Content warning - references to sexual violence

In this episode, Nicole (she/her) interviews Megan (she/her) and Bryony (she/her) from a grassroots project called SLEEC - Survivors Leading Essential Education and Change. SLEEC is a survivor-led organisation that changes conversations, supports survivors and dismantles the roots of male violence. 

They discuss how services for survivors of sexual and male violence are not working and the actions they've taken to create something survivor led and centered. 

They share a ton of wisdom and insight from their experiences with SLEEC from starting a resilience fund for survivors to running courses for men about rape culture and more. We talk about how male violence is an epidemic and the importance of DIY action and mobilising because nothing else is working.

Links & resources from this episode

• SLEEC website - https://sleec.net/
• The Resilience Fund - https://sleec.net/the-fund/
• SLEEC instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sleec_proj/
• SLEEC Linktree -https://linktr.ee/SLEEC

Solidarity Apothecary Links

• Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course – https://solidarityapothecary.org/herbalismandptsdcourse/
• Practical Medicine Making Intensive – https://solidarityapothecary.org/product/practical-medicine-making-course-end-of-september/

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host Nicole Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello, welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You may remember I began a series all about trauma.

In the build up to my herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course.

Yeah, that theme is continuing.

I know I'm like jumping about between kind of community herbalism episodes and trauma focuses.

But yeah, this stuff's really important to talk about.

And I want to share with you Yeah, an interview I did with Megan and Bryony from a project called SLEEC.

So that yes, SLEEC is a survivor led organization that changes conversations support survivors and dismantles the roots of male violence.

And it's all about DIY action and mobilizing.

And yeah, I think that really super inspiring crew that are doing loads of amazing work around male violence and sexual violence.

And yet in this conversation, just like heavy content warning that we talk about it's not, we talk more about like responses and like mutual aid and the work that they're doing, but there are obviously references to things like rape and rape culture.

And yeah, yeah, male violence in the home and other forms of violence.

So yeah, we talk about everything under the sun from how current kind of, Services designed for not they're not designed for survivors, but services like available to survivors are like not working and like all these different layers to that of, problems around a class and deservedness and all different things.

And how, yeah, and how they've been trying, they've been working in that field and how they've trying to be, been trying to organize differently, something more liberating and like actually survivor led Yeah, and yeah, we talk about this kind of epidemic of male violence and how the responsibility of ending violence really has to shift on to men.

And we talk about some of their courses and education work that they've done with men.

Yeah, and we also talk about things like rape culture and a little bit about the kind of quote unquote criminal justice system.

But yeah, they're doing like amazing work.

In supporting people directly and yeah, we go on like little tangents around different things.

But yeah, I think it's, I think it's a really great interview.

And yeah, I would love to hear what people think about it.

I'll put all the links in the show notes.

Yeah, because, this is one of the areas of trauma that's affecting people literally all over the world.

Like they said, it is an epidemic.

Yeah, this is one grassroots response to that, that I'm really proud to be amplifying via this podcast.

So please support them and their work, donate to their resilience fund.

And yeah, give them a follow on Instagram.

Okay.

Thanks for listening.

Bye.

Oh yeah, shameless plug again, the Herbalism, PTSD and Traumatic Stress course is launching very soon in a couple of weeks on the 18th of September.

So please join the waiting list if you're keen.

Yeah, no one turned away for lack of funds, check out the course page, see what it's all about.

I will be talking about it lots over the next few weeks.

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Take care.

All

Hello.

Thank you so much, both of you, for coming.

Please, can you introduce yourself, your pronouns, like any political affinities or projects you'd like to include?

I'm Megan, I'm she, her, and I'll be speaking through the lens of being a white cis woman who's working class and queer.

I'm Bryony, and I am Also, she, her, and I identify as queer neurodiverse, and also this white woman working class.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for being here.

So yeah, like we've had a whole series of interviews on the podcast about like different aspects of trauma from like class stuff to addiction and like youth oppression.

And I know your work is focused on like sexual violence.

which is obviously like a major traumatizing force in the world.

So I just wondered if you can speak to your project and what your work involves and where you started?

Yeah, so we started, so we're both survivors of rape and sexual violence and we had both worked and used survivor support services.

in the past, for a very long time, and have been involved in lots of different activist spaces within that.

And within working and using those services over many years, we experienced or witnessed so many problems, which I think we're going to go further into later on.

But part of some of the issues that we saw was the fact that mutual aid and autonomy and agency within being survivors was not really being centered in any of the organizations and services and we wanted to create something that a project or a platform that we would have wanted when we were going through our own recovery and healing and looking And again, I think we're going to go into this like later on, but especially as working class survivors or working class women and seeing the kind of gaps within services and within support.

And especially around like financial aid, there wasn't really anything that was providing that.

So originally it started as a mutual aid fund, which was called the resilience fund.

It's still called the resilience fund.

I'm not talking as if it's past tense, but it's still called the resilience fund.

That's still at the core of what we do.

And the idea with that was to provide financial aid in really small amounts to survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence, male violence, state violence, gender based violence, to have agency and autonomy to spend it on whatever they needed within their recovery and healing.

And that could look like, I don't know, money towards a bus fare or a taxi, it could be towards a takeaway, it could go towards a sex toy, like whatever it was that someone needed the cash for.

It was like instant money into their account and it was trying to dismantle the way in which we like distribute resources for survivors.

And just lots of different things that came within that.

Also looking at how the stereotypes and the narratives that we have around victims and perpetrators and how heavily embedded that is within our culture and society and how much we were directly impacted by that within our time working in support services and the kind of expectations and assumptions that are placed upon you when you go through something like rape or sexual violence and how disconnected we were from that and how much rage we had about how the system operated and so we were like we quit our jobs we both worked in like really intense jobs in like trauma services and we like quit everything we ran off to Mexico and then we started SLEEC on a beach sipping tequila which was great.

And that was what came out of, years of witnessing problems and experiences and listening to other people as well.

And the kind of stories that they had about support services and charities and needing something different.

I think, yeah, from how it started, it was, as Megan said, it was originally a fund and kind of almost just a fund and an Instagram account where we were challenging the kind of ideas around rape culture, but then it grew very quickly.

There were so many things that We could see our friends and community needed.

So it grew from being just this tiny fund to us doing all kinds of things like food packages, creating alternative healing spaces, like workshops mini, like one day festivals for survivors offering all different things for free.

And we moved on as well to also running courses with men to look at dismantling the roots of male violence and trying to plan training and workshops for other organisations to learn and unlearn and unpack all the ideas that we were talking about within rape culture.

Amazing.

And so just, can I just clarify what SLEEC stands for?

SLEAP stands for Survivors Leading Essential Education and Change.

Amazing, it sounds like you've filled a very like massive niche that's not filled if that makes sense by like different projects and like you said all these different services which we'll talk about.

So on your website you write like DIY action and mobilizing because nothing else is working.

I just wondered if you could share what you mean by DIY and also what is.

currently like not working in terms of survivor support in your kind of experience?

Yeah, that is a big question because in our experience, so much isn't working about survivor support.

I think one of the main problems that we had both being supported by services and working within services is how they're built on these same structures, like power structures of patriarchal white supremacy, like kind of savior complex ideas of how we support people and how support is offered.

They're built in a way where you need to prove your deservability to be able to receive support.

You need to be seen as like weak or sad.

We need to be rescued, be given help.

And I think that was one of the big things that we wanted when we started doing this work.

Another thing I think that we found really difficult was just how hard it is to get even the basic support that is available.

People are in crisis from leaving, abusive relationships or to have experienced sexual violence often want something quite immediate and they want support that's available in that trauma and in that also unsafe situation.

There just isn't that support there.

There's like long waiting lists or the kind of support that is available is very conditional.

There's no understanding of any kind of complex needs or intersectionality in general.

And so there was, there's nothing there.

For people that actually needed, like, that first response support, because one of the things that SLEEC does, which we're not actually we don't have any funding for at the moment, we're trying to actually fund it, but we've always just been this group that people can contact through like email or through Instagram and say, I need this kind of support or this I'm in this crisis situation, how can you help me?

And we, and I've respond with the immediate first response, having a conversation with the person, working out what they might be able to access.

If they need money to get like a bus somewhere to get out of the situation that's available.

So we offer that very direct, personal, first hand response.

You don't need to fill in loads of forms, you don't need to we don't ask you anything that you don't need to tell us anything.

We just say, what is it that you need, and we try and work with that, we try and support people in a kind of very direct way.

a basic human way,

I think as well there's like a conversation that needs there's so many conversations that need to be had, but the reality is that the systems that are in place to support around trauma in specifically around domestic and sexual violence and male violence is just failing.

And part of our way of seeing what is failing is recognizing that we don't treat harm and trauma when it's happening or has happened, we don't respond as a community.

So we don't see this as like a collective thing that is happening within our society and within our communities and within our families and social circles and how we respond to that.

as SLEEC, individuals within that, but as an organization is seeing this as a community response.

So Bryony was saying, if someone is in like desperate need for something urgently, there aren't actually services and systems that are providing that or supporting in that.

And so we're trying to almost bridge, not even bridge that gap but trying to create networks and create connections and create solidarity that actually centers the direct needs that someone needs.

And I think part of us working in support services and then using them was seeing how unbelievably binary it is in terms of the support that is actually offered.

And there's so many, loop, like there's so many hoops you have to jump through and ways in which you have to present in order to get the very limited support that is already in place, having then waited up to two years, if not more, to get or access that support.

And because you've been waiting so long, there's this real sense of desperation that, you finally got the support that you need.

So then you have to accept whatever the support is, and there's no flexibility within, what a lot of charities and support services offer because they're often funded by funders who have a very specific way of seeing trauma and healing and recovery which is in this very linear way that is like only applicable if you have these tick box requirements that you need to meet and so it doesn't allow for any like natural human responses within that.

And part of the work we do at SLEEC is trying to accommodate for the individual needs in which people have while also responding collectively and as a community.

And that's why it's more DIY.

It's we don't have these fixed ways of operating.

We might have things that we can offer that are fixed, but there's movement within that, there's flexibility within that.

And it might be that we can't always offer that, but we're transparent and honest about that.

But for example, we had a support group for survivors that was for 12 months every two weeks, and that was entirely led by those that were in the support group.

So we didn't have a kind of, we had a suggested set structure of how the group might work.

But for the first kind of, A few months of that space, the beginning 15 minutes of the group was for people in the group to work out what they wanted from that space and to build it based on that.

And we had a survivor that was the facilitator, but she was just there to hold the space, to open the space and close the space and to help manage time.

But apart from that, how the group was structured and evolved was entirely up to those that were in it, rather than us determining that.

Amazing.

And that's the thing with trauma, right?

Is that it renders people very powerless often, or like a feeling of powerlessness, like in the moment or in the situation.

And then recovering is really about reclaiming that.

So yeah, like you said, if organizations are offering things where you have no fucking choice about what you're given or what you need, then yeah, of course it's not going to be, Yeah, meeting people's needs.

Like, why is it important to be, like, survivor led?

You've already mentioned a little bit about what that looks like, but say, just like in a prisoner support context I've always agreed that abolitionist movements and things need to be led by prisoners and former prisoners and prisoner family members and people affected by incarceration, but the toll on the people Who like find this work really triggering because it's so close to home is really high and I just wondered how you navigate that as a crew?

I'm also a survivor of sexual violence from a child and also adult experiences.

And I it's weird.

It's it's almost like too triggering for me to do that work, even though I do prison stuff.

But I just, yeah, I just wondered, like, how do you navigate that like yourselves and what does collective care look like for people involved in the project?

I think being really honest, we're still trying to work that out.

We're still figuring that out.

And it's not, it's for me personally, it's about recognizing that is an ongoing journey and discovery around, how do we sustain ourselves in this work, in this fight, in these experiences?

I think me and Bryony As the co founders, although there are other people within the organization now as it's grown, I think we have had to have, and that this hasn't always been the case, but I think communication is also have to be like really prioritized and strong when we're, talking about stuff that can be really like close to our own experiences, I think running a project that.

we founded and that was like rooted in our own lived experience as survivors and the experiences of other people I think brought up the fact that there's still a lot of unlearning that we have to do around toxic stereotypes and ideas around trauma and survivors and rape culture and that sometimes comes up and we have to learn how to acknowledge that and navigate that when that is coming up.

prioritizing things like rest is like really important.

At the same time, sometimes I can fall too heavily on rest and I need to push myself a bit.

And I don't mean that in a way of being like productive.

I mean that sometimes I, in myself, can't always recognize my own boundaries.

So it's constantly having a conversation with myself or ourselves, with each other and being vocal about that and being honest that our boundaries that might work in this.

moment or the way in which we show up might be how it is for now, but that also might change because of other life factors that are going on, we're existing in the world right now and has been obviously for so long, but that is like really immediate.

And there's so much trauma that's going on, both, you our own personal experiences of trauma, but also secondary trauma.

It's like such a valid and real thing that's happening.

And so we have to be really careful of also not taking on other people's trauma when we're doing this kind of work.

And that's an ongoing conversation and practice in terms of how we actually handle that.

And we don't always get it right, but I think the way in which we are with other people within the organization is very much about Looking at what someone's individual needs are, and what someone needs to feel safe to work in this line of work.

And I think often that never gets prioritised or centred.

It definitely didn't in the support services that we worked in.

How can we as an organisation support you so that you feel able to show up in this and sustain yourself in this?

And, what do you need for us to give you that agency and autonomy?

And so that's a conversation that we have with anyone that does any work with us.

What are your needs?

How do you work?

How do you need to work?

How can we support you in that work?

So it's making sure that people feel heard and that this is a way in which we're dismantling the ways that we work.

So it's more on an individual need basis than it is this set structure of working.

I think also one of the things we've learned to do is like In planning projects, we are very aware that we can't plan so many like long term projects for me and Megan specifically because there's times where we've had short courses that we've run about specifically sexual violence and our experiences and when it's come to it, it's been like, I just actually don't have the capacity and the energy to talk about sexual violence right now because we've planned it in for there's ways now in which we work.

A lot of the kind of workshops that might be around that or the talks that we do.

We don't plan them in advance for kind of more than like a month maybe.

Because we know that we might change our kind of capacity levels.

We try and have that way of operating with everybody within the group as well.

So that we can not come to a kind of an event or a thing that we've got planned to be like, I actually I can't do this right now.

As well as when that happened, those times being okay with canceling things.

I think that's something you live in a world where it's like everything has to go ahead and we have to always be productive.

We have to always like, it's, it's unprofessional to not run a workshop or a talk that you put on and we've had to do our own and learning and put in practice this idea that is okay to not do things when.

You can't handle it when it's to do with your own experience, when it is gonna cause you more harm.

So I think that's something that we really try and work on.

Yeah, I think also removing guilt, like you were saying, Bryony, about when we have had to cancel, I think over the years of us working in this league, we've gotten a lot better at tuning in to when we need to cancel, because we've overbooked ourselves, we've overworked ourselves, or we're just not in the space to be able to do it, and not feeling any guilt, because, I think a lot of in the past when we've felt, when we've had to cancel because we don't have capacity, we don't have the energy, it's just not appropriate.

There has been that inherent feeling of guilt, which is obviously coming from in an internalized, catalyst framework.

And I think, For me personally working within SLEEC has really allowed me to break that down and, interrogate that and see that actually when we show up to spaces, we want to show up because we want to be there.

And that's authentic and that.

There's a level of honesty to the people that are also giving their time and energy that we are there because we want to be there and share space with them and vice versa.

So it's more appropriate that when we can't do that, that we're really honest about that and clear about that.

And I think through doing that and getting into a habit of being honest around that has enabled us to, yeah, be able to manage that better.

Because I think with lived experience work, it's that's really important that we do start allowing for that because it is very personal, it is our own experiences that we're putting on the table to do this work, and it's valuable and it's important and it's needed, but in order for, to protect ourselves and each other, I think that's the way that we have to promote and allow for.

It just, it doesn't work when it's, in my opinion, it doesn't work when it's not led by people with lived experience when projects are set up by people that haven't actually got direct or kind of second level experience of these issues that kind of an organization is set up to support.

It just, it doesn't have that kind of level of understanding, of connection, of being able to meet people's needs, of being able to offer support in a way that feels genuine and human.

It always becomes this kind of weird institutionalized service that has all these power dynamics and like hierarchy.

So I think it's it's so important.

for there to be these spaces that are led by survivors or led by people with lived experience.

But yes, it's, we really have to be able to protect ourselves and each other.

And that is really hard.

Thanks so much for sharing that.

I think it will be really useful for people like engaged in like similar organizing of just modeling it in the sense of yeah, like I wish back in the day that I could have like you said, like canceled things or just been like, I don't have the spoons or capacity for this.

And just, it would have felt okay to be like, yeah, I can't do this tour.

I can't do this talk or this campaign meeting.

Yeah.

I really love that you've integrated that.

And I completely agree that like, when.

projects and stuff are run by people that aren't relating to it in a kind of embodied experience way.

It's often yeah, it just becomes like some sort of weird bureaucratic intellectual endeavor or something, which is just like always reproduces all the bullshit.

So on your website I love that you like specifically name like male violence.

And I pulled like a little quote off and I wondered if you could share a bit about that.

a bit more about it and it said we need men to take action.

Male violence is an epidemic.

Whilst it's essential that survivors direct this work, responsibility has to shift on to men.

We need new ways for men to be actively involved in dismantling the roots of male violence.

Collective organizing is a necessity.

We build spaces through education, conversation, and research that prioritize men's relationships to patriarchy and rape culture.

And sorry, I'm just out of breath.

I'm like so pregnant.

It's just like hard to talk, but yeah.

Could you just share like a little bit more about that and, what have you found effective in your experience, what do men need to do?

And I know you've done courses and trainings with men and I'm just like super curious to hear like how they've gone down and their impact.

Yeah, men need to do so much.

We started the course because we'd wanted to do a men's learning course for years before we actually launched it.

So we launched it in 2021.

So we'd wanted to do it prior to that, but didn't have the resources all the time.

And then the Sarah Everard case came to light in British media and it was this kind of galvanization all of a sudden of men in particular.

What men in particular, people, but men suddenly almost waking up to the fact that male violence is very prevalent and it's very real and it exists and has done for, centuries and centuries.

And so there felt like there was this moment, this opportunity to almost take advantage of that while it was trending.

Because the reality is when it hasn't been trending, our numbers for men who sign up to the course are very low.

So there is a correlation there.

So we launched this.

Men, it was called an emergency men's learning course, because it's an emergency.

Like we say, it's an epidemic.

Like we're not shying away from the reality and using the language that is appropriate and reflective of what is actually going on.

So we launched this men's learning course and it was a four week course online because it was in the pandemic and COVID times.

And everything that we put into that course was through all the years that we had of conversations, experiences, realizations, learning, knowledge, everything got put into that course.

And we weren't anticipating, oh I don't feel like we were anticipating what we were actually building at that time, which was a community of men coming together to explore not only their own individual relationship to male violence and patriarchy and rape culture, but looking at it from like in a collective environment.

And then we realized that there really weren't enough like spaces for men to unpack and explore their internalized patriarchy and violence.

And We had our friend Lewis Wedlock who is an amazing educator and works primarily with young men of colour around male violence, around patriarchy, around consent.

And we got him to speak at the beginning of the video about patriarchy being this inner and outer thing.

And how we often see patriarchy as this external, structure, this thing that is existing outside of us.

And what he does is basically tell these men it's this internal thing and it's this internalized structure that we have that we are enacting every day in our choices, in our decisions, in our way of thinking.

Even for us, we were like, Oh, I've actually really thought about how we internalize it.

And what that kind of did right from the get go was create this wake up for a lot of men that think you can be quite subjective to something, but suddenly when someone's telling you that actually what we're living under and the oppression in which we all experience is it within us and we are in acting that and internalizing that, that was like a real clarifying moment.

You realize that, So much of the focus has always been on women and marginalized genders to do this work, to do this labor, to campaign, to shout, to fight, to change.

And in 2021, when misogyny and rape culture and male violence was like really coming into light, creating this space was an opportunity for men to actually start taking action.

and actually start engaging in a really like emotional personal way but also in a way that centered action because it's really like it's really good to talk about this stuff but we actually do need to see more action like that is something that's like really important within this work is that men are starting to like actually take action around dismantling and intervening in harm and violence.

I think one of the most exciting parts of the course that we didn't realize was going to take off with the kind of the how raw and honest the conversations we were having in these spaces.

I didn't realize how much we were going to enjoy doing these courses.

It was something we wanted to do.

But, after the first course that we were looking forward to the sessions, if it was actually, there was like joy there, there was like laughter there.

There was, we use a lot of like humor in the way that we work.

So some of the sessions like, There was like a lot of laughter, which sounds like wild when we're talking about male violence of rape and sexual violence, but there's some elements of it that are like ridiculous and we're able to find humor in some of the things while we're talking about.

while we're talking about stuff.

But I think being able to have a space where men can be really honest about things they've been feeling and be able to ask questions that maybe they've not been able to ask people because we make the space, we said at the beginning, this is a space where we're not going to judge you for any questions that you want to ask.

Maybe there's questions you have that you feel like maybe that is like a sexist question or maybe you don't know certain things.

Which, everyone's so scared of getting it wrong.

There's a space where you can get it wrong.

You can fuck up or we're allowed to get it wrong and fuck up together in this space.

And building that space where men are really being really honest and vulnerable in this space.

It's really like exciting to see the kind of conversations that are coming out of it.

And I think one of the main conversations that are really good to have in the space is.

talking about the way that victims and perpetrators are perceived by our society, the way that we look at this binary idea of a perpetrator being like a monster, this like one dimensional character where their behavior is their identity.

That's not something that you can ever come back from.

That's something that then you are labeled that monster forever if you have any behavior that isn't okay.

So it's very hard for people to be accountable when we look at it like that.

And equally, the way that we look at the idea of a victim even that word people still use the word victim in some services and obviously in like criminal justice system.

But that's also such a one dimensional way that survivors are perceived in the media of this kind of sad, broken, weak, vulnerable person that's usually female, usually white, usually cis, usually petite, and usually it has to be innocent as well.

They've done nothing wrong and they are just somebody that has only experienced harm.

So I think that's one of the main kind of, the biggest conversations that we have in that space where we start to impact those ideas and It's really interesting having those conversations with men and having them feed into that and how they feel about those kind of identities and those ideas.

I think as well, because we as individuals and also as an organization.

Where abolitionists is around prison and the criminal justice system.

And part of what we like weave into throughout the course and have an entire session is exploring accountability.

And accountability is like becoming more of a conversation, but within that there's not necessarily I hate this word, but I'm going to use it tangible ways of taking accountability and we discuss that quite heavily within the course because in order for us to take accountability we have to understand that we all have the capacity to harm and that's a really interesting conversation to be had between two survivors and a group of men talking about harm that happens that we can all experience that we can all perpetrate and having those conversations start to dismantle the way in which a lot of men see a either being something that they don't enact or starting to realize that they have committed harm and that by acknowledging that in this space the judgment that they might have felt in previous spaces is not showing up, which then allows them to start to engage with how they might actually take accountability.

We explore what that looks like.

We explore what justice would look like outside of a justice system.

We explore the ways in which we need men to hold each other to account in order to start, into intercepting in the cycle of violence in the cycle of harm and looking at ways in which we can respond both as individuals but also as a community because something I think that came out of all the courses that we've done is how lonely a lot of men are you know we don't talk about that enough there's a loneliness within men existed amongst each other and that connection and community is really essential in the human experience and that extends to all people and part of this course is creating that community, but also it is educational.

It is about making sure that the men that participate are aware that there is a level of responsibility that they have, that they really need to start engaging with, and it's finding that balance.

And like Bryony said, we do that through like humor and being ourselves and being honest and fucking up.

And like we said, we're really bad at tech.

So that always happens.

And I think it's just being really human with each other.

And once we're human with each other, we can actually start seeing the ways in which we need to shift, the ways in which we need to change and the ways in which we need to show up for each other.

There's just so much to say there.

I'm just curious are men like self referring have they seen it on your Instagram and been like, Oh, I'd like to do that course or like groups putting people in touch with you or yeah.

What does that look like in terms of who's coming along?

The more recent ones have been a lot of people that have been on our courses and then they've told their friends who have then joined the course, but yeah, we have a lot of people that see it through either social media or what.

We've promoted it in some places as well, put out some flyers and posters around.

But we did an in person one in Bristol last year.

And from that, I'm not actually sure, like, where, like how a lot of people came to it.

Because we had some people come down from like Sheffield, and we had people from all over come.

And that one was just on Eventbrite.

We got a lot of people that just saw it on there, but as Meg was saying before, unfortunately it's when this stuff is more in the media, that we get more people sign up.

So when it's not being in the media as much, it is really hard to get men to sign up and to want to do it.

So we do struggle with that as well.

Yeah.

It's so wild when you said about things like trending and it's just Oh God, it's such a dystopian world, isn't it?

Like people only talk about racism when this happens or sexual violence when this happens or yeah.

You talking about the training made me think of a funny, maybe you won't find it funny, but like when I was in prison, they have a course called the freedom program, which maybe you've heard of.

Oh yeah.

I'll be glad to hear you.

To hear your take on the course actually, but you look at these different kind of archetypes of kind of dominating behavior and stuff.

And like the responsibility is placed on the survivor or the woman to be like, Oh, I didn't spot these signs.

Therefore it's my fault that this like situation escalated or something.

But I got kicked out the first session because I made a joke because they were talking, the facilitator was talking about how many Women were getting killed by male partners like per week and it was really shocking.

And then they were like, okay, how many women do you think kill their partners?

And it was like much less.

And she was like, what does this show us?

And I just went we've got to step up ladies.

And she's Oh, get out.

And then, yeah,

but Get out.

How dare you.

That's literally like one of the only programs that I've ever come across, which is insane when this stuff is so like insidious in our culture and yeah, I'm just interested to hear what your yeah, what your knowledge is of that program and like learning in general.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I used to work for a, in a safe house and we actually had A kind of version of the course that we could do with people, like the kind of, or the paper, paperwork, of the course, like the course content.

I just remember looking through it and being, like, literally blown away.

by how ridiculous some of the kind of content was because it was, yeah, as you said, it's so like victim blaming.

It's also was just like, it was everything that we're, that SLEEC tries to dismantle in terms of these very stereotypical ideas of a perpetrator and a victim.

And it was very heteronormative, very kind of one dimensional and very victim.

It felt like it had been written like.

50 years ago.

I'm, I was shocked that it's still being used, but now I found some of it hilarious and did not use any of that content with people that I'd worked with, because I felt like it was entirely inappropriate.

I think it just shows like how much it still perpetuates all the hierarchies that exist within like support, because I remember there was an organization that me and Bryony used to volunteer at back in the day.

which had its own problems but they would use Freedom Program.

It's always been around like for as long as I've worked in support services, or or in whether that's in a paid or voluntary capacity, or use them myself.

The Freedom Project, Freedom Program has always been around, and Within education around these things, there feels like a deliberate attempt to keep people in a certain place, whether that be about your knowledge or your own experiences.

And there's a lot to be said about how a program like the Freedom Program maintains a certain hierarchy, which is you often have someone who doesn't have the lived experience of domestic violence, or sexual violence, or the intersection of male violence within that.

Essentially teaching or training or imparting, I'm doing like little quotation marks with my fingers, this like knowledge and this expertise onto people that aren't being offered any alternative within that, who are often in a vulnerable situation with like generally within that.

And so it's maintaining this hierarchy that someone knows more about your experience than you do.

It also perpetuates the really like toxic and dangerous thing that exists within rape culture, which is victim blaming, slut shaming.

And there's no, there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of that.

If anything, it's still getting credited as this like amazing thing that's happened.

I still meet people who want to facilitate it.

And the fact that isn't being like challenged and interrogated, and there's not being an offering for anything different because that would be seen as too radical.

The idea that you could send us someone's actual lived experience and actually engage in conversation about what it, what is domestic violence?

How does it show up?

What's its prevalence?

What's its impact?

That isn't something that is being in any way prioritized because it's all about maintaining these hierarchies and this like lack of engagement with a very real issue, which is, all of our responsibility.

I think as well, one thing that really got me about the course is this idea that somebody else knows more about your safety than you do and like I've been in a domestic violence relationship myself and it's people that have been in domestic violence like relationships know more than anyone how to keep themselves safe.

Like maybe it doesn't look like that from the outside world, but like they have been living.

in a way that they've been having to protect themselves for so long.

And I feel like the freedom program kind of takes that away from people and says, Oh, you don't know how to look after yourself.

You don't know how to keep yourself safe.

You've been in these relationships because you didn't spot the signs to begin with.

And you still don't know how to keep yourself safe now.

And it's very it's very much putting that, putting all the emphasis of this violence on specifically women, because the course is just for women.

And I think that's another reason why we wanted to do the men's event to men's learning course, because we're like we should be having courses with men talking about violence that men are perpetrating and how men can hold each other accountable and how men can see the signs of them causing harm in their friendship circles or in, their communities in their workspaces and understand the different levels of violence and what violence can look like and how.

they can spot the signs and call each other out on it and call each other in and work to protect each other because that's who should be getting educated on this.

Yeah 100 percent and I think what you mentioned about people knowing assuming they know more about you, or you having to disclose certain things.

The, one of the most horrific outcomes of this course was a friend who I was doing it with literally one of the prison officers, who was, like, meant to be some external facilitator, basically came on to her and was, like, sending her letters as like a different person like from outside prison and was literally like abusive and horrific and my friend felt like super unsafe and like thankfully we got that officer sacked.

I had a mission to just get as many prison officers sacked as possible who were like trying to have sex with women and stuff inside but yeah just that like you said like that hierarchy dynamic like that's what it creates right?

If you have environments with that power situation and obviously like a prison environment like really enhances that.

This is like another cheeky side note but like how do you navigate like men doing the work to accumulate social capital?

Like I feel like people I've been harmed by more emotionally often it's been this real male sentimental feminist, do you know what I mean?

Oh, I've read all these things, and da, and then it's just oh my god, you're a piece of shit you're just literally sleeping with everyone left and centre, and reproducing all these dynamics, and Yeah, I'm just curious as to, I guess it's the same with any kind of oppression stuff, right?

White people would do similar things, wouldn't they, with, oh, I'm an ally, and I've done all this self education, and then they just do loads of awful stuff.

But yeah, I'm just wondering if you've seen evidence of that in your courses at all or whether like actually you've been surprised by the sort of like integrity of the people participating?

The short answer is yes.

I think when you were talking then I was just like nodding my head because unfortunately that is that does exist and we have witnessed it.

I think me and Bryony are like able to spot that quite early on.

within certain men that have come on our course.

I think what's quite interesting that happens is, so the kind of demographic of men that often come on our course are, it's a range in terms of sort of identity.

So around race, age, class, and also gender identity within that we have had non binary people sexualized as men on, in the space, more in the more recent courses that we've had.

But.

there's often an attitude I think of some participants that they already have that they already have a level of knowledge around these subjects but potentially maybe their level of knowledge has come through like literature and like reading and being part of the groups and being like in the kind of like anarchist spaces or in the kind of activist spaces and then they come on our course and we quite quickly like dismantle that.

No, I think we create an environment where actually there is a level of honesty and authenticity that you need to present as.

So it's quite interesting when you see that maybe someone is coming from a performatist.

Perspective and then we try to basically eradicate that, but you can't always do that because, people have their own relationship to stuff, but it's definitely something that maybe outside of the men's learning courses.

I just see generally around men reading all the books.

using all the language and also there's a conversation that needs to be had about ment co opting like therapeutic language and language that has like inherently been used to describe abuse there has to be a conversation around that happening but i have seen that

unfortunately quite prevalent, that kind of yeah, I guess performative way of addressing things.

And that can feel so harmful and so infuriating and so painful sometimes to witness this kind of lack of integrity within these very real experiences that we are being directly impacted by.

In terms of how we navigate that, I think we, Try not, within our like learning spaces, we do try to come from a non judgmental place and try and get someone to a place where through the kind of transparency of the space and through people being honest and raw and open and vulnerable trying to like, use that as a way to in which that breaks down maybe the original reason why they might have come onto the course or why they might be engaging in this work.

And I think because we speak from our own experiences, like we, there's a part in our course where we are talking about, we do a content warning, but we're going into fairly specific details about the violence that we've both encountered over our lifetime, which is a lot, and we're just two people.

And I think that, that offering, we're offering our own experience as a learning tool, which is a massive thing, I think that

does dismantle the stigma.

in some people that might have come for a performative reason or for a reason because it's another notch on their like knowledge board or whatever.

I think we do start to see maybe a little bit of a shift I'm not in someone's brain.

I think as well because our course is very much about lived experience and us talking from the place of like our own experience and people that we know like our community's experience.

we feel it's really important to learn.

So it's not a course that is based on all these different theory, like feminist theories or like academia.

And I think the kind of people that we get that have learned stuff in that way, very quickly realized that it's not the space to be having those discussions or to be using knowledge in that way.

And I think because the space is, like Meg said, we do start with saying, we all fuck up in this work.

And we're very honest in like how, in ways that we have we have our own internalized sexism and ways that we might've enacted harm in the past, where we didn't even realize.

People are more able to own up to these things.

I've had a lot of people in the space that have actually have been honest and said, I did come on this course because I I've, Thought that I'd know stuff, but I thought it would be good to come on this call mainly to look good to my female friends of how people like admit that they've the work they've done in the past is to look good to their female friends.

I'm going to talk about that.

And I think that's when it gets really interesting and it feels like we have a space where we're actually holding, significant conversations.

Yeah, it sounds like the spaces are like very, yeah, like attracting different people with different backgrounds and intentions and like agendas, but that kind of radical honesty that you're trying to facilitate or hold space for is like transformative, if that makes sense.

I know all this stuff's really heavy and I'm sure you're used to talking about it all the time, but for folks who haven't encountered the term, what is rape culture?

Or like why, like what is the culture bit, if that makes sense?

I guess it's.

The normalization really of violence and rape in our society.

So from, how legal systems treat rape and male violence, like with low conviction rate for rape, that it's impossible.

for anyone to be, not impossible, but it's very low for anyone to be convicted for rape and sexual violence.

So it's yeah, it's integrated in the legal system.

It's in our media, the glamorization of rape and sexual violence and normalization of rape and sexual violence and kind of men exerting power and women specifically being shown as like sexualized objects in the media and unconsensually.

It's a way people in positions of power can get away with sexual violence, like politicians and, famous people, actors musicians are able to, yeah, rape, harm, be violent and get away with it.

And it's the way that it's normalized and the minimized as well, how sex crimes are often minimized in these spaces and how women are victim blamed and bloodshamed all the time in, again, in the media and just generally in our society.

Yeah, I think that was the perfect description.

I don't have anything else to add.

No worries.

Thank you.

How do you think then we need to respond to rape culture?

Yeah, I think it's first of all, understanding how it shows up, which often we don't, because these aren't conversations that we're having from a young age around it.

And I think when we say the word rape culture, because it's a culture and it's so it's really broad and expansive, it can feel really hard to determine exactly how it shows up, but like Bryony was saying it's very much embedded into like our day to day culture and because we're not teaching our young people around what it is and how it presents and you know within rape culture it's things like slug shaming and victim blaming and how heavily that is embedded within the way in which we kind of police each other in the way in which we judge each other on a kind of day to day basis so Part of it is getting equipped within ourselves, first, as to what it looks like, how it presents our own experiences of it, how we also perpetuate it I still perpetuate rape culture.

I think we have to be honest with ourselves about the fact that if you've grown up in a culture, it's normalized certain behaviors and actions and language and imagery.

You're going to internalize that within yourself over the many years of your development.

And therefore, it's going to come out in your day to day being and in your.

In your interactions, in your relationships, in the way in which you talk to people, in the way in which you judge people, in the way in which you perceive people, it's going to be there constantly.

So first of all, we have to really engage with that on a personal level.

How does it show up?

How do I perpetuate it?

What does it look like?

almost get to understand your own relationship to it.

And then once you do that, you can then begin to see it happening for other people.

And that's why we need people to start intervening and interjecting and interrupting that cycle of rape culture being perpetuated.

So for example classic thing would be like if you were in the pub with your mates and someone made like a rape joke, which, for a lot of us seems really like out there, but that's still very normal for a lot of people to make a joke around consent being breached or to be derogatory and about someone's appearance or to non consensually objectify someone.

Cause that's the other thing we talk about consensual objectification in our course, but that's like a separate thing.

But the idea of, unconsensually objectifying someone.

If you can start witnessing people do that, then it's about learning the tools of how you engage in that conversation.

And part of the stuff we do in the men's learning courses is giving almost entry, phrases, entry starts of conversations of how you might interrupt that when your mate is doing it.

But really, again, it's coming back to that thing of seeing this as a community response, because the culture of rape is embedded within all communities and then the kind of global community.

And it's starting to see that when we're seeing rape culture be played out, for example cat calling, which is part of rape culture, that normalization of cat calling someone, when we start seeing that, it's about being like, okay, I recognize that isn't okay.

that makes me feel uncomfortable but also it might be making, it's making that person who's experiencing it directly uncomfortable.

So then you're taking yourself out of the position that this is like not a me problem.

No, it is a you problem.

It's all of our problem.

If someone is being harmed in our streets or harmed behind closed doors, that's everyone's problem.

And rape culture is upholding that harm.

It's about learning how we then Basically challenge it, call it in, call it out.

And we need to be doing that for young people, and that goes around things like boundaries, and sex, and consent, and pleasure.

And having those conversations normalised from a young age, which unfortunately is not happening at the length and speed it needs to be.

Yeah, for real.

And I think this rape joke stuff is really prevalent with prison.

It's always, If someone's about to get sent down, all their friends are like, Oh, don't drop the soap.

And it's okay.

To make jokes like this.

Yeah.

So just moving on.

Cause yeah, like I said, I've got so many questions about your work.

Like I think it's so important and amazing and interesting.

And another thing I saw on your website was how you write, how classism is really spoken about in the recovery and wellbeing world.

And I was like, Fuck yes.

Thank God.

You speak to this.

What role do you think like class plays in both experiencing male violence, but also recovering from it.

And you mentioned a little bit already about your resilience fund and I hope people listening will donate to that.

But could you share a little bit about like why that matters, like from a class perspective?

I think for us, it was one of the main things that we felt going through our own trauma, what services did exist for us, what we did have access to, because, yeah, I grew up without money, and when I was experiencing trauma, I didn't have money to to pay for treatment.

access, anything that could help with that.

And the services that are available just don't really have the kind of understanding of people that don't have money.

And I grew up in Bath, so everybody around me did have money, which made it in one way worse, because I think not having money was more like, showed up for me, was magnified.

But in another way, I had the privilege of being around people that did have money and understanding how some of these kind of structures work.

It is like some of trying to access stuff is like a game that you have to understand.

You have to know the right language and you have to speak the right way.

And I do have the privilege of knowing people that have shared those, that knowledge of me and shared that language with me.

And I think I've had more ability to access and support than maybe other people would have.

But I think one of the main things that I find, I found so degrading and like hostile, is the way that when You need to access support specifically if it's to do with any kind of financial support.

The kind of, where you have to prove your, poverty your kind of deservability and you know you have to offer them like private stuff like bank statements or benefits letters to be able to access even like the smallest kind of smallest bit of support and I think specifically, just having some like bits of money to be able to spend on things that you might need when you're experiencing trauma and recovering from trauma, having that like choice and agency to be able to just choose what it is that might, might just give you like something that you can give you like a little bit of joy, like buying a new plant or like something for something for the bath, like some nice bath oil, like people just don't have that extra money.

So I think that was one of the reasons why I wanted to set up the Resilience Fund was to be able to offer this mutual aid fund where you can just apply and it's you don't have to prove anything.

You don't have to prove that you're a survivor or that you don't have money.

You literally just put your name.

I don't think you have to put your name, but you put a name you want in your PayPal and it goes straight into your PayPal account.

It's just like literally a few clicks and you don't have to offer us anything, any, reasons in exchange for that because we just it works on a trust basis where we get donations for the fund and if there's money in the fund and somebody applies that money goes to them and it's just a redistribution of money rather than somebody deciding who gets money, why they get money, if they deserve to get money, having to prove that they should get money.

I think it's another specifically when it's around money, it's another thing that makes you feel just shitty having to be, like, prove why you can't afford things when you're already struggling, makes you feel really shit.

And I think the other thing that I found was that any kind of other therapies counseling or any kind of what people might call alternative therapies, which are like herbal remedies, which is just basic traditional medicine.

It's just, it's really unaffordable.

And that's just not something that a lot of people can access, so what we're left with is free services, which usually you have to wait for months to years to access, and often, in my experience of the work that I've done and everybody that I've known that's got free support in the Southwest, it hasn't been good.

The counsellors haven't been very good, or the service hasn't been very good.

That's all that we're offered and all that we're left with because we can't afford anything else.

And I think that's just something that isn't really spoken about because people don't like to speak about money.

People don't like to speak about poverty and rape culture and how those two things intersect.

And I think it's conversations that we really need to be looking at.

Counselling now is like on average a session costs from like 70 to like a hundred pounds a week.

which is just really wild and concessional rates are rarely below 60 pounds.

And I think there's this thing as well as like concessions where rich people organizations offer concessionary rates that are like a couple of quid off or 10 pounds off the original price without any understanding of what like somebody's income is and what money might have left over for things like treats or for things like self care.

Things that are offered on concession are never affordable for people that don't actually have money.

Yeah, so the disparity of what is actually affordable to one person and to someone else.

It's like when you see like affordable housing and like the affordable housing is like starting at a quarter of a mil for a one bed flat and that's like affordable housing and I'm always like, wow, who determined that was affordable?

Like someone else once again within the kind of I guess the systems and the kind of the well being world, sorry, have almost pre determined what accessibility or affordable looks like, and which is often not actually reflective of the individual experience within that.

I think so much of what we experienced going through recovery was things like being like, Oh, why don't you just go get a massage?

It's that massage is like 60 quid, like minimum.

So it's I have to work full time while going through this recovery.

So I have to pay rent, can't actually find 60 quid to then go have a massage.

And it's even though Like someone might just be genuinely asking that, you're then made to feel that you have to then explain why you wouldn't be able to afford that.

And it brings up the shame that we often have within either growing up working class or without money or growing up in poverty.

There is shame that's heavily embedded to that experience.

Not for everyone, but I know for myself, I've had to unpack a lot of internal shame around being working class.

And I think wellbeing world, especially within trauma, especially around sexual and domestic violence perpetuates that shame and also makes you feel somewhat that you're not able to fully look after yourself.

If you can't afford these things, then are you really prioritizing yourself?

And it's maybe you need to prioritize having a roof over your head or food in your stomach.

And there isn't much of a conversation around that.

Where I think, what was really interesting when we set up our mutual aid fund was how much class was still being so heavily policed.

For example, we had a lot of people where we set up the mutual aid fund because, like Bryony said, we're not asking you any questions of proving you're like, current financial position or status or your class background.

We're not asking you to prove why you need the money.

We're not asking you to write a full length account of your own experience of trauma.

All of these things that often are, like, happening within support services and charities.

We're not asking for any of that.

We're literally just asking for how much do you want in the realms in which we can offer and what's your bank account.

that's all you actually has a minimum requirement that you have to fill in.

You can tell us what you might want to spend it on, you can tell us your name, but you don't have to.

And a lot of people's responses was how are you going to monitor those people that might be telling a lie, that, that aren't survivors, that aren't in need of it.

And it's we can't, and that's okay.

It's okay to have a system where it's based on trust and it's based on the idea that.

I'm using this service now and then I might not need to use it in a month's time.

It's this moving away from this idea that especially working class people and people that have grown up without money are inherently like scammers because that's obviously deeply perpetuated within our media just like generally this idea that we're always trying to like scan the system to get a little bit more money.

It's like there might be people that apply to our fund that has money.

That's okay.

There might be people that aren't survivors that apply.

We can't, it's moving away from this idea of policing and determining and being gatekeepers to financial aid.

And it's always so funny because the people that always donate to our resilience fund or the people that, because we have the option, you can either have a grant or a loan because some people actually like to have autonomy to pay it back.

It will always be people that.

either don't have money, are working class, are survivors themselves, have intersecting like oppressions that are the ones that are like donating to us, that's always been like a consistent thing and I think that is just absolutely telling of the environment in which we're living in and the way in which like class is still heavily like prevalent within all of our experiences within well being and trauma recovery.

I think with the Trust thing as well.

I always find it funny when people ask you questions like, oh, how are you gonna determine?

Who accessed it, and with these questions, it's it's not my money, it's not our money, it's just money that's been gathered from our community to offer back into the community.

We shouldn't have the right to determine that or work out how we manage that, we're just literally creating, holding a space where that money can be held and redistributed before they need it.

Yeah, amazing.

I could talk about this stuff all day and I think it's why with my herbalism, PTSD, and traumatic stress course I really, Wanted it to be something where people didn't have to disclose.

Oh, da, this is why I'm, like, worthy of having a free place on your course or whatever.

Because it's just, like you said super humiliating and degrading, if that's been your life experience.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think the fun sounds amazing, and I completely agree about like access to support being like, so inaccessible.

As part of why I run a one to one clinic and I support people like completely for free, like paying for all their hubs and posting it and stuff for people that need it, obviously, it's limited of how many clients I can see a month or whatever, but it is that thing of if you can't afford it, like having a 10 pound off, something is just not going to cut it and why should like people.

Without money or like more working class people, like why should we just have to have like freebies and podcasts?

Like why can't we have access to like really detailed like personalized care, and like quality medicines, like it really upsets me with herbalism that you're just meant to suffer if you can't afford it.

Anyway, yeah, we've covered like so much ground and I just want to say thank you so much for your time.

And yeah, just before we finish is there anything else you'd like to share?

You That we haven't touched on or you wanted to expand on, and also like how can people support you?

How can they follow you and keep up to date with all your amazing work?

I've got a GoFundMe going at the moment, which you can find if you go onto our Instagram, which is LEE

pro PROJ.

If you go to the LinkedIn Bio, we're doing a fundraiser so that we can provide emergency.

It's for survivors, and this looks like buying things like security cameras or things people might need lock changes, emergency travel, and also paying for people to be able to offer one to one immediate support on the phone.

So this is something that we have been doing as and when already, but unfunded.

And now we need funds to be able to make that sustainable.

So we've got a great family going.

If anybody does have money and is able to donate, that would be amazing.

And also to our resilience fund, which is also, if you go on Instagram, it's in our link and bio or our website, which is SLEEC.

net.

Don't know if we have anything else that we should be

outing about.

So someone else who works in SLEEC is running are survivors essential packs.

So is there anyone that is like needing a safe house or refuge and going into new accommodation?

They've put together like big packs of all the essentials and then also like loads of really nice treats as well.

And we are doing deliveries of those within the Bristol area at the moment.

So for anyone who is yeah, leaving refuge or a safe house, going into new accommodation cause often you don't have anything.

So these are like essential packs made up of like food, toys, if you've got children, like nice, like stuff body care and health care and they're being individually put together on demand and on request.

And that's again, link in bio on our Instagram page, there's a request form, you fill that out and then we can get in contact with you about a date and time to drop off those essential packs.

And, or if you're moving into a safe house as well, there's one for that as well.

Oh my god, we should definitely collaborate and I'll get some nice herbal things to include.

Yay!

Yeah, we'd love that.

I just realised one more question that I had.

Yeah, so you mentioned about being abolitionists and, yeah I'm curious to hear your perspectives in terms of the quote unquote, criminal justice system and people who've experienced sexual violence because yeah, like it's often, I've often had a few, not run ins, but like difficult conversations with people who've worked in different services who have a kind of like real desire to incarcerate people.

And, I've also had friends and people I've known that have like really valued when someone who's harmed them has been locked up, basically.

It makes them, it gives them a temporary feeling of safety for however long.

that person is in prison.

And I know that we like a thousand percent do not have systems set up or infrastructure set up to keep people safe, which is why lots of people do still depend on the prison system, even though it also doesn't keep us safe.

But then on like my other hat in terms of prisoner support and having supported loads of people and met loads of people inside I know that.

Like the statistics are like, oh, 36 percent of people in prison have experienced like childhood abuse.

And I just really think it's like high 90s, if I'm honest, like every single person I met was like, had been in some sort of domestic violence situation or experienced abuse as a child.

Men and women and different genders.

And I feel like once Someone goes into prison they also become a survivor somehow because the whole prison system is built on coercive control, right?

It is, it was so shocking to me, leaving, a very, violent, oppressive situation when I was a teenager.

to then like ending up in prison a couple of years later and being like, wow, I'm having the same bodily responses to these officers who are, barking at me, policing my body, making me feel super unsafe, threatening me sexually, like blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it's I can see how if someone is in prison because they've harmed someone, for example, raped someone, then that person, May strongly have had abuse or violence as a child, potentially sexual abuse.

Not that's ever an excuse to then harm someone.

And then they're also becoming a kind of recipient of abuse within the prison system.

And yeah, it just, yeah, I know there's like lots of like anti carceral feminists.

I've been organizing around this stuff for a really long time.

But I just wondered like how you guys and how the project like interacts with this big, massive subject, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think fundamentally as a kind of base thing is that the criminal justice system just doesn't work.

We can just say that factually it doesn't work.

And then the next thing is that the prison system doesn't work.

And like you were saying, you going into prison and you then becoming a survivor of What is like the absolute epitome, in my opinion, of state violence is the prison system.

So then if you have someone going into that's committed harm, like rape, if we just use it in that context, you have someone going into a system that is inherently violent, that is inherently set up to not holistically or compassionately or humanly support them and offer them a space to heal and recover and be held to account in the ways in which we need people to.

You're going into a system that is just perpetuating that violence, that is not allowing for any of that.

What you're going to have as an end result, if that person obviously goes to prison in the first place, which we know conviction rates are really low, but if that person then goes into that system, they're like, the likelihood that they're going to come out as like a healed person is, it's non existent, it doesn't exist, because how could it?

The conditions in which we're putting people in are fucked, like one of a better word, just fucked.

And so from our perspective, as individuals and as someone myself who has gone through the criminal justice system, these rapists was put in prison.

Did I feel a sense of justice?

Absolutely not.

It was very much just expected that would happen and that it would go to court and I had no real say in that happening, no real agency or autonomy.

And then I was supposed to be handed this kind of like beacon of justice and I didn't feel that because what I knew was that man who had caused me violence and pain was going to go into a violent and painful system which was just going to reinforce that and he was going to probably experience it himself and that didn't in any way make me feel better about my own situation.

Now that's just me personally and like where I come from in life and how I engage with things and the privilege I've had of growing up in a loving household.

But I remember that being a real, and I was only what, 22 at that time or 23.

And that was like the real beginning of me starting to explore the prison system and where and how it doesn't actually allow for change.

It doesn't allow for healing.

It doesn't allow for recovery.

And so when we started SLEEC, it was very much from that mindset of looking at how we dismantle the roots of male violence.

How we dismantle the roots of violent male violence is first of all, getting rid of things like poverty and investing in social care and social services as just like a baseline foundational thing, but also looking in how we support the people that have caused harm.

And yeah, there are going to be people in our society and on our world that actually cannot be around people, they can't keep themselves and other people safe, but the place in which they need to then be held should be one that is of love and compassion and care and accountability and giving the opportunity to grow within themselves.

Might mean that they can never come out and be a, functioning human within society, but they are kept in conditions that are at baseline humane because prisons aren't.

And so where we come from as an organization, and we're never, I'm never going to expect someone who's experienced rape and sexual violence, childhood sexual abuse, to forgive their perpetrator, be okay with their perpetrator.

It's every single person's to have their own experience to their.

perpetrator or to the harm and abuse that they've experienced and it's every single person's right if they want that person to be incarcerated.

I do not get to determine whether that's right or wrong, but from my own experience, and that's all I can ever lead from, is I know that in order to prevent violence and harm from continuing, there has to be an acknowledgement of humanity to the people who are causing that harm.

We have to show up compassionately towards these people in a way that is still holding them to account.

It's not excusing the behavior, it's understanding the context.

Like you were saying, Nicole, if you've experienced childhood sexual abuse, it doesn't excuse you then going on to perpetuate that, but it is context and there are reasons and we have to understand that.

And it can prove really difficult having those conversations with people because sometimes people misconstrue what you're saying, which is that you might be a rape apologist, which is totally not this lens that we're coming from.

It's very much about seeing it that from I'm in a position of privilege in my life that I can have some this level of understanding, I can engage with these subjects, I can educate myself, I can listen, I've got the time to do that.

So I'm going to use that privilege to focus that into then dismantling these systems of harm in a way that is understanding of everyone's relationship to it, which isn't always easy.

I think one of the things that It's difficult enough work is when you're speaking to survivors after they've experienced harm.

And there's still a lot of pressure in our communities and even from like support services to report things that have happened.

And I think there's not enough education around the criminal justice system and prisons in general.

So people aren't actually given the choice of if they want to go through with that from, what going through the criminal justice.

service might look like for you as a survivor, but also what the prison system actually is or what that's actually I think like the work that you do Nicole, just around prisons in general and making people more aware of just what prisons are like and what people are up against, I think there needs to be more education that reveals the, how the criminal justice system works, who it's set to serve, what it is like inside prison, because I think from my experience of working with survivors, a lot of people don't actually want to use the criminal justice system, or once they've started using it, regret it.

A lot of people I know have gone through the criminal justice system and said, that was worse than their experience of rape.

And I think there just needs to be more conversations and more education around what it actually is like for people both going through it and inside.

Something we also talk about is what actually is justice to you individually because we've created a system, i.

e.

the criminal justice system, that is a one fixed way of seeing what justice is, which is often incarceration or punishment.

for the harm that's been caused.

And we don't ever unpack our own relationship to what justice looks like.

And that is such a fundamental thing in all of this, is starting to engage with what does justice actually look like to you individually?

And then, checking in with your people as to what justice looks like for them.

And then once you start having these conversations about justice, and what does that actually look like?

How does it feel?

How does it present?

Is it structurally?

Is it something internal?

Is it spiritual?

Whatever it is, having those conversations, you begin to see that these fixed systems that we have are not set up to actually provide us with the thing, the very thing that it says, which is justice.

And also at the same time, it's not set up to then give a proportionate consequence to what has happened in terms of the perpetrator or the person that's caused harm.

Sorry, I'm trying to move away from perpetrator as a, as as language, but for want of a better word, it's like, because we aren't having those conversations with ourselves and with, others about what is justice, what is accountability, what is harm, it makes it really hard then to yeah, I guess have a healthy relationship to these like really messed up systems.

I mean you don't really want to have a healthy relationship to a messed up system but like you want to be able to feel like you have some like understanding of it and some knowledge of it that's rooted in your own experience which I think is really important.

Amazing.

Yeah, 100 percent agree.

And thank you so much for your time today.

I think people will be, yeah, like really inspired by what you're doing and I hope it generates some donations and some support.

And yeah, I just want to say you have like my utmost respect and yeah.

Thanks again.

Thank you so much and it goes honestly both ways.

It's like such a pleasure to be in this space with you and just value and respect your work so much.

Yeah it's, I'm gushing a little bit but I'm gonna stop.

Yeah, thank you so much.

No worries.

And I didn't realize you were in Bristol, so that's even cooler because I'm like, like an hour and a bit outside.

But yeah, it means we could work together on some things or something.

This baby come.

Okay.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcripts, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.

org forward slash podcast.