At the end of the fall semester of 2015, Haverford’s intersectional feminist collective, Feminists United (FU), led a series of political actions along with some social events. Both received widespread backlash from the campus community.
The beginnings of a string of FU-inspired controversy arose with the group’s posters for its D.P.D.P. (Death to the Patriarchy Dance Party), held on November 20, 2015. These posters played on the double meaning of their acronym FU by including middle fingers, which sent the message “fuck the patriarchy.”
FU then began selling their own t-shirts in the Dining Center. These t-shirts were designed by Kaylynn Mayo, who is the founder and CEO of her own clothing company, Rho Brand Designs. By incorporating the middle finger into the t-shirt, she maintained the theme of the posters for D.P.D.P. and aptly added at the bottom of the shirt, “A Message From Feminists United.” This is not the first time Mayo has designed an attention-grabbing shirt for Feminists United. Last year, the shirt Mayo designed was sold at FU Fest in the spring of 2015 and the proceeds were donated to SAFE, a Philly organization dedicated to protecting women on the street.
Matey Scheiner, member of FU, posing in FU’s 2016 shirt.
Next came the more intentionally political actions from Feminists United, dubbed the “The Fucked Up Series.” On November 30th, 2015, FU sent an email out to the student body asking for survivors of sexual assault and boundary violation to recount their experiences at Haverford. This email, with the subject line “TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault Mention — Fucked Up Shit Happens Here Survey” (which was censored by Student Council to contain asterisks in place of such profanity), sparked an increase in the campus-wide backlash against FU.
In this email, FU described their survey as such:
“Feminists United has created a survey for students to recount any experiences on campus in which they have experienced sexual misconduct or sexual assault or felt that their boundaries were violated. The results of this survey will be used to confront the student body about its false view of Haverford’s community as a safe space for all and foster a conversation about how we can continue to improve our community. Your responses to this survey may be posted publicly so please do not include names of any individuals or any other information that you would not like to be viewed by others. All responses will be anonymous.”
The instructions on the survey read:
“The results of this survey will be used to confront the student body about its false view of Haverford’s community as a safe space for all and foster a conversation about how we can continue to improve our community.**Your responses to this survey may be posted publicly. Your response will remain anonymous, but please only write something that you are comfortable having posted.**Please do not include names of any individuals or any other information that you would not like to be viewed by anyone on campus.
Please share any instance(s) in which you have experienced sexual assault or misconduct or you have felt that your boundaries were violated at Haverford (a violation of boundaries may include but is not limited to sexual assault and sexual misconduct–you may define a violation of your boundaries however you feel comfortable doing so). Please only include experiences that occurred at Haverford.”
Throughout their Fucked Up Series, responses from the community served as ironic justifications for the very premises of their actions. In speaking vaguely of “fucked up shit,” FU was referring to the dark, destructive, life-altering incidents that we describe as sexual assault. It is worth reflecting on the fact that we feel the need to censor what society has deemed as “profanity,” but something as horrific as sexual assault has not been considered “profane” enough to even warrant a campus-wide discussion regarding how to prevent it. For another example, the forum responses claiming that the campus is a perfectly safe space simply because they individually had not experienced sexual assault or boundary violation only proved the point FU was trying to make: that people assume Haverford is a safe space because they are unaware of the stories and experiences of survivors. In order to remedy this disconnect, FU presented the campus community with the opportunity to see first-hand accounts of sexual assault and boundary violation at Haverford.
On Friday, December 4th, 2015, FU posted all the survey responses that were submitted to them on a board directly facing the entrance to the Dining Center. The responses included a telling, dichotomous mixture of critiques of the pseudo-scientific nature of the survey and devastating, deeply personal accounts of sexual assault students had experienced on Haverford’s campus. Juxtaposed to these accounts of sexual assault, the responses that claimed to be highbrow critiques of the scientific methodology behind the survey appeared cold and lacking in empathy. They also appeared to miss the point of the survey: it was not meant to collect hard data to be analyzed in an academic setting; it was meant to provide a public forum for survivors of sexual assault to recount their experiences. Further, there had already been a scientific survey conducted to gather sexual assault data at Haverford. FU’s survey, on the other hand, was not about numbers; it was about attitudes, change, and widespread misconceptions at Haverford.
Throughout the days and the weeks following (during which the board remained on display in the Dining Center), crowds of students, administrators, and DC staff could be seen silently reading the responses, their facial expressions seemingly deep in concentration and rumination.
On Friday night, FU projected the words “Fucked Up Shit Happens Here Too” onto the front of Founders Hall, Haverford’s most iconic building. Anyone who went out that night (or any time after 5 pm, when it started getting dark outside) could see the words projected brightly onto our dear Founders Hall, a symbol of all things Haverford: Quaker traditions; the Social and Academic Honor Codes; trust, concern, and respect; confrontation; consensus; community; and integrity. By projecting these words onto Founders, FU confronted the fact that any incident of sexual assault on Haverford’s campus directly contradicts the values Haverford claims to stand for.
“Fucked Up Shit Happens Here Too” projected onto the front of Founders Hall.
This action also incorporated a “solo cup sculpture” meant to represent the number of sexual assaults that occur nationally. The use of solo cups was meant to symbolize the typical college party environment where these assaults often occur. However, the sculpture received backlash from survivors who felt objectified by what they interpreted as their experiences being represented by a solo cup.
A screenshot of a post on Yik Yak regarding FU’s solo cup sculpture.
Following their Fucked Up Series, FU hosted a community discussion on December 9, 2015. The discussion brought up a broad range of perspectives and reactions to FU’s actions. The co-facilitators included members of FU as well as some Women*s Center staff and the WC Program Coordinator Qui Alexander. Some of the critiques of the actions came from the perspective of survivors who could have been traumatized or triggered by the very public and sudden presentation of their own stories in the Dining Center.
They also issued the following apology, read aloud by co-facilitator Matey Scheiner, regarding their solo cup sculpture:
“We at Feminists United wanted to offer an explanation for the solo cup sculpture that was up last Friday, but more importantly, we want to apologize for its effects. First and foremost, we want to apologize to any and everyone who was hurt by the project. We want to take full responsibility. The following explanation is not in any way meant to be an excuse, but to clarify the project and to hopefully share the message that it was supposed to demonstrate. Feminists United created the cup structure to represent the national sexual assault statistic and to create a tangible image so that the Haverford community could understand the prevalence of sexual assault. The use of solo cups to represent the statistic has been used on other campuses such as George Mason University and the University of New Mexico to remind students that sexual assault often occurs in party spaces while people are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This however is no excuse for the prevalence of sexual assault in these spaces. In using solo cups, we hoped to take an object that is normally associated with fun and parties and remind people of its sometimes negative and dangerous uses, as assailants will often use alcohol/ other drugs to assault people. However, we failed to state this, and for that we offer our sincere apologies. In gauging the impact of our project we encountered multiple survivors of sexual assault who felt objectified by our use of solo cups to represent their traumatic experience. For that, we are also very sorry. In our attempt to make a statistic tangible to those who deny the prevalence of sexual assault at Haverford and other colleges in the United States, we overlooked the project’s impact on survivors. We do not, under any circumstances, want to put survivors of sexual assault through any more trauma or objectification and we thank those who spoke up for letting us know how you felt. You and your experience are not a solo cup, nor just a statistic.”
Despite the abundance of insights presented at FU’s community discussion, there was one thing lacking: anyone willing to vocalize the opinions expressed on the anonymous platform Yik Yak. Many of those who opposed Feminists United and their actions on the anonymous platform seemed to believe that if they vocalized their opinions publicly, they would be subject to public shaming, accusations of bigotry, and yelling. In the wake of this discussion, Madeleine Durante published an illuminating commentary on Haverford’s fear of discomfort (and, subsequently, Haverford’s fear of discussing the uncomfortable, taboo topic of sexual assault).
Clara Abbott, who attended the community discussion, drew on a similar theme when asked to reflect on the discussion and FU’s actions: “I would say that much of what we discussed was about making Haverford a place where confrontation can happen in many different ways, with or without emotion, large or small, loud or quiet. It’s important to make confrontations like FU’s welcome in the community because in many ways it made us grow more than something more toned down would have.” According to both Durante’s and Abbot’s analyses of the campus reaction to FU’s actions, Haverford failed to respond to FU’s confrontation in a productive manner, and instead resorted to regressive attacks on the tactics, rather than the substance of FU’s activism.
A screenshot of a post on Yik Yak expressing a resignation to not attend the community discussion.
With so much backlash being hurdled towards FU and so many misconceptions about their political goals, I decided to sit down with Kaylynn Mayo, one of the group’s co-heads, to discuss the implications of FU’s actions the past semester and their goals moving forward.
ON THE “DEATH TO THE PATRIARCHY DANCE PARTY” AND THE FU SHIRT
CR: What was the inspiration and intention behind the design of the poster and the shirt and what does the middle finger symbolize?
KM: When planning the middle finger shirt design, we (FU members) discussed ideas that would be fun, a little provocative, and ultimately be a shirt that we thought other people on campus would really like. Also, our club name’s abbreviation is FU which just so happens to be an abbreviation for fuck you, which just so happens to be represented by a middle finger in American culture—and we really couldn’t resist the play on words there. The poster design came after I had already designed the t-shirts, so we just wanted to stick to that theme.
CR: How do you interpret the claims that the middle finger is aggressive or attacks white males?
KM: I think some people have assumptions about what constitutes a feminist activist group that are often far from the truth. The middle finger was not directed at any specific person or group of people and our club has never made any statements about hating white males, despite what trolls on Yik Yak have been saying. We understand that what we do as group is automatically politicized, but when we came up with the shirt design we honestly were not trying to make a political statement. Our party theme was “Death to the Patriarchy Dance Party (DPDP)” and some people automatically took that to mean “death to white males,” which was not at all our intention and is not the definition of “patriarchy.”
CR: Is there something wrong with being “aggressive” in this kind of activism?
KM: I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with aggressive activism! FU’s actions were really not that aggressive in the grand scheme of activist movements—our primary intention with these recent actions was to simply foster a better dialogue on campus about sexual violence and boundary violation. While I don’t think we were aggressive, we were bold and shocked some people, which was intentional. There really was very little conversation about sexual violence and boundary violation on campus and so we wanted to force that conversation. This is not to ignore the valuable events like Speak Out, but those events are not something the entire campus has to deal with—if we were quiet and less provocative then people would continue to not talk about these things.
ON THE ANONYMOUS SURVEY AND THE BOARD IN THE DC
CR: What was this survey intended to do or create on campus?
KM: We had planned the projection to be the major conversation starter and the survey responses to form a basis for dialogue. As a group, we all knew that sexual misconduct, assault, and boundary violation happened on this campus—we had either experienced these things or talked to people that had—but we knew that many people would easily discount our claim that “fucked up shit happens here too” if no one said “hey! This fucked up shit happened to ME.”
CR: What were your reactions to the responses about sexual assault?
KM: When I first read the responses I was overwhelmed. I was angry and sad about the experiences some people had and also angry that some people felt entitled to take up space in our survey to insult FU and the people that responded to the survey genuinely.
CR: What was your reaction to the responses about the alleged bias and illegitimacy of the survey?
KM: I was pretty disappointed. I was really hoping that people would talk to FU members about any concerns they had, but instead people took up a space that was meant for people to share their experiences in order to share their opinions about our actions. Also, it was still, by definition, a survey. We never claimed to be collecting scientific data; we were asking people to respond to a question.
CR: How did you think the dichotomy between “this survey is stupid” and “here’s my personal experience with sexual assault” responses affected readers’ reception of the board, or your own?
KM: We debated as a group over whether or not to publish the “this survey is stupid” responses because those responses did not follow the survey prompt and were not what the space was intended for. Ultimately, though, we decided that it was important to highlight the dichotomy between people claiming, “Haverford is safe and we don’t have issues,” with people talking about times when they weren’t safe at all.
CR: What made FU decide to make all responses anonymous, without the option for respondents to include their names?
KM: Because Speak Out already exists as an event in which people can share their experiences in a very non-anonymous safe space, we felt that our event should take a different direction and allow people that would otherwise not share their experiences a place to do so. We did not think of a non-anonymous way for people to contribute their experiences without overlapping with Speak Out, but it is not something we are opposed to considering further for future events.
ON THE “FUCKED UP SHIT HAPPENS HERE TOO” PROJECTION
CR: Throughout the planning process for this action, what did FU consider?
KM: Because our survey asked respondents to recount experiences of sexual assault, sexual misconduct, and boundary violation, we wanted people to define these experiences however they felt comfortable. This allowed for a diverse conglomeration of experiences that we didn’t want to limit with a title like “sexual assault happens here.” We added the “too” at the end of the statement to combat the idea that Haverford is exempt from these issues that many other schools are known to have.
CR: What were the inspirations for the action and what did FU intend create or cause with this projection?
KM: We were inspired to create the projection after seeing a similar demonstration on Columbia’s campus by the group No Red Tape. Their projection said a few phrases, one of which was “Rape Happens Here.” We appreciated the powerfulness of No Red Tape’s actions and understand that their actions were a reaction to their campus’ particular experience with rapes, however we thought that projecting the word “rape” in bold letters on Founders would be triggering to survivors and limit the scope of the issues we wanted to address. We envisioned people seeing the projection, being shocked, talking to FU members that were tabling outside with the projection and inside with the response board, then talking to their peers about sexual violence and boundary violation on campus.
ON THE COMMUNITY FORUM AND MOVING FORWARD
CR: Some survivors criticized the triggering nature of certain aspects of the actions. How does FU strike a balance between reaching out to those who are unaware and maintaining sensitivity toward survivors?
KM: We are very sorry for the parts of our actions that were triggering to survivors. We all talked about ways in which our actions would not be triggering, but in hindsight we realize that our intentions were not totally transparent—because we were going for the shock factor—but in the future we will take more care to be open about the intents of our actions so that we aren’t hurting any of the people that we ultimately want to support.
CR: Most criticisms of FU were posted anonymously on Yik Yak. These criticisms did not seem to be present at the community discussion. Why do you think the people posting those criticisms didn’t come to the forum, and what does that say about their arguments?
KM: I viewed these criticisms as coming from cowardly and immature people. FU’s actions were not combative towards any specific people, except for assailants. I think the people that essentially cyber bullied FU members on Yik Yak either violated someone’s boundaries and are defensive about that or don’t believe that we should ever critique our school’s culture.
CR: What were the overall accomplishments and disappointments of these actions?
KM: I expected some negative feedback from our actions, but I was optimistic that our community would confront us in person (or at least by email!) with their disagreements. However, there were also many, many more people that came to me and other FU members and thought what we were doing was valuable. Some people even said that they realized that they had violated people’s boundaries in the past and really wanted to change how they engaged with others.
CR: What does FU plan to do moving forward and building off of these actions?
KM: We’ve set up a meeting with members in the administration for next semester to talk about how we can better combat sexual violence and boundary violation and we definitely want to continue this conversation with the student body, but other than that we don’t have any concrete plans! A lot of our actions this semester were about shocking people into conversation, but we had little idea about what the campus climate was in terms of talking about sexual assault—since people rarely talked about it. Now we know what the campus climate is, so we can take into account people’s responses from this semester when planning our future actions.
On a final note, Haverford students ought to begin the spring semester contemplating Feminists United’s actions last semester, the campus-wide reactions, and what we can do moving forward about sexual assault on campus.