FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture

FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture is a creative activist collaboration to upset the culture of rape and promote a culture of consent. FORCE designs communications campaigns to generate media attention and get millions of people talking. Nationally known for producing large-scale public art projects, FORCE believes that a more difficult and honest conversation needs to happen in America to face the realities of sexual violence, and envision a world where sex is empowering and pleasurable rather than coercive and violent.

FORCE is most widely known for their viral panty prank, where they pretended to be Victoria’s Secret promoting consent themed slogans on underwear. More recently, FORCE tricked the internet into believing that Playboy had released an updated anti-rape party school guide dubbed, “The Ultimate Guide to a Consensual Good Time”. They have also received national attention for projecting “RAPE IS RAPE” onto the US Capitol Building and for floating a GIANT poem written by a survivor in the reflecting pool on the national mall. FORCE is led by Hannah Brancato and Rebecca Nagle, creative educators, organizers, and activists in Baltimore, MD.

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The Monument Quilt: a public healing space by and for survivors of rape and abuse.

The Monument Quilt is a crowd-sourced collection of thousands of stories from survivors of rape and abuse. By stitching our stories together, we are creating and demanding public space to heal. The Monument Quilt is a platform to not only tell our stories, but work together to forever change how Americans respond to rape. We are creating a new culture where survivors are publicly supported, rather than publicly shamed.

Sections of the quilt will be witnessed across the United States through a tour, quilt making workshops, and a historic display in our nation’s capitol. Blanketing over one mile of the National Mall, thousands of fabric squares will be stitched together to spell “NOT ALONE”. The Monument Quilt gives churches, schools, towns and our country clear and accessible steps to support survivors of rape and abuse when, often, people don’t know where to begin. Through public recognition, the quilt reconnects survivors to their community.

In Baltimore, FORCE is organizing with survivors through Gather Together, a survivor collective creating a community for support, healing and advocacy.