MeTooLGBTQ 2020: LGBTQ+ Survivors Video Submissions

Guiding Questions:

• General – eg name, age, sexual orientation and/or gender identity, survivor of ___
• How did your experience affect you? 
• What do you wish people knew about being a survivor and being LGBTQ? 
• What other parts of your identity and/or reality intersect with your LGBTQ+ survivorship? e.g. How has your racial identity played into your experiences? Or: your mental health status, your job or career, your class status, your disability status, etc.

Suggestions / Additional Tips:

• Don’t feel like you need to dive deep into your trauma; we are not here to exploit your story or your pain. 
• Share only what you feel comfortable sharing with a general audience. 
• This doesn’t have to be a masterpiece! We can clean up some audio in the editing process. 
• Review some tips, below! 

Sample script for a short video clip: 

“My name is Jen, I’m a 34-year-old queer nonbinary woman and a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and rape.

When I came out as queer, my mom asked me if it was “because of what happened” – assuming that because I’d been abused by a guy, I’d somehow “become” queer. The answer is no, of course, but even I worried about that. Assuming that if it was, the assumption there is that my queerness would be tarnished somehow, less valid, because it was tied up in the post-traumatic response to sexual abuse. And that’s just not true. 

I’m a survivor. And I’m queer. And I’m a nonbinary womxn. Those identities and realities all coexist, and they’re all equally valid.”