Liberation Through Various Forms

In today's discussion class, we observed different forms of survivor's discourse and analyzed liberation, contradiction and recuperation within the accounts.  While watching Tyler Perry's survivor discourse on The Oprah Winfrey show, there were contradictory and recuperating forms but what I mostly saw was the liberation that Perry experienced through his disclosure.

 
As a successful writer, producer, director of tv shows and movies, Perry directed a series of movies which contained cases of childhood sexual assault. Particularly in one of his movie's, "Madea's Family Reunion", Perry includes the story of a young girl who is subjected to sexual assault by her stepfather which is endorsed by her mother. This movie was released before his disclosure, and it makes me wonder as if this was a form of way for him to cope with his trauma. In the end of the Alcoff article, it is mentioned that, "what we need to do is not retreat, as he might suggest, from bringing sexual violence into discourse but rather to create new discursive forms and spaces in which to gain autonomy within this process" (Alcoff). This quote is followed by the different ways that a person can speak out without explicitly recounting their experience. This may include saying it as poem, a tv commercial, a religious service, etc. This is what I perceived Perry do with his this film. He was able to express his experiences through a fictional character and story without fully disclosing it to the world. He was also able to expose the veracity of intramilial childhood sexual assault which I believe needs to be represented in mainstream media.

Six years later, Perry decided to speak out about his experiences on The Oprah Winfrey Show. His disclosure was liberating as Oprah asked, "how have you felt since that interview (first disclosure of CSA three weeks prior), releasing that into such a worldwide way?" Perry responds with "I feel lighter as if I took the weight of the world off my shoulders and I am hoping that in talking about it, it is helping a lot of other men to be free because there is so many of us that don't say anything". Perry's speak out is strengthened by Alcoff's article in which she states that, 
"Speaking out serves to educate the society at large about the dimensions of sexual violence and misogyny, to reposition the problem from an individual psyche to the social sphere where it rightfully belongs, and to empower victims to act constructively on their own behalf and thus make the transition from victim to survivor" (Acloff, par.4). It is visible that Perry's way of overcoming his trauma is by speaking out to the public and using his social status' to further encourage other men to feel and be "free" as well.

 Of course, this can be contradictory as Perry cannot account for every man's childhood sexual assault experience as they are all different, but it is a way to bring forth the reality of men experiencing sexual assault and the need to erase the stigmatization around them.