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It was April, last year.
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I was on an evening out with friends
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to celebrate one of their birthdays.
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We hadn't been all together
for a couple of weeks;
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it was a perfect evening,
as we were all reunited.
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At the end of the evening,
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I caught the last underground train
back to the other side of London.
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The journey was smooth.
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I got back to my local station
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and I began the 10-minute walk home.
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As I turned the corner onto my street,
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my house in sight up ahead,
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I heard footsteps behind me
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that seemed to have
approached out of nowhere
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and were picking up pace.
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Before I had time to process
what was happening,
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a hand was clapped around my mouth
so that I could not breathe,
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and the young man behind me
dragged me to the ground,
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beat my head repeatedly
against the pavement
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until my face began to bleed,
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kicking me in the back and neck
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while he began to assault me,
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ripping off my clothes
and telling me to "shut up,"
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as I struggled to cry for help.
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With each smack of my head
to the concrete ground,
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a question echoed through my mind
that still haunts me today:
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"Is this going to be how it all ends?"
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Little could I have realized,
I'd been followed the whole way
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from the moment I left the station.
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And hours later,
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I was standing topless and barelegged
in front of the police,
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having the cuts and bruises
on my naked body photographed
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for forensic evidence.
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Now, there are few words to describe
the all-consuming feelings
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of vulnerability, shame, upset
and injustice that I was ridden with
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in that moment and for the weeks to come.
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But wanting to find a way
to condense these feelings
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into something ordered
that I could work through,
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I decided to do what
felt most natural to me:
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I wrote about it.
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It started out as a cathartic exercise.
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I wrote a letter to my assaulter,
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humanizing him as "you,"
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to identify him as part
of the very community
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that he had so violently
abused that night.
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Stressing the tidal-wave
effect of his actions,
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I wrote:
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"Did you ever think
of the people in your life?
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I don't know who the people
in your life are.
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I don't know anything about you.
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But I do know this:
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you did not just attack me that night.
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I'm a daughter, I'm a friend,
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I'm a sister, I'm a pupil,
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I'm a cousin, I'm a niece,
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I'm a neighbor;
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I'm the employee
who served everyone coffee
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in the café under the railway.
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And all the people who form
these relations to me
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make up my community.
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And you assaulted
every single one of them.
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You violated the truth that I
will never cease to fight for,
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and which all of these people represent:
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that there are infinitely more
good people in the world than bad."
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But, determined not to let
this one incident make me lose faith
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in the solidarity in my community
or humanity as a whole,
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I recalled the 7/7 terrorist bombings
in July 2005 on London transport,
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and how the mayor of London at the time --
and indeed my own parents --
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had insisted that we all get back
on the tubes the next day,
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so we wouldn't be defined or changed
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by those that had made us feel unsafe.
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I told my attacker,
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"You've carried out your attack,
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but now I'm getting back on my tube.
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My community will not feel we are unsafe
walking home after dark.
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We will get on the last tubes home,
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and we will walk up our streets alone,
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because we will not ingrain
or submit to the idea
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that we are putting ourselves
in danger in doing so.
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We will continue
to come together, like an army,
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when any member
of our community is threatened,
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and this is a fight you will not win."
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At the time of writing this letter --
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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At the time of writing this letter,
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I was studying for my exams in Oxford,
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and I was working
on the local student paper there.
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Despite being lucky enough to have
friends and family supporting me,
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it was an isolating time.
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I didn't know anyone
who'd been through this before;
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at least I didn't think I did.
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I'd read news reports, statistics,
and knew how common sexual assault was,
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yet I couldn't actually name
a single person
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that I'd heard speak out
about an experience of this kind before.
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So in a somewhat spontaneous decision,
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I decided that I would publish
my letter in the student paper,
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hoping to reach out to others in Oxford
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that might have had a similar experience
and be feeling the same way.
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At the end of the letter,
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I asked others to write in
with their experiences
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under the hashtag, "#notguilty,"
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to emphasize that survivors of assault
could express themselves
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without feeling shame or guilt
about what happened to them --
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to show that we could all
stand up to sexual assault.
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What I never anticipated
is that almost overnight,
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this published letter would go viral.
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Soon, we were receiving
hundreds of stories
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from men and women across the world,
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which we began to publish
on a website I set up.
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And the hashtag became a campaign.
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There was an Australian mother in her 40s
who described how on an evening out,
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she was followed to the bathroom
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by a man who went
to repeatedly grab her crotch.
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There was a man in the Netherlands
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who described how he was date-raped
on a visit to London,
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and wasn't taken seriously
by anyone he reported his case to.
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I had personal Facebook messages
from people in India and South America,
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saying, how can we bring
the message of the campaign there.
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One the first contributions we had
was from a woman called [Nikki],
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who described growing up,
being molested my her own father.
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And I had friends open up to me
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about experiences ranging
from those that happened last week
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to those that happened years ago,
that I'd had no idea about.
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And the more we started
to receive these messages,
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the more we also started
to receive messages of hope --
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people feeling empowered
by this community of voices
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standing up to sexual assault
and victim-blaming.
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One woman called Olivia,
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after describing how she was attacked
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by someone she had trusted
and cared about for a long time,
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said, "I've read many
of the stories posted here,
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and I feel hopeful that if so many
women can move forward,
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then I can, too.
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I've been inspired by many,
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and I hope I can be as strong
as them someday.
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I'm sure I will."
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People around the world began
tweeting under this hashtag,
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and the letter was republished
and covered by the national press,
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as well as being translated into several
other languages worldwide.
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But something struck me
about the media attention
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that this letter was attracting.
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For something to be front-page news,
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given the word "news" itself,
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we can assume it must be something new
or something surprising.
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And yet sexual assault
is not something new.
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Sexual assault, along with other
kinds of injustices,
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is reported in the media all the time.
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But through the campaign,
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these injustices were framed
as not just news stories,
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they were firsthand experiences
that had affected real people,
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who were creating,
with the solidarity of others,
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what they needed
and had previously lacked:
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a platform to speak out,
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the reassurance they weren't alone
or to blame for what happened to them,
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and open discussions that would help
to reduce stigma around the issue.
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The voices of those directly affected
were at the forefront of the story --
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not the voices of journalists
or commentators on social media.
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And that's why the story was news.
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We live in an incredibly
interconnected world
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with the proliferation of social media,
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which is of course a fantastic resource
for igniting social change.
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But it's also made us
increasingly reactive,
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from the smallest annoyances
of, "Oh, my train's been delayed,"
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to the greatest injustices of war,
genocides, terrorist attacks.
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Our default response has become
to leap to react to any kind of grievance
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by tweeting, Facebooking, hastagging --
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anything to show others
that we, too, have reacted.
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The problem with reacting
in this manner en masse
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is it can sometimes mean
that we don't actually react at all,
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not in the sense of actually
doing anything, anyway.
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It might make ourselves feel better,
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like we've contributed
to a group mourning or outrage,
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but it doesn't actually change anything.
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And what's more,
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it can sometimes drown out the voices
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of those directly
affected by the injustice,
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whose needs must be heard.
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Worrying, too, is the tendency
for some reactions to injustice
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to build even more walls,
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being quick to point fingers,
with the hope of providing easy solutions
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to complex problems.
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One British tabloid,
on the publication of my letter,
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branded a headline stating,
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"Oxford Student Launches
Online Campaign to Shame Attacker."
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But the campaign never
meant to shame anyone.
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It meant to let people speak
and to make others listen.
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Divisive Twitter trolls were quick
to create even more injustice,
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commenting on
my attacker's ethnicity or class
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to push their own prejudiced agendas.
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And some even accused me
of feigning the whole thing
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to push -- and I quote --
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my "feminist agenda of man-hating."
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(Laughter)
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I know, right?
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As if I'm going to be like,
"Hey guys! Sorry I can't make it,
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I'm busy trying to hate
the entire male population
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by the time I'm 30."
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(Laughter)
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Now, I'm almost sure
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that these people wouldn't say
the things the say in person.
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But it's as if because they might
be behind a screen,
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in the comfort in their own home
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when on social media,
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people forget that what
they're doing is a public act --
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that other people will be reading it
and be affected by it.
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Returning to my analogy
of getting back on our trains,
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another main concern I have
about this noise that escalates
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from our online responses to injustice,
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is that it can very easily slip
into portraying us as the affected party,
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which can lead to a sense of defeatism,
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a kind of mental barrier to seeing
any opportunity for positivity or change
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after a negative situation.
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A couple of months
before the campaign started
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or any of this happened to me,
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I went to a TEDx event in Oxford,
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and I saw Zelda la Grange speak,
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the former private secretary
to Nelson Mandela.
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One of the stories
she told really struck me.
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She spoke of when
Mandela was taken to court
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by the South African Rugby Union,
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after he commissioned
an inquiry into sports affairs.
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In the courtroom,
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he went up to the South African
Rugby Union's lawyers,
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shook them by the hand
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and conversed with them,
each in their own language.
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And Zelda wanted to protest,
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saying they had no right to his respect
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after this injustice they had caused him.
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He turned to her and said,
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"You must never allow the enemy
to determine the grounds for battle."
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At the time of hearing these words,
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I didn't really know why
they were so important,
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but I felt they were, and I wrote them
down in a notebook I had on me.
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But I've thought about this line
a lot ever since.
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Revenge, or the expression of hatred
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towards those who have done us injustice
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may feel like a human instinct
in the face of wrong,
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but we need to break out of these cycles
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if we are to hope to transform
negative events of injustice
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into positive social change.
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To do otherwise
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continues to let the enemy
determine the grounds for battle,
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creates a binary,
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where we who have suffered
become the affected,
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pitted against them, the perpetrators.
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And just like we got back on our tubes,
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we can't let our platforms
for interconnectivity and community
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be the places that we settle for defeat.
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But I don't want to discourage
a social media response,
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because I owe the development
of the #notguilty campaign
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almost entirely to social media.
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But I do want to encourage
a more considered approach
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to the way we use it
to respond to injustice.
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The start, I think,
is to ask ourselves two things.
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Firstly: Why do I feel this injustice?
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In my case, there were
several answers to this.
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Someone had hurt me and those who I loved,
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under the assumption they
wouldn't have to be held to account
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or recognize the damage they had caused.
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Not only that, but thousands
of men and women suffer every day
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from sexual abuse, often in silence,
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yet it's still a problem we don't give
the same airtime to as other issues.
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It's still an issue many people
blame victims for.
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Next, ask yourself: How,
in recognizing these reasons,
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could I go about reversing them?
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With us, this was holding my attacker
to account -- and many others.
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It was calling them out
on the effect they had caused.
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It was giving airtime
to the issue of sexual assault,
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opening up discussions amongst friends,
amongst families, in the media
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that had been closed for too long,
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and stressing that victims
shouldn't feel to blame
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for what happened to them.
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We might still have a long way to go
in solving this problem entirely.
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But in this way,
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we can begin to use social media
as an active tool for social justice,
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as a tool to educate,
to stimulate dialogues,
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to make those in positions
of authority aware of an issue
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by listening to those
directly affected by it.
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Because sometimes these questions
don't have easy answers.
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In fact, they rarely do.
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But this doesn't mean we still
can't give them a considered response.
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In situations where
you can't go about thinking
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how you'd reverse
this feeling of injustice,
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you can still think,
maybe not what you can do,
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but what you can not do.
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You can not build further walls
by fighting injustice with more prejudice,
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more hatred.
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You can not speak over those
directly affected by an injustice.
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And you can not react to injustice,
only to forget about it the next day,
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just because the rest
of Twitter has moved on.
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Sometimes not reacting
instantly is, ironically,
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the best immediate course
of action we can take.
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Because we might be angry, upset
and energized by injustice,
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but let's consider our responses.
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Let us hold people to account,
without descending into a culture
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that thrives off shaming
and injustice ourselves.
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Let us remember that distinction,
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so often forgotten by internet users,
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between criticism and insult.
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Let us not forget
to think before we speak,
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just because we might
have a screen in front of us.
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And when we create noise on social media,
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let it not drown out the needs
of those affected,
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but instead let it amplify their voices,
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so the internet becomes a place
where you're not the exception
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if you speak out about something
that has actually happened to you.
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All these considered
approaches to injustice
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evoke the very keystones
on which the internet was built:
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to network, to have signal, to connect --
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all these terms that imply
bringing people together,
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not pushing people apart.
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Because if you look up the word
"justice" in the dictionary,
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before punishment,
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before administration of law
or judicial authority,
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you get:
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"The maintenance of what is right."
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And I think there are a few things
more "right" in this world
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than bringing people together,
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than unions.
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And if we allow social media
to deliver that,
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then it can deliver a very powerful
form of justice, indeed.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)