Abstract
In Hear Our Stories: Campus Sexual Violence, Intersectionality, and How We Build a Better University, Jessica C. Harris sets out to address the many intersectional failures that occur when viewing sexual violence response and prevention from a whitewashed, “race-evasive,” one-size-fits-all framework. Harris argues that we have ignored the role racism plays in experiences of sexual violence and, in so doing, erased Women of Color's experiences. Using qualitative interviews conducted at three large public institutes of higher education in the United States, Harris illustrates how the experiences of sexual violence for these Women of Color were about “intra-racial politics of reporting, the influence of structural racial diversity on their decisions to disclose, and how intergenerational and historical trauma acted as a precursor to experiencing sexual violence” (p. 11). Focusing on institutional betrayal as a form of intersectional failure, Harris provides a rich picture of what Women of Color experience when they experience campus sexual violence; and this work fills a significant gap in the literature of campus-based sexual violence prevention and response work.
This is a case study of three different institutions: River University, Mountain University, and City University, three public universities with populations ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 students. All three institutions have minority-majority populations where white populations ranged from 10 to 30 percent. This is particularly important given that much of the prevention and response research and programming has historically focused on white, cisgender, heterosexual students. Three of the book's six chapters focus specifically on how students at each of these schools experienced sexual violence and were failed by their institutions. Harris interviewed 34 Women of Color survivors on two separate occasions (primary interview and then follow-up) as well as staff in prevention and response offices on those campuses. By choosing three institutions that were predominately populated by students of color, Harris is able to illustrate the many ways these students experience sexual violence prevention and response on their campuses and document the many flaws and failures in the way campuses frame and enact prevention and response efforts.
This book presents the many ways institutions can betray students and community members when they do not seem to take sexual violence on their campuses as seriously as is warranted. For example, students and staff at these schools talked about the ways institutions seem to sweep incidents under the rug or how they did not seem to respond in ways that made survivors feel seen or believed. Students often felt like their experiences of violence were not “serious enough” to be taken seriously because they did not fit within the flawed narratives of stranger rape that are riddled with white supremacist narratives about the dubiousness of black men and the purity of white women. This myth of stranger rape fails to capture the vast majority of experiences of campus sexual violence, which more often than not are committed by acquaintances rather than “strangers in a dark alley.”
Of particular importance is Harris's use of intersectional theory to outline the many intersectional failings that illustrate how these women's experiences are rarely centered in discussions or policies. These intersectional failings include what happens once students go to campus but, importantly, also the kinds of sexual health education (or significant lack thereof) these students receive before they get to campus. The clear discussion of the failings of the U.S. sexual health education system helps illustrate the many systemic failures for students of color. When schools and families refuse to discuss sexual health for religious, cultural, or political reasons, students are left with little information and often turn to friends or the internet, typically leading to more sexual misinformation and less reliable comprehensive education.
Not only does Harris do a thorough job illustrating and detailing how these particular Women of Color have experienced sexual violence and the institutional and intersectional failures that created further failures, but she also uses her clear intersectional framework to provide new ways to move forward in our research on, and efforts toward, prevention and response to campus sexual violence. Harris concludes the book with an important discussion on healing. While she discusses the importance of healing and the many ways in which survivors can heal, she poignantly points out that not all of these Women of Color survivors have healed. Healing for Women of Color survivors, as Harris describes, is typically not found in the dominant healing practices of talk therapy or disclosure, practices that are more often found to work for white women. Instead, many of these survivors looked to their communities and tried to find healing through cultural practices.
This book is rich in descriptions of experiences and covers a robust literature. The methodological/institutional context appendix is helpful in situating how this research was done and illustrates how Harris used intersectionality to frame the institutional context of this work. In doing so, she provides a path to move from intersectional failure to intersectional repair. Harris has filled a significant gap in the existing literature on campus sexual violence, and this work will serve us all well as we move forward in our efforts to combat gender-based violence broadly and campus sexual violence specifically. Her book is powerful and encourages, no, demands we all do better and use intersectionality (structural, political, and representational intersectionality) not as an optic or performative framework, but as the core of how we make sense of what is happening on college campuses. This book is a call to action—both theoretically and practically—and researchers and practitioners would do well to heed the call.