I say this with love as an experienced civil liberties activist since the early 1990s AND an advocate with thousands of hours of victim facing advocacy work:
Activism can move mountains and effect great change. However it is not generally trauma-informed and many activists can be arrogant, abusive, fact-resistant and quite toxic.
If you are male survivor or your perpetrator was female, online and social media activists often lack empathy or may intentionally retraumatize for ideological reasons. This is an unfortunate reality of online activism that must change.
While many advocates can also be arrogant at times, they are usually trauma-informed and don’t target survivors of any type for abuse.
Both sides of this coin have a role in the anti-sexual violence movement. However, the activist side in particular really fucking needs to work on its latent toxicity toward male victims and women who were sexually assaulted by other women. Fix it, or lose credibility. Decide. The time for childish defense of this abusive behavior is long past.
