeutic services, legal costs, and relocation costs) but only having an average of $10 in savings. A lack of cash, savings, and support for financial well-being prevents many survivors from being able to afford or access all types of care and costs.

Throughout the month of September, FreeFrom offered a social media campaign outlining some of the ways that systems can change to better address the need for financially supporting people being harmed. 

These were some highlights: 

• Create mutual aid networks, including lending circles, in your community.
• If you are an employer, you employ survivors. Pay all your staff a living wage.
• Offer all employees paid and protected gender based violence leave, sick leave, parental leave, menstrual leave, and vacation leave
• Offer robust health insurance coverage for mental health services, abortion care, gender-affirming care, and non-Western approaches to healing
• Divest from police and invest in services that make survivors feel safe. Studies have shown that up to 40% of police officers have caused harm to an intimate partner. In our latest research, 22.7% of survivors reported being subjected to police harassment or brutality.
• Create and connect community members to Survivor Resource Hubs. 

FreeFrom has responded to the economic needs of those who have experienced relationship violence in a few ways that are aimed at helping survivors access the money that they need. 

They have created a safety fund, which provides unrestricted funds to people who have been harmed, and a savings matching program, which incentivizes survivors creating savings by matching up to $40 per month that they are able to save. This is intended to help do a little to reverse the ways that intimate partner violence has prevented those who have experienced harm from meeting their basic needs and building wealth for their future. 

In this very uncertain economic time, with high inflation and a slowing job market, people who have experienced domestic violence are in an even more vulnerable economic position than they were when FreeFrom’s study began. As we move through this Domestic Violence Awareness Month, keeping the economic concerns of those who have been harmed front of mind will be important to the work of creating a world where harm is prevented and those who have been harmed are able to heal. 

If you would like to learn more about FreeFrom's studies or advocacy work, visit their website at FreeFrom.org. 



Tess Benser
(they/them/theirs)
Assistant Director, Center for Women & Gender Equity

What's Inside the October Edition?

1. Upcoming Events
2. Art & Activism: Art As Witness
3. Advocacy in Action: Pandemic Related Exploitation
4. LGBTQIA+ History Month: Comparing the History of Pride in the United States & Germany
5. Domestic Violence & Reproductive Coercion: Why & How it Happens

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Events

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Art as Witness

By Hannah Zartman (They/she)

Content warning: There will be discussions of colonization, racism, genocide, and harm against Indigenous peoples. Direct quotes from some sources also include the term “Indian”, referring to Indigenous people. Artworks from the exhibition include imagery of the harm faced by Indigenous people in boarding schools. If these topics or mentions of these topics are not okay for you to interact with at this time, please scroll past this piece. Take care of yourself and your needs first. 

Definitions for language accessibility- Exhibit: a public display in an art gallery or museum

Image of Susan Hudson’s quilt “The Beginning of the End”- https://www.qtm2021.org/beginning/ 

The quilt “The Beginning of the End” by Susan Hudson, displayed in the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, depicts three panels filled with intricate stitching, purposeful fabric placement, and immense care and intentionality. In the imagery, we see Indigenous children being taken through the stages of assimilating to Anglo-European culture in North America. We see children being forced to have their hair cut, even though hair is a sacred aspect of their culture. We see them being stripped of their birth names and given “modern” names instead, names that were more “civilized” or “American”. And Lastly, we see a crowd of blank faces with identical haircuts, depicting the mass assimilation and erasure of Indigenous culture, heritage, and language that these children faced in Indigenous Boarding Schools across the U.S. and Canada. The artist, Susan Hudson of the Kin Yaa aanii Clan of the Navajo Nation, uses quilting to honor her relatives and all others who were taken from their homes and sent to Indigenous Boarding Schools. She says, “A quilt can be the beginning of a conversation about boarding schools… Making quilts is my form of activism”. Her dedication to this craft, which was forced upon young girls at boarding schools, offers a way for Hudson to honor the experiences of harm faced by her people and create conversation and change using the tools that their oppressors attempted to use to break them. 

Hudson’s quilt is part of the ongoing exhibit Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories in the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ. The exhibit is a revitalization of a previous show titled Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience which opened in 2000 at the museum. The previous exhibit sought to illuminate the stories, voices, and lives of Indigenous people who experienced life in these boarding schools. The current exhibit also seeks to amplify the voices of Indigenous people, though through an expanded installation that allows for more stories to be heard, acknowledged, and understood. This updated version was made possible due to a grant given by the National Endowment of the Humanities which is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government. This grant allowed for new digital technologies, artwork, and archives to be used for the show. In addition, the museum created a traveling version of the exhibit that will allow folks across the U.S. to learn about and acknowledge the stories and lives of students in these boarding schools. 

For many Indigenous people, the history of boarding schools and the way they’ve impacted their loved ones and communities has been at the forefront of their minds, actions, and activism. For many people outside of these communities, the impact and even establishment of these boarding schools have been largely misconstrued and erased from public knowledge. Folks outside of Indigenous communities must recognize that this is not by chance; systemic racism within schools has enabled educators to leave out, misinform, and misrepresent the events of the recent past regarding Indigenous communities and European invaders. Indigenous boarding schools operated from the 1870s-1980s; during this time, children were taken from their homes for years and forced to assimilate into “civilized” society. They were made to cut their hair, assigned European or “white-sounding”  names, and forced to speak English rather than their first languages. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse were also not uncommon in these schools. Children were also killed or died at boarding schools as well; more than 50 of the 400+ documented boarding schools across the U.S. have burial sites on their grounds. It is believed that there are more, though they’re unmarked and therefore difficult to estimate a more exact number. In June of 2021, the US Department of the Interior and Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna) released information on an investigation looking into 408 federal boarding schools and respective burial sites. 

This investigation is part of a larger project, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which will continue to investigate the histories of boarding schools and their burial sites. It will also offer steps towards healing within Indigenous communities while also holding the government accountable for its role in the creation and implementation of Indigenous boarding schools. Secretary Haaland also began a project called The Road to Healing which is a year-long initiative that seeks to better understand and aid those who experienced life in Indigenous boarding schools and the impact those years had on themselves and their descendants. As a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, Secretary Haaland recognizes and connects with these folks because she too, has relatives who faced harm within the boarding schools. 

As mentioned before, a way that Indigenous people are reckoning with and healing from the generational traumas inflicted upon them is through art. Art is not only a way to heal personally, but it can also offer a communal experience of solidarity, acknowledgment, and growth. Art can be used as a witness to experiences or events that may otherwise feel isolating or lonely. Indigenous artists like Susan Hudson, Shan Goshorn, Shizu Saldamando, Randy Kemp, Jane Ash Poitras, and Steve Yazzie make art that reflects the experiences, stories, and lives of their people. For these artists, art is used almost as another viewer or persona living through an experience as well. The Heard Museum has offered these artists a space to share their voices, stories, and craft with a large audience while also calling attention to the harm inflicted upon Indigenous people by U.S. officials in boarding schools. Through this exhibit and others like it, conversations and actions centering healing for Indigenous peoples are able to reach masses of people who may not hear their voices otherwise. Art is a powerful witness that Indigenous artists have utilized to listen and understand when others, historically, have not. 

Art and advocacy have also been a means of reclamation of boarding schools for Indigenous folks. Over the 20th and 21st centuries, Indigenous communities and leaders have become more and more central to the curriculum, teachings, and practices of boarding schools that still exist. By reclaiming these spaces, Indigenous people have made something helpful, rather than harmful, out of the boarding school experiences that so many faced. Children who attended schools in the recent past, late 20th century-early 21st century, would have been encouraged to learn more about their tribes, the languages they spoke, the culture of their peoples, and their religious beliefs. The schools were autonomously run by Indigenous leaders who recognized the importance of teaching the younger generations about their heritage. Although unintentional, this progression of agency and self-advocacy grew from places that were meant to break Indigenous folks and their communities. It is clear that through various forms of activism, holding federal governments accountable, and demanding justice, Indigenous people have asserted their power and resilience against those that sought to do them harm. 

[A tan graphic featuring colorful illustrations of people of various races and genders all wearing masks, featuring brown text, "Pandemic Related Exploitation From an 'Essential' Worker."]

“Starbucks strongly recommends customers wear facial coverings while visiting our stores, regardless of vaccination status. Where mandated by local law or regulation, Starbucks will require customers to wear masks while in our stores. Additionally, starting August 5 (2022) all company-operated store partners are required, regardless of vaccination status, to wear facial coverings while on shift.”

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Comparing the History of Pride in the United States & Germany

By Jocelyn Brown (she/her)

Content warnings for mentions of homophobic violence, police brutality, and the Holocaust.

Click here to see a photo album of everything mentioned in the article from our time in Germany!

Introduction

    This August 2022, I had a chance to go on a short-term study abroad course for political science about what makes democracy work in Germany and abroad. We stayed for two weeks in Bad Bevensen, Hamburg, and Berlin. One of our assignments was to take photographs of democracy in action in Hamburg. The assignment was supposed to happen on a Sunday, but when we learned that the Hamburg Pride Parade was happening that Saturday, we begged the professors to switch the days. Thankfully, they obliged. Everyone who attended the pride parade said that the most notable aspect was the lack of police presence. 

Police at pride parades is a continued debate in the United States, as they are often mandated to have a presence, even if they are not welcome. While some U.S. cities have recently banned officers in uniform marching at pride, other cities have hesitated to commit. Heritage of Pride, which hosts the New York City Pride Parade, has banned law enforcement until 2025. Heritage of Pride states, “The sense of safety that law enforcement is meant to provide can instead be threatening, and at times dangerous, to those in our community who are most often targeted with excessive force and/or without reason. NYC Pride is unwilling to contribute in any way to creating an atmosphere of fear or harm for members of the community.” Before the ban, Andrea Ritchie, an author and lawyer, was on-call legal support for NYC Pride. She claims that she witnessed instances of police violence at pride every year for ten years. While there were no police at our experience in Hamburg, it is important to note that Germany is still not perfect. Germany still experiences police brutality against marginalized groups and homophobic hate crimes. Later that same August, on the 27th, a 25-year-old man was attacked in Münster’s pride parade, and he unfortunately later succumbed to his injuries. Sven Lehmann, the German Federal Government's Commissioner for the Acceptance of Sexual and Gender Diversity, later condemned the attack. 

Stonewall & the Weimar Republic 

    It is interesting to note that some European countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, actually call their pride celebrations Christopher Street Day (CSD). CSD Hamburg, which we attended, is one of the most prominent events in Germany. These events all take place between June and August, and they are named after Christopher Street in NYC, where the Stonewall Inn is located. The most common phrase surrounding Stonewall is, “The first pride was a riot.” The Stonewall riots were a series of protests in June 1969 in response to a police raid at the Inn, a gay bar, which escalated into multiple arrests and instances of police violence. While it was certainly not the first such uprising in U.S. history, it became the most prominent. To mark the first anniversary of the riots in 1970, the first pride parades were held in major U.S. cities. Similarly, the first German CSD took place in Berlin in 1979, but there were other pride events by different names before then. Berlin continues to be a leader in European pride events.

    While Europe references American history of pride with its CSDs, Germany has its own fascinating history. While most people consider history to be linearly progressive, as in always getting better for marginalized groups, history is really a complex relationship of push-and-pull factors. Michael Neureiter, a political scientist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, writes, “While it is important to stress the significance of Stonewall for the LGBT community, it would be wrong to perceive of the gay rights movement as an entirely contemporary phenomenon.” In fact, some academics cite the Weimar Republic as the time of the first organized pride movement in history. The Weimar Republic (1919-1932) was an experiment in democracy that preceded Nazi Germany. Same-sex acts between men were illegal under the infamous act Paragraph 175, which had been adopted from the Prussian legal code during German unification. It did not include same-sex acts between women. Between 1919 and 1932, almost 8,000 men were convicted of violating Paragraph 175 and could spend up to four years in prison. 

The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was one activist group who wanted to overturn Paragraph 175 and educate the public on gay rights. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a lawyer and committee member, has been described as the “first gay man in world history.” Ulrichs was one of the first people in Germany to openly acknowledge his identity as a gay man and worked towards education his entire life. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Intersex Law Association presents a Karl Heinrich Ulrichs Award every year in his honor. The Weimar era also had extremely loose censorship laws, so the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and other activists were able to publish both educational and entertaining gay media, such as films, plays, and magazines, without much concern. Gay World War I veterans were also key to the movement and created communities for those struggling. Similar to the Berlin of today, Berlin had the most gay clubs or bars of any European city at the time. While Paragraph 175 was still in effect, the law was vague and difficult to enforce, so the police often left gay meeting places alone as long as there were no “public disturbances.”

In October 1929, a vote to repeal Paragraph 175 had finally passed. However, by the time the Nazis won the majority of the vote in the Reichstag, the repeal had not yet come into effect. Instead, the Nazis were able to broaden the scope of Paragraph 175 and strengthen its punishments. They also reinstated harsh censorship laws, shut down Berlin’s gay scene, and would eventually send LGBTQ+ folks to prisons and concentration camps. Overall, around 50,000 men were sentenced to police prisons, where they could be subjected to torture or forced labor. Another 10-15,000 men were sent to die in concentration camps, often under the guise of conversion therapy. After the Allies won World War II, they chose not to repeal Paragraph 175 or release prisoners arrested for their sexuality. On the reality of post-WWII life in West Germany, The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust states, “People who had been persecuted by the Nazis for homosexuality had a hard choice: either to bury their experience and pretend it never happened, with all the personal consequences of such an action, or to try to campaign for recognition in an environment where the same neighbours, the same law, same police and same judges prevailed.”

Because the Allies tried to bury the truth instead of returning to the tolerance of the Weimar era, research into these victims of the Holocaust is still ongoing. West Germany would continue the police raids and arrests under the law. Even after homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, Paragraph 175 remained, so another 3,500 men would be convicted during this time of legal limbo. The federal government finally repealed Paragraph 175 in 1994, after the unification of West and East Germany. In 2016, the government established a pardon and financial compensation scheme for anyone convicted under Paragraph 175. Of course, some victims had already died, and in those cases, the government made payments to gay rights movements instead. Federal Minister of Justice Heiko Mass stated, “The burden of guilt lies with the state because it made the lives of so many people so difficult. Paragraph 175 was from the very beginning unconstitutional. The old convictions are unjust [and] do huge injury to the human dignity of each convicted man.” To conclude, same-sex marriage ultimately became legal in Germany in 2017. 

Returning to Personal Reflections

    Although Germany is now cited as one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly countries currently, there are still significant challenges for LGBTQ+ folks in Germany. According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Human Rights, 57% of Germans believe people in their country are fairly or very open to LGBTQ+ folks, but 36% of respondents had still been harassed in the previous year. And, although it is clear that democracy is worth protecting, when alt-right, white nationalist parties are elected, it is marginalized people that pay the price in blood. A German man quoted anonymously in the same study states, “At the moment, I think that the situation for LGBT people in Germany is likely to worsen again due to the increase in right-wing conservative parties and the generally more aggressive sentiment against everything that is different.”

    Besides at the pride parade, we saw plenty of LGBTQ+ folks existing happily in public, pride flags on government buildings, and advertisements for drag shows. Our tour guide in Hamburg took us around the gay districts of St. Georg and St. Pauli, just outside the main train station. He stopped us at a cross pattern in the pavement in front of a church. Each stone in the cross is labeled with someone that has died during the AIDS epidemic. The German program director, Martin Kaiser, We also went to the Miniatur Wunderland during our time in Hamburg, which is a model railway museum based on locations around the world. They are famous for interspersing politics in the exhibits. We noticed one of the windows in Brazil said Rio Sem Homofobia, which is a real gay rights movement in Brazil. When we were walking around in Berlin, we stumbled upon the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, which is across the street from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial is a huge concrete cube in the park; the cube has a window where a film showing gay couples kissing plays on a loop. We were also a little obsessed with the socialist fraternal kiss, which became the image of the trip. The fraternal kiss was the greeting between socialist leaders. We got to see the mural of politicians Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker’s kiss painted on the east side of the Berlin Wall, which became one of its most famous murals. 

Conclusion

[A teal graphic featuring headshots of Ignacio Rivera and Aredvi Azad as well as logos for The Center for Women & Gender Equity and The Heal Project.]

Event Preview for Sexual Liberation: Living at the Intersections with The HEAL Project

Tess Benser (they/them) 

On October 25th at 6:00pm, The Center for Women & Gender Equity is excited to virtually host The Heal Project for their program, Sexual Liberation. The HEAL Project is a QTBIPOC, Disabled, and Survivor-led educational initiative using media to prevent and end Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) through healing the wounds of sexual oppression and embracing sexual liberation. This program will dissect the concept of sexual liberation, freedom, and privilege— specifically how it interacts with race, class, and gender. What does sexual liberation look like when we often witness a predominantly white, heterosexual, male-dominated, anti-trans culture? How do queers, poor people, transfolks, people of color, and women get access to the privilege of desire and exploration? How does oppression show up in our bedrooms and between our legs? Join us as we walk through and dissect the obstructed path to sexual liberation.

The HEAL Project works as a media education organization that is dedicated to shifting the culture of sexual violness by bringing awareness to systemic root causes of Childhood Sexual Abuse. CSA is often siled in efforts to prevention sexual violence on a misconception that CSA is rare. However, CSA is very common, impacts children of all genders, and is particularly prevalent in historically marginalized communities. Understanding that CSA increases the likelihood of life-long repeat victimization of sexual and relationship violence for survivors, is a core goal of The HEAL Project. The HEAL Project was founded in 2016 by Mx. Ignacio G Hutía Xeiti Rivera, M.A., a cultural sociologist with expertise in sexual trauma and healing, to bridge CSA prevention with the larger movement to end gender-based violence, and break generational cycles of sexual harm by educating parents, healing survivors, and transforming the culture of sex itself. 

In addition to conducting workshops, the Heal Project also offers a number of additional offerings aimed toward sexual liberation and the ending of sexual abuse. They have an archive of their previous webinars, which are available for a tax deductible donation, and cover topics of survivorship, surviving harm and causing harm, and navigating virtual sex for covid-19 and beyond. Their educational offerings extend past the webinars. The Heal Project also produces a video series, available to watch on their YouTube Channel, called Caution: Unrestricted. Season one of this series talks about “bad” survivors or survivors whose experiences do not match up with societal expectations of what people who have experienced harm should look like. Season two talks about family dirty, and investigates how familial dynamics can help to perpetuate a culture of sexual harm. 

The Heal Project offers a teaching tool for sexual healing and sexual liberation. They offer “RASHIM & Friends", a comic series that helps engagement with RASHIM (Rivera-Azad Sexual Healing Integration Model). RASHIM is the result of Ignacio and Aredvi's three decades of combined experiences with sexuality, trauma, healing, and sexual liberation. This comic series offers suggestions on how to navigate boundaries and advise, and how to provide an affirming environment for children and young people who are curious about sex and their bodies. They also offer their monthly newsletter which offers exclusive content not available on social media and responds to news and cultural events. 

The HEAL Project is led by Ignacio Rivera and Aredvi Azad. You can read their bios and visit their webpages below. 

Ignacio G Hutía Xeiti Rivera (Ig-Nah-See-Oh Gee Who-tee-ah She-eye-tee Ree-ve-Rah), M.A., is a cultural sociologist with expertise in sexual trauma and healing for marginalized populations. Ignacio is a Queer, Trans/Genderfluid, Chronically-ill, Black-Boricua, and Taíno activist who prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “they.” They are an internationally known gender non-conforming speaker, educator, writer, and performer with over 20 years of experience on multiple fronts, including economic justice, anti-racist and anti-violence work, as well as mujerista, LGBTQI and sex positive movements. Ignacio is also the founder and curator of Poly Patao Productions, which began 20 years ago and centers the sexual liberation of LGBTQI people of color. Ignacio’s work is influenced by their lived experience of homelessness, poverty, and sexual trauma and is focused on providing educational opportunities that are especially geared toward the sexual liberation of queer women, transgender, multi-gender, gender-queer, gender non-conforming, gender variant and queer people of color.

Ignacio is the host of Connecting The Dots, a talk show that paints a holistic picture of how Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) shows up in everyday life and every level of society. Ignacio and their guests discuss ways to take an active role in changing the culture of shame and secrecy that makes CSA possible.

As the Founder and Executive Director of The HEAL Project, Ignacio is on a mission to prevent and end childhood sexual abuse through healing the wounds of sexual oppression and embracing sexual liberation. igrivera.com | heal2end.org


Aredvi Azad (uh-Red-vee ah-Zah-d) is a certified sex and relationship coach, and an educator, writer, and speaker who has been producing educational media on gender and sexuality, kink and BDSM, and intersectional approaches to relationship building for the past decade. An Irani-American immigrant living with multiple invisible disabilities, Aredvi is a queer and trans/genderfluid relationship nerd who uses the gender neutral pronoun “they.” Aredvi’s work focuses on identifying patterns of bonding in adults who have experienced childhood emotional and sexual trauma, including generational and oppressive trauma of racism, sexism, classism, and other systems of inequality. As a scientist-turned-sex-educator, Aredvi is a self-proclaimed sexual liberationist working towards a sexually imaginative and expansive world. Aredvi is a Co-Executive Director at The HEAL Project, on a mission to prevent and end childhood sexual abuse through healing the wounds of sexual oppression and embracing sexual liberation. aredviazad.com | heal2end.org