Sexual Violence and Women’s Health: Deal with It Individually or Collectively?

At a time when the extent of sexual violence is finally coming to light, when the victims, often vulnerable and in pain, still struggle for their voices to be heard – amid a climate of loneliness, doubts, lack of self-esteem, shame and fear of speaking out – how should we respond? Just grin and bear it, as some of our grandmothers used to say? How can we help ourselves? What kind of support, backup, encouragement and protection can the community offer?

Physical and psychological suffering: do we have no solution but to individually depend on our gynecologist or shrink, or can we imagine more collective solutions? Let’s look at the practices of self-help groups in the 1970s and see what we can imagine today.