Soma Sara, founder of Everyone’s Invited
‘We think rape is abhorred by all, but rape and violence are totally normalised in the culture we consume and the language we use’
Photo provided by Soma Sara
This article contains discussion of sexual violence.
I sat down with Soma Sara before her talk at the Cambridge Union to discuss how she feels about her organisation Everyone’s Invited three years on from its inception.
Unless you were completely off the grid during the first lockdown, you will remember (and may even have been part of) the initial growth of Soma Sara’s charity, Everyone’s Invited. Since the first Instagram post in June 2020, although Soma’s charity and the conversation surrounding sexual abuse have expanded, her goals and attention to the power of language have remained constant: “Our overall mission is to expose and eradicate rape culture with empathy, compassion and understanding.” The charity now has a permanent site where people can read and submit survivors’ stories and it also delivers specialist education in schools, “designed to empower school communities to promote healthy, equal relationships by discussing sexual wellbeing”. Most recently, Soma published a book of essays which she introduces as “my attempt to interrogate and try to understand how we can live in a society that allows sexual violence and misogyny to exist and thrive without any repercussions.”
When I sit down with her, I’m keen to pick her brain about language. I’m curious about her thoughts on the vocabulary surrounding sexual abuse and so ask what changes she feels could be made to make the issue more comprehensible: “It’s difficult. There are lots of different terms that are used. For example, gender-based violence is quite a good one because it acknowledges that women and girls are overwhelmingly the victims of violence. However, there are also other genders and identities non-conforming and non-binary…it’s about finding language that encompasses everything.”
The organisation has its roots in storytelling. Wrapping up a dissertation on Margaret Atwood, Soma was coming to the end of her English literature degree when she watched Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You: “The show had a profound impact on me. It changed my understanding of sexual violence by exposing the array of different behaviours and experiences survivors can have.” The series prompted Soma to recognise and start discussions about her own experiences of abuse which she soon realised were not extraordinary: “these instances of sexual violence didn’t feel rare or one off…looking back they were totally normalised…they were entrenched into our daily lives, particularly in our teenage years”. The more she and her friends talked, the more they realised that language was a key part of the problem: “we couldn’t articulate a lot of what was going on, so there was no way to share our experiences with the people in our lives.” Constructing a means of communication was therefore one of the foundational missions of the Everyone’s Invited campaign.
Central to Soma’s campaign has been identifying and challenging rape culture. However, from the beginning she’s been conscious of the challenges the term poses: “The word culture has been powerful in showing that this is everyone’s responsibility. However, I think the term rape culture provokes a kind of cognitive dissonance because people don’t want to believe that rape is normalised in society. We think rape is abhorred by all, but rape and violence are totally normalised in the porn we watch and the language we use. These scripts of dehumanization are so deeply embedded in all the systems and structures that it’s just staring you right in the face.” She concludes: “it’s hard because you don’t want to isolate people, you want to bring people into the conversation, but you also have to say it as it is, and this is a huge, pervasive problem- it’s everywhere.”
Her focus on the universality of the problem prompts me to question why the initial campaign was so dominated by private school and London-based experiences. “When we initially started it was centred on those schools because of my own background but also, because of the media’s obsession with the elite, they really pushed them into the spotlight.” Soma is keen to work against this slanted narrative. “This is happening everywhere, in all kinds of schools, and when you frame it that way you are basically minimising the problem. It makes it seem like it’s just a case of bad apples where, by removing all private schools, we would fix the issue. It’s so much deeper than that. Saying it’s only those schools does a disservice to all survivors who have experienced sexual violence in all kinds of backgrounds. Nevertheless, I do think there is something to be said about power and privilege in this conversation.”
The inclusivity of the conversation is underlined in the name Everyone’s Invited, so I’m interested in where and how Soma sees perpetrators fitting in. I ask if she was ever worried that perpetrators might, in the same way as victims had, find some comfort in hearing all these other stories of abuse. She’s not heard this point before, suggesting that rather than a concern, “maybe it might not be such a bad thing because it shows that we are all victims here.” She recognises that this is a controversial perspective, pointing out that “we have received fierce criticism from our own community for encouraging empathy for all, including men and boys, but we believe in reconciliation. Nothing will change unless men and boys are also part of this discussion.”
Although she is keen not to diminish the plight of survivors, Soma acknowledges that “coming to terms with being a perpetrator is a really horrific ordeal” and thus suggests that “maybe knowing that there are other people who have hurt others will make them feel less isolated and so more able to change.” Broadening our discussion of inclusivity, I ask how Soma feels older generations should engage with Everyone’s Invited. “Although it is for our generation and the future, the organisation is for older generations too, because they are the people who have responsibility in society. It’s crucial that they are trying to educate themselves about what young people’s experiences are in the modern sexual landscape and online culture as it is so different from what they knew.” She emphasises that “if we are going to find solutions and make a change they [older generations] need to listen and create spaces and environments where young people feel like they can talk without judgement.” Everyone must be invited into the conversation to “work against the stigma and taboo that shrouds all of these topics: sex, porn, sending nudes.”
Before Soma leaves for her talk, I manage to sneak one more question. She was in a similar situation to a lot of us now when her campaign first took off. Like me, she was just about to complete the final year of her English Literature degree when her life was spun off course. She went viral and became a symbol for the fight against sexual abuse. I’m curious how she feels about where she’s ended up three years later and I also wonder what she foresees for her future. She sighs. “It’s a hard one to know. I don’t think I am going to be doing it forever. It’s just exhausting and hard work”. Lifting her head with a smile, she continues, “but it is also exhilarating, and really rare to be doing work that actually has an impact and helps people.” Soma is clear about the mixed blessing of her position: “I have had some amazing experiences and have learnt a lot, but it does get really tough.” As for the future, “I think I’m going to look towards finding peace in my life more. Because I do sometimes feel trapped, even though I realise that I’m probably not, because the world is so big and there’s so much out there. So, I feel hopeful that I can just shepherd this until its next evolution.”
At the time of writing, Everyone’s Invited have received 50,046 submissions and there are 93,000 people in their online community.