April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It’s also usually the most strenuous month of classes for me, although this year due to a barrage of midterm papers all due at the same time, that may well have been March instead. So for the most part, I’ll be working on school projects this month instead of blogging.

One of the projects on my to-do list is a work of creative non-fiction in the topic and format of my choosing. As rape culture is something I have been exploring, and since it is a topic much on the mind lately, I decided I would do it on that.

Of course, although I have had some experience with Not-Rape, I have never actually been raped, so I cannot speak to what that experience is like. I need to do some serious research, and for that, I turn to the internet. I would like to compile stories of others’ experiences of rape and sexual assault and braid them in with a critical reflective voice which provides a focus and trajectory, with the goal of creating compassion and raising awareness of rape culture.

I will use no one’s story without their explicit consent. And since this is a lyric essay, there are specific aspects of the stories that I am looking to incorporate more so than others—specific details will help me to contextualize the stories, but beyond that, what I am looking for are concrete details which reveal the emotional texture of the event, and a lot of times those details get lost in the typical retelling of events. So, both in order to more easily find what I am looking for and solve the problem of explicit consent, I’ve created a survey.

If you have ever experienced rape or another form of sexual assault, and you want to help me tell this story, I invite you to participate. All information gathered here will of course be kept strictly confidential, and no identifying information will be used.

Click here to take the survey.

I am still collecting responses, and will continue to do so until further notice. I have posted a project update for this here, and you can find a link to the survey there.

Of course, feel free to link this post around, so that I can cast my net a little wider. Additionally, I welcome any articles or book recommendations you may have on the subject, and if you have a story to share about how rape culture has affected you even though you have not been raped or sexually assaulted, please feel free to share in the comments or via email (my contact info is on the sidebar).