Debrief/ "Uncle Stop Touching Me"

Since we’ve last spoken, we have received overwhelming feedback from women from all over. We have had both women and men come forth and share their own experiences with sexual assault. We would like to thank them for being vulnerable and sharing their experiences with us because we know that it takes immense courage to speak up and share something so sensitive to the world. In this debrief we will highlight some of the feedback we received from our friends, family, community, and society at large

We’re going to start off by breaking down some of the comments that we received under the article “Uncle Stop Touching Me!” 

African Uncle wrote: Lmao y’all gon have every African man looking out here like a pedophile. Ask y’all families the places they kept their hands in to start messing with kids. And blame them no cam here d say Uncle Na African man rubbish. 

 In our article, we clearly defined “Uncle” and made sure that it was put in the proper context. We want to make clear that this article in no way shape or form takes away from the amazing uncles of the world; the Uncles that are doing an appropriate job of raising children. Furthermore, we REJECT the notion of victim blaming. This is to say that we reject the notion that young girls are paying for the sins of their ancestors because sexual assault is NOT a form of punishment for the sins of our forefathers.

We had another person comment about the next steps after the  article. To that person, we want to say that we’ve heard your concerns and we assure you that the momentum will not die! We have some future projects that will highlight our next steps in detail but for now we are working on creating safe spaces within our communities that will help equip young girls and young women on how to navigate some of these “Uncle” situations. We are working on creating a network of women along with a working list of “Uncles” across our communities that are to be avoided. We are taking measures to educate women so that they do not find themselves in these types of situations.

Now to highlight the feedback that we have received from our friends/family -- the majority of people were supportive of our decision to write this article. Writing such a piece was seen as a taboo in our society and because of that, we received some negative responses. One negative feedback that we received from the Cameroonian Community in Chicago came in the form of a group of men using the term “Uncle Stop touching Me” as a way to refer to younger developed women. For example, if a young girl would walk into an event, they would turn to each other and say “Hey look there goes an ‘Uncle Stop Touching Me.’” This shows that they are first, recognizing that there is power in this movement and that they should stay away from these young girls because they WILL be ousted. Secondly, it shows just how much our society cuddles men into thinking that sexual assault is a joke because to that group of men, it was comical. Thirdly, it  shows their high level of immaturity in dealing with topics such as these.  It also gives them leeway to victim blame not realizing that both men and women are traumatized due to sexual assault. We are asking these men to do better in standing up for women and children that have been victims of sexual assault.  

Our voices will be heard, we will continue on our advocacy mission because we are fighting to give women who have been affected by sexual assault back their autonomy. Moving forward, we will be doing a four part educational blog series. This four part series will examine the different aspects of the “Uncle Stop Touching” dynamics in the African community. This series will begin with our article called “African Aunties, DO BETTER!” For all survivors, remember that you are loved unconditionally and the actions of others should NOT deteriorate your self worth, continue healing and continue telling  your truth.