Sexual harassment and violence are so pervasive in STEM fields that we are second only to the military, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. As awareness increases, so do the activist-led movements to hold our institutions accountable, like the #MeTooSTEM blog and the many petitions started by Dr. BethAnn McLaughlin.

Yet, despite the high profile cases breaking like clockwork, cases continue to be swept under the rug and mishandled by the systems and offices intended to support us. There continues to be no satisfactory method for survivors to heal and prevent further harm from happening. Report to the Title IX office and have a gag order placed on you while the university maintains its best interests or confide in a professor only for them to be required as a mandatory reporter to divulge your incident to Title IX on your behalf. Discuss only amongst students and risk that serial sexual assaulters move more quickly than the whisper network.

Not only do the survivors of sexual harassment and assault deal with trauma and need healing, so do the activists and allies doing work to prevent more harm. So often, the activists themselves have endured and survived SVSH.

By making this zine, we hope to provide a platform to heal; to say the things you can’t say without more harm, and to convey with imagery what you can’t speak in words.

We hope this zine reminds everyone impacted by SVSH in STEM that they are not alone. We may not know how to fix the mess that sexual predators created, but we can try to do it in solidarity.

 

The first edition of the zine was printed to share at the 2018 Society for Neuroscience meeting. To submit a postcard, please take a photo and submit it in the following form.

Upload your postcard here

 

If you'd like to support the creation of this next zine, please consider donating!

 

 Special thanks to Melissa Lee for allowing us to use her photography for soliticing submissions for the first zine!