Comfortless Collective, Call For Submissions
“Comfortless” is a collective that focuses on survivors and the ability to recount trauma as graphically or vague as someone sees fit. It is a perversion against the “good survivor.” It is a rebellion against the expected. Survivors of sexual abuse and assault are often required to remain calm, collected, and speak without vulgarity in order to appeal to the masses. But we are not for the masses, we are for recovery and revolution, we are for creating a space where we can talk about ourselves and our bodies, trauma, and pasts as we see fit. Here, we can talk about rape, child sexual abuse, grooming, physical abuse, the way were grabbed, beaten, and neglected. This is triggering because we are raw, real, and in pain. This will make you uncomfortable. We are not sorry.
We are coming together in healing and positivity. But healing and coping requires anger and confrontation. We will shout names and talk about who hurt us, we will talk about torture and the way we lost our souls at age five. We will talk about back alleys and bedsheets and the bathrooms our daddies pulled us into. We are resilient and strong, we are the voices of trauma you’ve tried to forget. Respectability politics are over, the reign of the “bad survivor” is here.
For the time being, posts will be published directly on the blog. The next step will be to create a web-based magazine publication monthly where submissions will be called according to a “theme.” The long term goal is a physical, printed quarterly. Let’s get this off the ground, let’s create our space, we need it and deserve it. You deserve it.
Submissions will focus primarily on text, but visual, audio, and other means of retelling or processing trauma are accepted and encouraged. Poetry, long form prose, bullet point lists, illustrations, photography, connect the dots, fill in the blank, whatever you see fit, it fits us.
