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Opinion: Letters to the editor Open letter to Clothesline Project thieves
By Steph Wilkins Contributing writer The Clothesline Project (CLP) is an activity and exhibition that raises awareness about violence against women and promotes healing among those who have been touched by sexual assault, domestic violence or murder of a woman or child. Women who have been raped or beaten and those who have known victims of abuse, sexual violence or murder are invited to decorate a shirt to honor one woman’s story. Sometimes there are images that linger and haunt such as an eye with a frightening world reflected in it, a Star of David as a bid for peace, an open, festering wound that will never heal. Sometimes there are words: “Mike, my virginity was not for you.” “I said stop. He didn’t.” “I got help.” Sometimes they are cutting in their clarity, sometimes incomprehensible and abstract, yet they always seem like secrets exposed or revealed. They are raw, vulnerable, angry and excruciatingly intimate. Student made t-shirts hung on Friday afternoon in Garvey Park with educational and advocacy materials. Sometime during the night, one or more people stole at least 12 of the shirts. To the thieves: I wanted to tell you exactly what you have taken. The white shirts you took honor the memories of women who have been murdered, most often by those who claimed to love them. There were red shirts taken. When you carried them off, you carried the symbol of the sexual assault and rape of both women and men, but mostly women. The yellow shirts represent women who have been battered. Did you notice that the green shirt you took was smaller than the rest? That’s because the green shirts represent women who were sexually molested as children. There were only a few purple t-shirts on the line. Purple shirts signify a woman who was targeted because she was, or was thought to, be gay. Although the women whose stories were commemorated in the black shirts are mostly far away, they are not as far as you might think. Women are raped and brutalized in times of war and conflict all over the world and gang rapes occur in cities like Erie every day. That brings me back to you. I thought you should know what you took already belonged to you in the cultural legacy of violence we share. Yes, you took individual women’s stories and thereby silenced their voices; but collectively, the CLP reveals important insights into social patterns and the ideas and activities we value as a society. We are going to continue to make and display t-shirts. I invite you and all members of the community to make one. Look for flyers and e-mails for opportunities. I propose we hang them in the commons between Hirt, Zurn and Preston in May and that we each take the opportunity to learn the stories of others. I ask that the campus community respect and protect these visible reminders that violence is an increasingly prevalent and intolerable trend in our society and we must each of us, do everything in our power to end its reign over the human heart.
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