While interviewing Shiori Ito, the face of Japan's #MeToo movement, she said that looking back at how much Taiwan had come through and progress, she felt confident in the future.
Many studies have shown that when human or animals encounter an extremely dangerous situation with fright or despair, the body will freeze, which is a natural mechanism to protect itself from feeling pain. Not to mention how rape survivors would choose to obey, avoid angering the perpetrator to ensure maximum survival. This is the reality not reflected in the law.
In our last interview, Shiori mentioned to prove rape in Japan, the victims are expected to react in certain ways: you'd have to scream, resist, thrash around, and be injured by the perpetrator. If not, the judge would assume you consented.
Not just the law. The society has single-minded imagination for the survivors' presence: they must look miserable, weak, unable to speak well, and dressed in conservative clothes. However, the survivors are not an abstract "concept" nor should they live a certain "image", they're just who they are.
Shiori recalled the day of her first appearance in the press conference. A respected journalist friend told her, 'You should wear a black suit, people would take you more seriously and more likely to believe you.'" Ito said with a smile. "Later on I told him, no, I prefer to wear what makes me comfortable."
She decided to dress a white shirt, leaving the first two buttons open, just like her formal usuals. However, this decision made her suffer the most serious backlash in the whole incident. "Look at her, she's a slut!" Those harsh comments kept repeating at that time. She paused a while to continue, "this is also the reason why I decided to leave my shirt open, I don't want people to look at victims of sexual assault with a certain image."
Neither dressing in conservative nor behaving "safer" has ever prevented people from being sexually assaulted. Yet these imaginations stopped survivors from telling their own truths, for they are afraid to face the backlashes once they acted differently from the images of a victim.
"I never posted photos of myself on the internet publicly. However, some people found my photos from my friend's Instagram, the picture was taken two months after the incident, I was smiling and holding a camera at work. And they say I lied about being raped, just because I was able to smile at the camera while working."
She then realized it's never about those unbuttoned shirts nor the ability to smile politely at work events. Any little act could lead to false accusation of Shiori being a lier. Simply because she did not behave the way of how people would portray sexually assaulted victims.
"The idea of how the victim or the perpetrator should look like and how they should behave is all mythical, that's why I chose to show up publicly, to reveal myself with my voice and name. Because after the incident, I still have to live my life, just like everyone else."
You must believe in your own truth, you must believe in yourself
"But first of all, you must be able to survive first. In our society, you must have a job in order to live independently, if you decide to expose your story, there's a big chance you might lose your job, and these difficult situations make it painful for people to survive."
Everyone has their own way of survival. Shiori said she doesn't have a universal guide to help others, but she always tells them one thing: The survival come first, find a way to stay alive. "You know the best, other people might criticize or judge what happened to you, but deep down only you know what happened. So, you must believe in your own truth, you must believe in yourself."
"And for me, my way of survival is to speak out the truth."
Ito lowered her eyes, looked at her palm, and told me something that's not in her best interest for an interview. "In fact, for me to get through that tough time, I relied on alcohol, sleeping pills, and other medications." with her tone increased slightly, "It's not the best solution for survivors or people with PTSD, but...I needed them at that time."
To survive, and to feel better gradually - is the key to open up a new chapter. Don't blame yourself for trying. I appreciate her honesty in revealing the dark side of survival, so other survivors could release their guilt and feel they are understood.
And the support from others is vital too. "If you don't feel safe to speak up, it's hard to get help from others, even harder to get through the trauma."
After Ito revealed her story, she received tons of emails flooding in her mailbox, those letters were from other survivors, people who have never got a support system and thus suffered from the memory of sexual assault for more than a decade. The silence on rape had poisoned their lives.
She used the story of Lady Gaga as an example. It took Lady Gaga seven years to reveal that she has struggled with PTSD since she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. Until now, she still battling with PTSD and chronic pain day-to-day.
"Sometimes people would ask if I have put it behind? My answer is no. Still, I questioned myself, can I call myself a survivor? Because I'm still trying to survive every single day." With a wry smile, she said the incident of that night would flash into her mind deviously sometimes, and she would suddenly burst into tears.
"I was working in a desert in Arizona two weeks ago, out of nowhere, I started crying." She asked herself: Why am I still suffering?
"The aftermath of sexual assault is often invisible. Unlike other physical violence that would cause obvious injury such as broken bones, bleeding, etc., The harm from sexual abuse are masked to the naked eye, but it doesn't mean the damage doesn't exist." Shiori believes that sex is the foundation of human existence, hurting it could cause great damage to a person's dignity. "Rape is often used as a weapon in wars, with the power to destroy a person, a family, a community, and even a country."
To be honest, I'm not that angry at Yamaguchi anymore
After Ito reported the case to the officials, she told her family too, "I don't want them to know this from others, I wanted my sister to know what happened to me, and if the same thing happened to her, she would know what actions to take based on my experience, and she's safe to tell me everything."
In Japan, many families would stop the victims from reporting the assault, they regard this as a disgrace to the family. Shiori said she's been lucky for her family had never stopped her from going on court, or publishing her story. "However, my father was very mad at me. He said, 'How can you be so calm? Why aren't you angry enough?' My mother was extremely mad as well, her reaction was "I want to kill that person!'"
She didn't feel comfortable to discuss this with her family because they were too emotional, which she could understand. "I did go through that phase. It was too hard for them."
Speaking of which, Ito revealed a smile and mentioned she received a lot of support and companionship during her hard times. The publishing of Black Box heavily relied on the help of the editor and Ito's best friend. "I was afraid of reviewing all those recording files and documents about the case, it's my friend who helped me transcribed into copy and published the book."
The editor of Black Box was also under a lot of pressure since Yamaguchi is a heavyweight author of the same publisher. The editor had to keep the book as a secret until it's done. "It was challenging, actually we did everything in 3 months."
Shiori said she was surrounded by amazing people, not only women but also men. "For example, the investigator was telling me all the stupid things at first, but in the end, he's a human, so he helped me a lot. Knowing some actions could threaten his job, he still did things other investigators wouldn't do."
Sometimes people would say to her: if I do this, I might lose my job or face serious consequences that could change my life. But these people would always come back to Shiori saying: "You know what, I don't want to give up for who I am, so I want to do this." It's Shiori who would say: " No you don't have to do this, let's think it through." She smiled sweetly, "that's the most beautiful thing I discovered the past three years."
Look back at Taiwan's progress, I have faith in the future
Now Shiori wants to build a supportive environment for survivors in Japan. Looking back at how much Taiwan had come through and progress, she felt confident in the future.
"It has to change! And I do believe it can change." She said with her eyes glowing. The first step starts with the legal system. "Japanese are good at following the rule, we don't really talk about our minds, but if the law can change, then people would behave in that way even though they don't agree with it."
"Also, it's important to compare and share the experiences." From Shiori's personal experience, it's been hard to talk about sexual violence domestically, but once she tried to talk from the outside and create a dialogue, things started to change.
"So we got to be optimistic!" She looked cheerful, "we have a great example of how you made a change. I'm really surprised by how many social workers, NGOs, and organizations you have in supporting the survivors. I know you think it's far from perfect, but we can learn from what you've done already."
Now she has the energy to feedback to the Japanese society. Her documentary film Lonely Death on Channel News Asia explores the context of a serious social issue in Japan: people lose connections with each other, live in isolation and die lonely. The film won silver world medal at 2018 New York Festivals for social issue category.
Apart from her documentary projects, Shiori works on her physical strength as well. She's now learning MMA for gaining physical control, feeling the strength growing in her body.
Surviving is a verb, it contains wrestling with memories, believing in your own truth, reclaiming the strength, breaking down from time to time, putting yourself back together again, building confidence, reconnecting with people, feeding back to the community. That's what makes a person becomes a survivor and a warrior of life.
Author & translator｜Wanyun Chang
Proofreader｜Weiyi Lin
from 女人迷 womany.net https://ift.tt/2UXTDii
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