Even without intending it, victim blaming is something taught to all of us. It's a natural line of defense in feeling safe from danger.

It's time to state—explicitly and as many times as it takes: no one deserves to be sexually assaulted. And no one asks to be.    

Read about how you can beat the blame game here: http://www.catharsisproductions.com/posts/beating-the-blame-game-101

End victim blaming.

Guarded by Taylor Yocom

Studies say that one in four college women will be sexually assaulted by the time they graduate. In the wake of the taxicab sexual assaults in the Iowa City community last year, my female classmates and I discussed how we keep ourselves safe on walks home at night. We pulled our mace and rape whistles out of our pockets and showed them off---not one of us was fazed. The men in the room were taken aback that we even needed to think about this.  This discrepancy between men and women’s vulnerability hit me on a deep level: the objects of self-defense we attached to our key chains spoke volumes. They were the physical manifestation of the realities that women have to face every day: the necessity to be “on guard” in a society plagued by rape culture and victim blaming. I knew that I had to visually portray this situation that is so often overlooked.

My approach in shooting the portraits was to create a community experience. I set up open calls for women and female-identifying individuals to have their photographs taken holding whatever made them feel most safe walking home alone.  Meeting new people and conversing with the models gave me opportunities to hear heartbreaking stories and to discuss the movement. All of these conversations and interactions with the viewers gave me the motivation to keep going.

In directing the models, the only requirement I had was to direct them not to smile and to hold the up self-defense object. The models’ neutral stance directs attention to their idiosyncrasies but they are all unified under the necessity to possess whatever they are holding on their keychain. Making this these portraits and compiling the results is powerful statement to the community along with a powerful experience for the viewer. In creating this project, I hope to expand the viewers’ mindset: to rethink the statistics about rape and assault, to visualize that one in four women are assaulted in their lifetime, as a personal reality not a meaningless number.

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