Transcript:

0:00

KIYOMI: What can accountability offer people who have been harmed, or survivors of violence particularly?

00:06

SHANNON: One of the things that I have seen be very common with many people who've experienced domestic and sexual violence, there's a sense of a disempowerment. There's a sense of like, I didn't get to make choices about myself, my body, and my life. And that is very confusing and overwhelming to people. And one of the things that I think can be so valuable about self accountability is it can be the strategy of looking at where you can get to make sense of that experience without having to reconcile with another person who's done harm to you. So you don't have to go to the person who's done harm to you and say like, you know, and be on the same page, so try to reconcile that together. You actually get to look inside yourself and say like, you know, what was going on for me? What do I need to heal? What do I need to move forward? Are there different things I need in my life in order to get the support that I need? And so I think it provides people a really powerful tool for healing without having, without having some of that external validation that's so rare for so many survivors.

01:05

KIYOMI: One thing that I know comes up sometimes when we're talking about self accountability is sort of this idea that self accountability is somehow a way of like, putting the blame back on survivors. Could you speak to that a little bit?

01:17

SHANNON: For many survivors, they have, in my experience, a complex understanding of what their role is in surviving. I think particularly when it comes to domestic violence that's, that pattern of power and control, the long term - just how, what a long span that domestic violence and the harms can happen in - it makes for a really complex landscape to understand what happened. And because domestic violence happens in the context of a relationship, many, many survivors of domestic violence feel like they did have a role, feel like they made choices at certain times. And so telling somebody that feels like they made choices to move towards a relationship that wasn't serving them that it wasn't their fault and that they never, they didn't have any role in that often just doesn't even ring true for survivors. And so sometimes I think this tool of self accountability can actually be a little bit more honest way to approach survivors. To say you know, you made decisions in the context of a shitty situation. You had bad choices all around and you made the best choice for you in that moment. Or maybe you made not the best choice for you in that moment. And getting people to understand how they, what choices they made, how they navigated that, how they survived.

02:36

KIYOMI: I think a lot about the different ways that survivors make choices and how we're already limited in terms of economics, in terms of immigration status, in terms of transphobia and homophobia and all the different ways that our choices are limited. And then we're making choices sort of within that.

02:55

SHANNON: People do lots of different things in the course of surviving. Sometimes that's stuff that like, you get really praised for as being strong. And sometimes people do things in the course of surviving that they do not feel proud of, that they would never want to tell anyone, that is not who they want to be in the world. And people feel profound shame around that. And it's really hard to heal when you feel shame. And so you know, if you did something in the course of surviving that is not who you want to be, that's not how you want to be in the world, it's very, very powerful to have a tool for, to look at that without it being used against you. And so you know, when I talk about self accountability, especially for survivors, I actually think it's essential to do that not with the person that was harming you. That's not a task you're going and saying like you know, I lied to you in the course of surviving and that wasn't right. Like, I think that's something people do for themselves, to reconcile like you know, I lied in the course of surviving and that was not who I wanted to be, but I did that because it was not safe for me to be my true, honest self. So few people really understand how domestic violence works. People really believe that domestic violence is the moment that one person hits another, or that one person yells at another, or one person degrades another person. Domestic violence is a pattern of power and control that's like all the moments that you love each other and things are so great and you feel seen and connected, and the moments that are hard that you're staying up all night fighting, that physical violence happens. All that goes into the pattern and that pattern slowly degrades choices for survivors. And one of the things self accountability does, it starts to give choice back. It starts to give a sense of of autonomy. It starts to give a sense of self-determination that you, actually you know, in order to engage in the task of accountability you actually have to have a sense of autonomy. You have to have a sense of self. And that is why it's so, so essential I think, when people understand the true harm of domestic violence. It actually really helps understand why accountability, self accountability, is such an important healing tool for survivors as well.

04:51

(Music)