viz.

I wanted to post on this last week, but have been out of town! I'm so glad you put this up.
This issue this shirt raises for me, in addition to those that Melanie listed, has to do with the "authenticity" that the shirt bestows on the wearer. Will people assume that those wearing these t-shirts have been raped? Does the medium of the t-shirt negate its supposed confessional quality? But if the shirt loses its status as a personal revelation, does that negate the kind of work the shirt was originally designed to do?

This shirt reminds me of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA) sexual assault awareness campaign, called "Speak Up. Speak Out." The TAASA website includes a description of the campaign:

The "Speak Up. Speak Out." campaign includes television, radio and print public service advertisements. Each ad features an actual Texas survivor of sexual assault, talking about his or her personal story. However, their messages are about hope and healing - survival and recovery, rather than victimization - reinforcing the campaign’s goal to inform the public about sexual assault crisis services and to encourage dialogue across Texas. Ads continue to run in English and Spanish.

In this campaign, notice the emphasis on hearing from actual survivors--ostensibly to combat the same kind of silence that Baumgardner wants to shatter.

In the same Jezebel post that Melanie references, the author quotes from a friend of Baumgardner's, Christen Clifford, who says, "There really are so few spaces where it's considered appropriate to talk about [rape]," referencing a dinner party where rape came up and conversation just halted. The author then writes, "Call me old fashioned, but I'm not sure rape is something anyone is ever going to feel comfortable discussing at a dinner party." While that may be the case, I'm disappointed that the author doesn't take her own point further. Instead, to me, Baumgardner's shirt moves rape into a begins to blur the lines between spotlighting the victim (as in the TAASA campaign) and making the fact of rape less easy to dismiss or compartmentalize.