What Were You Wearing?
The Role of Victim-Blaming & Indifference in Facilitating & Perpetuating Gender-Based Crimes
This module confronts how victim-blaming questions treat clothing as explanation for sexual violence. The question redirects scrutiny from perpetrator to victim, making the person harmed answer for violence they did not cause.
This module pairs survivor words, representative clothing, contextual data, documentary records, and evidence to challenge the false narrative that victims cause, invite, or fail to prevent gender-based violence.
The What Were You Wearing? exhibit lineage begins with the poem "What I Was Wearing" (Mary Simmerling, 2005; United States Copyright Office registration TXu001227936, March 11, 2005). The first installation was mounted from the poem, with the author's permission, in April 2014.