sweating and my heart is beating so fast
I feel like it’s about to fall on the
floor expose for y’all to see all the
while I’m thinking say the right thing
the right move the right amount of
self-sacrifice oh really this all feels
just like the anxiety of her first date
man I wonder what my tinder profile
might say about me oh wow I’m Dylan I’m
actually 30 years old and I am less than
a kilometer away from you I am a social
worker meets media maker and I’m also
violence against women advocate
currently working at the ottawa
coalition to end violence against women
or a tiny yet mighty organization here
in ottawa recently i was appointed to
the minister SAS women’s advisory
committee to help shape the federal
strategy to end gender-based violence in
canada as the LGBTQ expert and cyber
violence expert but mostly my tinder
profile might tell you that I’m awkward
my best pick-up line is do you want to
play Scrabble it might tell you that I’m
gender non-conforming which means I use
the pronouns day in them that I like
long walks on the beach that I have
three tamagachi children and that my
life is an excruciating a torturous push
and pull between my feminist identity
and my undying love for the bachelor
I know I know there really is no hope
for me but I guess in a way our lives
are all one swipe right away from
something and that something isn’t
always a perfect match or happily ever
after sometimes we can’t always see
what’s in the depths of people’s lives
in the glow of our iphone screens or
honor tinder profiles you know I have a
hard time telling my story I was 20 then
and I’m 30 now and some things don’t
necessarily change but I know that I
have you see late one night I was
walking to my car after class in my
first year of university and my car was
located in one of the furthest loss and
they are i was raped by three men huh
there I said it it doesn’t get any
easier but I think you get stronger I
cannot begin to express you the enormity
of that night as survivors I think we
spend a lot of our time running running
from something or trying to find
somewhere desperately to run from and
you run from it for as long as you can
until you finally have to face it and
facing it is through no choice or no
fault of your own but sometimes it’s
impaled upon you and you have to carry
it with you wherever you go along every
crack and crevice along every edge and
cliff you always contemplate the jump
I couldn’t get out of bed for weeks my
body hurt all the time sometimes I had
to shower six times a day just to scrape
them off me like salvation I quit school
I lost a scholarship my parents couldn’t
figure out what was happening to me how
I could go from being an honor roll
student to just never going back to
school the thing but I didn’t know would
be the hardest was the amount of friends
I didn’t know I would lose I still feel
like I lost parts of myself that night
parts that I’m not sure you ever give
back so you try to pick up the pieces
over and over again you try to gather up
enough courage to go on why would anyone
every day reminds me of that day in some
small irrelevant way whether it’s I see
a car that reminds me of that night or I
wear perfume or smell perfume that
reminds me of that night these are my
daily reminders but don’t worry I’m not
just a survivor I’m not just broken I’m
not tragic I’m surviving I’m here and
I’m amazingly alive and I might be one
in three but I know that these
statistics are actually people’s lives
the real life experiences and they’re
trying to tell us something sexual
violence doesn’t just happen at night it
doesn’t just happen when strangers
decide they want to attack her harass
women it happens in our communities and
our families it happens with our friends
it happens at our schools it happens on
the internet it happens when we live in
a society built on racism and
colonialism and homophobia and
transphobia and ableism it happens when
we live in a culture that blame
survivors for their actions and doesn’t
hold people who hurt others accountable
it happens when we live in a society
where of the sexual assaults that are
reported so many of them are ever
recorded as a crime and even less of
those are prosecuted sexual violence is
all around us this issue is so much
bigger than you or me so I came to this
work not by a coincidence and not by
cliche but because so many of us have
our daily reminders this is rehtaeh
rehtaeh group and how facts she was like
a lot of other young people young
teenagers her father once told me that
she was the kind of person who was
willing to help anyone or any animal she
was tender-hearted and fun-loving and
then in just three short days her whole
life changed in November of 2011 at the
age of 15 rehtaeh Parsons went with a
friend to a party like most teenagers do
and they were drinking and there she was
raped by for teenage boys rehtaeh
couldn’t remember a lot of what happened
that night except for the fact that at
one point she woke up vomiting while
someone was sexually assaulting her but
what she didn’t know was that a
photograph was taken of the incident and
that photograph became widespread within
the school and town in three days she
was blamed she was slut-shamed in the
town nobody would help her in her
community the school would not intervene
the police when they finally decided to
get involved they thought there wasn’t
enough credible evidence to be able to
in three whole days her whole life
changed on April 7th at eleven-fifteen
p.m. rehtaeh Parsons died by suicide she
died struggling to live like she spent
the last 18 months of her life her case
is reopened in light of new credible
information and there’s a charge of
distribution and protection of child
pornography but in a lot of ways there
really was no justice for rehtaeh
Parsons because we’re still not talking
about what happened to her that she was
sexually assaulted or that she
experienced online gender-based violence
and at the end of the day she’s still
gone how are we all doing I know that’s
tough just remember that we’re all in
this together and take a moment to
but its banks a bigger question is the
internet a wild wild west that can’t be
tamed the problem violence and abuse is
the greatest challenge the internet
faces today in a recent report with the
UN / seventy-three percent of women
reported experiencing some form of
online gender-based violence what we
know about gender based violence locally
is that in a research study over with
young women in high schools a hundred
percent of the respondents said that
there’s a vibe they have experienced
gender-based violence but the thing is
is that technology is always changing
and we can’t keep up I know a lot of us
the internet is kind of just this weird
experience that we have but for a lot of
young people it’s a place where they
find community and empowerment but it’s
also quite dangerous from what we know
in talking with young women and looking
at the issues is that this is so much
bigger than just mean tweets or comments
on articles there’s the issue of online
harassment which I mean we talk about
trolls and I’m not talking about the
cute rolls with the hair and the the
jewelry I’m talking about p
who are on the internet harming people
and oftentimes his harm is aimed at
women I have a friend who is a feminist
blogger in Toronto and just because she
uses a platform to talk about
experiences and what it’s like to be a
woman she’s had people seek out her
private information and release it
publicly where her child goes to school
where she works her banking information
this is what’s happening to women just
for the sake of having a voice online
the issue of non-consensual distribution
of intimate images also we sometimes
talk to it talk about it as revenge porn
or sexting while it’s not porn because
it’s not consensual and it’s not revenge
because we shouldn’t feel entitled to
those things to begin with but we saw
this with the case of Jennifer Lawrence
in her / iCloud leak with all of her
intimate images we saw this with Amanda
Todd who was a young person in bc who
had her photos go viral and she was
slut-shamed she had to change schools at
least three times before she committed
suicide we see this in the issues of
recordings of sexual assaults like with
what happened to rehtaeh Parsons and so
many other young women on the internet
there’s a recent Netflix documentary
about Audrey and Daisy and what it means
to be a victim online and how victims
are demonized and perpetrators aren’t
held accountable digital dating abuse I
can go on the Google App Store and find
things like a girlfriend tracker I can
go on tinder and use GPS location and
geo-mapping just to figure out where
people are these are things that happen
on the internet people talk about black
mirrors being this kind of technological
future but we’re actually leaving that
right now I know right it’s terrifying
but don’t worry I have some hope for you
there’s young people in canada in ottawa
who are doing such amazing work around
these issues and there’s some things
that they want you to know for example
cyberbullying please stop using that
term it’s overused
it doesn’t make any sense it doesn’t
actually get at what we’re talking about
this is violence this is also a gender
issue it affects mostly young women and
LGBTQ people young people of color it’s
relentless and inescapable oftentimes
because you can’t escape it even if you
go home at night it’s a systemic issue
but also that adults focus too much on
the negative sides of online life you
can have to talk telling young people to
get off the internet because this is
where their communities are this is
where they find their friendships and
support and it’s not consent if you can
understand these long terms and
conditions community policies that
people can understand legal jargon young
people they say hey if we can’t
understand it then we don’t consent to
it it’s like being on a powder keg
that’s about to explode and surveillance
is actually a problem it’s not a
solution we should stop policing young
people we should help them because they
are the experts of their own lives but
you put all these things together it
really is a perfect storm how many of
you have made a mistake when you are a
teenager most of us imagine never being
able to escape that mistake imagine
never being able to have the right to be
forgotten do you really want to live in
that world young women in ottawa are
changemakers but we need a paradigm
shift because this is not just a women’s
issue it’s everybody’s issue we need to
be building communities of care
community that requires critical
awareness of all the things we must
continue to do and build on and work to
unlearn all the ways in which we engage
and behave that actually sustain
gender-based violence we need a culture
change we need for young people to be
able to come up up to us and say hey I’m
in it really deep right now I’m in a
mess I’m in trouble and I could really
use your help mom and dad they need to
be able to go to trusted adults for
support they need you to list
they need you to stop blaming them and
shaming them and telling them don’t
share your pictures don’t text we need
to have these conversations with young
people we need to tell them that they’re
not alone and there’s other things that
we need to think about too we need to
start asking ourselves hard questions
like for people that are developing
these technologies are we developing
them with young people in mind and with
women in mind where’s your corporate
social responsibility when you’re
creating these kinds of platforms the
issue for example is free speech free
speech for whom we need to work together
to do this whether you’re a parent or an
educator or an advocate or your person
working in the technology sector because
building safer digital spaces means the
ability for all users of all genders
sexualities races abilities to be able
to come and participate meaningfully in
these online spaces because not
everything is a disaster and even when
it is we’ll be able to know what to do
with it and I’m talking about real power
not just empowerment and if I could
leave you with just one thing today is
this if a person in your life comes to
you and they trust you enough to tell
you the hardest thing that’s ever
in doing this you have the power to help
remake the world in the next 150 years thank you