Living Lotus Project

08/07/2020

This is Daisy Coleman. She was an artist. An advocate. A leader. A visionary. A survivor.
In 2012, a classmate of Daisy’s r***d her after plying her with alcohol at a party. She was 14. He was 17. He was also a footballer, with family connections that included wealth and status privilege. After the assault, he and his friends dumped her on the front lawn of her house in almost freezing temperatures. Her mother found her scratching at the door the next morning, barely conscious.
Despite having evidence to prosecute, charges against Matthew Barnett were ultimately dropped amidst an unofficial campaign of victim blaming and aggression towards Daisy. While Barnett went on to study at his grandfather’s distinguished alma mater, Daisy’s mother, striving to protect her children from the unbearable hostility being meted out against them (Daisy in particular), moved her whole family out of the Maryville town in which a privileged young man had first assaulted her daughter and then been protected by his community.
Daisy suffered because of the s*xual violence a man chose to do to her. She suffered because of the lack of support a community chose to deny a child. Despite that, she went in to found a student-led national organization with a mission to end s*xual assault among middle and high school students. The work of Safe BAE continues today, giving teens the tools to combat s*xual violence, to understand consent and to reject victim blaming.
This week, Daisy Coleman ended her life by su***de. She was 23. As her mother Melinda says, “She never recovered from what those boys did to her and it’s just not fair.”
It isn’t fair. And men’s lives go on to fulfil the great “potential” society defends and protects for them, while the women they choose to harm are left to put themselves back together.
Daisy Coleman had a potential too. She managed to fulfil so much of it despite the violence that was done to her, first by Barnett and then by the structural powers in place that work every day to protect men just like him.
Rest in power, Daisy. You will not be forgotten.

01/27/2020

"That same work of compassion also calls on us to remember that no person is an island. All of our lives leave ripples. Some lives are tsunamis. Compassion is not summarizing the beauty of the wave; it’s picking through the wreckage, reckoning with who was hurt. Awe without honesty isn’t respect; it’s myth. Admiration of only the easy parts is fanaticism, not reverence."

"What we admire is so overwhelmingly male, so much of the time. And as a result, what we are willing to set aside, what we deem inconvenient, the worse-makers of more important male matters, is overwhelmingly female. If we want our heroes to be better men, and if we want more of our heroes to be women, and if perhaps we want a world in which our stories are more honest than the framework of heroes and villains allows, well — we have to start by telling the whole truth."

On the inconvenient women who make matters worse

11/21/2019

This is so important! 💬

11/02/2019

Brava.

10/29/2019

The 'She is not your rehab' movement is empowering men to address domestic violence by healing from past traumas through honest conversations.

09/25/2019

We are with you, Chanel.
“While writing Know My Name, I was constantly drawing as a way of letting my mind breathe, reminding myself that life is playful and imaginative. We all deserve a chance to define ourselves, shape our identities, and tell our stories. The film crew that worked on this piece was almost all women. Feeling their support and creating together was immensely healing. We should all be creating space for survivors to speak their truths and express themselves freely. When society nourishes instead of blames, books are written, art is made, and the world is a little better for it.” – Chanel Miller

“While writing Know My Name, I was constantly drawing as a way of letting my mind breathe, reminding myself that life is playful and imaginative. We all dese...

09/06/2019

As a matter of law, we MUST stop blaming r**e victims. He/she is NOT consenting to s*x if they have too much to drink. That getting drunk is referred to in this article as "putting themselves in a dangerous situation" is blatant victim blaming. That these can be conflated in a predator's mind or in his/her legal defense is unconscionable. The ONLY person responsible for r**e is the ra**st, and they should be held accountable without the law giving them a built-in defense.

New York is not the only state with this unforgivable loophole. Please call your governors and senators and demand legislation to fix this!

Most states only explicitly say that drunkenness implies a lack of consent if the intoxication was involuntary

07/28/2019

"Research suggests states with more gun owners have higher numbers of partners and family members killing each other in the home, with women in particular danger of being victims of violence."

More needs to be done to protect those at risk of domestic violence, a co-author of the study told "Newsweek."