website design? rape survivor comms?

[nerdflighter]

can somebody come onto this post or my inbox and talk about how communities for survivors of violence (sexual/otherwise) are structured? and if you had the ability to design a community for survivors, what would you really want? what features are indispensable and which ones would be amazing to have? I'm working on a website for refugees to connect with other refugees (please ask me about it) and I'm trying to look at the closest analogues that I know of that have established communities - I'm also looking at reddit subs for abuse survivors. I want to know what makes these spaces work, and I want to know how to make them as easy to work with as possible. everything you can give me, please.

Comments

[siderea]

Hi! Here via sciatrix! Mental health professional, SJW, and web forum wonk. I can't answer your question vis a via web, but here's some things to know:

I would not have considered rape surivivors comms as at all analogous and maybe not pertinent to the need of refugees, for the following reasons.

CONTENT ADVISORY: Discussion of psychological issues re rape.

A prof of mine once proposed a distinction between traumas that happen only to individuals and catastrophes which happen to whole communities. In between we can posit there are disasters which befall families but not their greater communities.

When we talk about "rape survivors" in the English-speaking West, we are usually thinking of rape as a crime against individuals. Whether we are discussing domestic violence, or date rape, or stranger rape, or rape in carceral institutions, we're talking about a a crime that is perpetrated against individuals, usually in secret or seclusion.

We're not thinking about rape as it is used as a war crime, where, say, all the women of town are raped – perhaps publically – by an invading military.

The crucial distinction here is that a kind of psychological boundary is drawn around the victims, separating them from the non-victims. If someone goes through a trauma alone, they are psychologically cut off by the trauma from other people. If a group of people go through a trauma together, they are collectively cut off from outsiders by the trauma, but may be bound together by their shared experience.

The person who goes through trauma alone most typically struggles with issues of validation: did it actually happen? was it actually that bad? what will other people think about me? But people who go through a trauma together get valdation from one another: they are validated that it happened, that it was terrible, and they don't have to wonder what other people will think because other people know and have probably told them.

Overwhelmingly, in the English-speaking West, "rape survivor" resources are set up with the (reasonable!) assumption that sexual violence survivors went through their traumatization alone and are struggling with the psychological isolation and disconnection attendent to that. They're all about providing connection with other people who "get it", who can provide that validation and understanding.

But that's not necessarily (or usually?) the primary work of supporting refugees, in so far as refugees go through the experience of fleeing trauma as families, and have connection to ex-pat communities.

(Though that said, it is possible to be a solo refugee.)

I know far less what the psychological work of refugees around trauma is. I'm pretty sure there's going to be some serious variation between refugee populations. Yazidis arriving in Oklahoma and Somalis arriving in Michigan are going to have very different experiences than, say, a Guatamalan fleeing gang violence to the US border whose first language is a Native American one, and has little Spanish and no English.

[ETA: I know far less about this topic, but my impression is that the work of psychologically supporting refugees has far more to do with assisting with the problems of acculturative stress (e.g. culture shock), bereavement (both loss of individuals and loss of home/ways of life), and the challenges of small tightly-knit expat communities, that may have, in addition to all the ordinary community pathologies of small subcultural groups, collective trauma problems.]

So the question I would put to you is: what are you trying to do with your website for refugees to connect with other refugees? How are you hoping to support them? What kind of help do you imagine this will be?

If you're thinking that refugees want/need connection with other refugees for the same psychological reasons that rape victims do, I think you may be badly off the mark.

[siderea]

P.S.

Oh, right. On behalf of everyone in or from Africa, India, and Latin America, and about half of China: screw the desktop, it's all phones all the time.

Seriously, none of this "we'll also make it accessible on the phone" nonsense. Like, I'm strongly recommending that you don't even make a desktop version, to force you to prioritize the phone experience.

See: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/920460.html and read the comments for more info and links.

[wellthisisnice]

Oh, definitely go with mobile-friendly design! The main reason i decided to create a website about asexuality in my native language, beside lack of truly accessible 101 info, was that even though most anyone uses their phone as their primary access to the Internet nowdays (especially for non-work stuff) the only mobile-friendly ace resource available was Facebook, which is not very... human-friendly. Especially for older, neurodivergent, and disabled folks, and those fleeing violence and abuse.

This video has some tips on how to build mobile-friendly websites.

This is even more relevant in refugee communities, that we know use their smartphones as sometimes their only way to find resources and connect with others. It can also be used against them, so take that into consideration when building the site too.

Related to that, remember to look up universal and accessible web design. Accessibility checklists are great for this, and some of these considerations can be useful not only for disabled users, but also for those you may not be fluent in the language(s) your website is built, since accessible informational design offers simplified language and multiple info clues (like, for example, consistent colors and icons).

[nerdflighter]

good point about Accessibility! and thanks for the links, I'll look into them <3

[nerdflighter]

I have a friend (very new friend) who works with refugees from all over the world. she's interested in exploring if there's a collective refugee identity and how refugees from different contexts can support each other.
she was talking about how a lot of refugees are very isolated in the places they end up in, so in spite of having an immediate community, they're extremely isolated from the rest of the world.
I'll bring up your points to her, though, and see what she says.
I picked rape survivor comms as the closest analogue to what I was trying to have, but obviously they're not the same situation and many things will have to be adapted and changed.
Thanks for the input! I'll get back to you on the other stuff