sigelphoenix

Tonight was my last training as a peer educator with C.O.R.E., the Committee Organizing Rape Education. This is the campus organization that I've been mentioning for the past couple of months. I started my training at the end of last quarter, and now I'm "qualified" to be a peer educator who will give presentations on sexual assault and relationship violence starting next fall.

This isn't something I predicted for myself. Public speaking, obviously, is not my strength - talking on the phone still intimidates me. >_> But when I wanted to start doing volunteer work, C.O.R.E. was one of the first opportunities I heard of, and I thought, why not? I'm already doing one thing that I'm not used to or good at (i.e., activism), so why not try something else?

Tonight, for this final training session, we practiced doing the actual presentations. I expected that it wouldn't go perfectly, and it didn't - I screwed up, I hesitated, I babbled for embarassingly long periods of time without saying anything coherent. But I expected that. It's something of a relief to have finally tried it out, and figured out what I need to do and what I need to focus my attention on. And, you know, it wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be.

We also had a guest speaker, a woman who has experience both teaching and training on topics related to sexual violence. She did a great job of preparing us for the tough stuff, like difficult questions or an unresponsive audience. I'm slightly less anxious now.

She also acknowledged that public speaking on this topic is different from most other types of public speaking - the topic is far more personal and uncomfortable than almost anything else people speak about. We're trained from an early age not to talk about any of the subjects related to sexual violence - not about sex, not about our bodies, not about violence, and not about rape itself. Not only do we have to do the work normally involved in public speaking, but we have to fight our way through these preconceived barriers in people's minds. This isn't easy. But it's important. And she said: "Standing up in front of people and talking about sexual violence is nothing short of a revolutionary act."

I'm a revolutionary. Fuck yeah.