Kelsey Jean

I learned html, css, JavaScript, MySQL, and PhP during my senior year of college, when I needed to complete an online portfolio that showcased my photography of the local LatinX community, whilst I interned at and later, co-directed the projects of Unete: Center for Farmworker Rights and Dignity, in ASHLAND and MEDFORD, OREGON. I learned darkroom photography in ASHLAND, in the photography department of Southern Oregon University.

I was raised in an unincorporated community that is between Petaluma and Sebastopol, CA; I attended Petaluma High School and then transferred to the arts-magnet program of ArtQuest that is within Santa Rosa High School, in Santa Rosa, CA; where I was born and where I now live. I am bilingual in Spanish. I am a victim of domestic violence and I am a victim of rape. I am also a qualified advocate for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I am dedicated to this type of work, first and foremost; I know that it is the most important of all, because it truly is life or death; and, though there are others like me—I am unique and I am defiant and deliberate, in my assertation that victims are not always survivors; and lest we not be questioned or corrected for identifying as such—the term “survivor” is coerced and it is forced upon victims, as though it is their responsibility to “survive” what was done to them. I am a victim and I do not see the identity of “survivor” as being empowering of victims; rather, I see that it functions as a means of stalemating the conversation about rape and about domestic abuse, assault, and battery: it does nothing to give back to victims, their voice, their identity, their physical autonomy, their literal voice (as a friend and colleague of mine had her literal voice shot out from her body, at the final point of contact with her abuser; hence, her entire face had to be reconstructed and she cannot use her voice ever again (not in the same way, and never again with the same strength as she had prior to this final assault against her by her lifelong abuser). It is never a victim’s responsibility to “become a survivor” for any reason, and that “our” society continues to forcibly “empower” victims to do this, is another form of abuse and needs to be stopped NOW, not later.