Mirror Memoirs

Mirror Memoirs is a national storytelling and organizing project offering a community of belonging for anyone who wants to end rape culture without leaving any survivors behind and without enacting harm through historically violent institutions. Our mission is to create a world in which Black and Indigenous gender non-conforming children (and all children) are free from sexual violence. While the US Centers for Disease Control estimates 20% of all adults (1 in 4 female-assigned-at-birth and 1 in 6 male-assigned-at-birth people) experience rape or sexual abuse by an older child or an adult by the age of 18, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that gender non-conforming children, especially those assigned male at birth, may be at even greater risk. A 2011 study of more than transgender people found over 50% experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives, and of those who were adult sexual violence survivors, 72% had also survived child sexual abuse. This project uses storytelling and survivor leadership to illuminate the needs and wisdom of survivors at this vulnerable intersection, and to organize for solutions to this violence beyond reliance on prisons, police and state-run psychiatric institutions.