This 24-Year-Old Is Creating A Civil Rights Movement For Sexual Assault Survivors

(Via fastcoexist)

Screen Shot 2016-04-21 at 9.58.54 AM

This is the first I have heard of this wonderful campaign that has as its mission to create  a Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights. Founded by Amanda Nguyen, who was confronted with the "hostile place" that is the criminal justice system when her own rape kit was almost destroyed, has taken a simple and common sense approach to changing the system:

"Working in the halls of the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, Rise is pushing to pass a Bill of Rights for survivors in all 50 states. They cobbled together laws that already worked in various states, picked the ones that could gather universal support, and put them together. As such, the rights are basic and noncontroversial, such as fair and efficient rape kit procedures, a tracking system for the kits, a survivors’ right to a sexual assault counselor, and standard procedures to simply inform survivors of their rights."

Reading this, I wonder if the same approach could not be taken with the online harassment? What if we did a study of all the laws and policies that exist about online harassment in the world, see which ones have been effective and cobbled them together to come up with a comprehensive set of guidelines/laws/policies to deal with situations like Zoe Quinn or well, fill in the blank... Having just seen the very moving TED talk by Monica Lewinsky on the private toll of public shaming, this kind of comprehensive policy and procedure could also be used to curb the power of the online lynch mob, always at the ready with their virtual nooses.

I bet this has already been done before -Academia people? Or is online harassment too new to have its own laws? Oh dear, I think I just created my very own research project...