The name Sarah is Hebrew; it means “princess” or “princess of the multitude.” In the Torah, Sarah gave birth to an entire legacy. She is also mentioned as Sara in Hebrews 11:11 among the Old Testament worthies, who “all died in faith."
A friend of mine messaged me the other day and linked me to @faultsaints‘ post (x), and said, “I got triggered for nothing.” I disagree with my friend, and I would like to say why. Despite the fact that there is as little evidence that Sarah was real as there is that she never existed, I personally don’t see that it matters whether or not Sarah was fiction. The moment that her story, real or imagined, went viral in the tumblr roleplay community at large, Sarah became something so much more than any single brave young woman: Sarah became a symbol.
Sarah’s story of abuse, assault, harassment, and subsequent suicide represents the stories of too many very real women who have enduring shockingly similar circumstances. Women like myself who have lived in fear and dread, victimized further and shamed by the rape culture that we live in. Even if her story was a social experiment (which I’m not entirely convinced that it was), the point of all of this was presumably to prove that tumblr will get up in arms over nothing at all– only Sarah’s story is not nothing. Sarah’s story brings to light a very real threat in the world that very much spills over into our online existence. Sexual predators, rapists, bullies– these people exist in life and therefore exist online, and even worse, are made brave by anonymity and lack of consequence. These people and their victims are real, even if Sarah was not, and her story gives them, us, a voice.
Every woman who has been afraid to see her ex, every woman who flinches when someone she loves touches her, every woman who doesn’t trust her male friends to be alone with her, every woman who scopes out the exits of every room she’s in… they are all Sarah. Every roleplayer who gets asks about writing uncomfortable scenes or IMs to have skype sex or has submissions of some stranger’s erection in their inbox or death threats or people telling her to kill herself because she’s such a bitch– we are all Sarah.
If Sarah was an experiment, my hope is that she has proven successfully that the phenomenon of sexual harassment exists in our community and also that it will no longer be tolerated, that we as a community will not stand for it, that we will stand up instead for what is right and defend each other and keep our sisters safe.
For me, Sarah is real. Sarah is my sister, calling me when she’s woken up and doesn’t know where she is. Sarah is my best friend, crying her eyes out in our college dorm room. Sarah is my coworker, putting on a brave face when she’s afraid. Sarah is me, with scars on my arms from when I was fourteen. #IamSarah