Mazer Archives May 2023 Newsletter | Out of the Archives: Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women Collection

I often wonder what happened to my mom in her youth. Growing up, it seemed that her purpose was to teach me how to navigate my environment while staying alert at all times. Always being on the alert were my mom’s watchword. She taught me how to assess situations and how to approach a car at night or how to walk alone at night. Such lessons began when I was in the second grade. Sometimes the adult me thinks that I was too young. But then again, maybe not. Regardless, thus, from an early age, I knew there was something about my body, about me (a lesbian even then) that was vulnerable. To some extent I felt like my body wasn’t entirely mine. And this can be such an unsettling feeling for a second grader. However, in retrospect, I know that my mom’s lessons were actually meant to teach me that my body is mine.

I’ve known a number of women, some of them ex-girlfriends, who have experienced some form of assault. It is these experiences that have led to a number of organizations founded by women to help other women. One such organization founded in 1971 is the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women (LACAAW). Prior to the 1970s, there were no organizations that provided services to victims of assault. Violence against women was a social norm and expectation. It was the feminist movement that ultimately brought the statistics on rape and other forms of assault to light. The founders of LACAAW were six women activists who created an anti-rape squad in response to one of their friends being raped. One of their tactics was to post warning signs on buses and trees about local rapists. Also, guerrilla theater tactics were implemented and skits on rape were performed in public. Thus, instead of keeping the violence enacted upon women’s bodies behind closed doors, these women brought it into the daylight for social acknowledgement and confrontation.

According to their website, LACAAW was first a part of the Women’s Center where they operated a hotline for sexual assault survivors. The response to their hotline was overwhelming. A majority of the women who called the hotline were in abusive relationships. As the organization evolved, so did its services such as educational programs, self-defense training and promoting legislation. Over 50 years later LACAAW is still going strong and provides much more to the community. In fact, in 2006 the name was changed to Peace Over Violence for an all-inclusive focus on family violence. Patty Giggans, one the original founders, was speaking at an event for the City of West Hollywood preCOVID, when she was asked if violence against women has lessened over the years. Giggans’s response shocked the Mazer’s board member Angela Brinskele who was sitting in the audience. Giggans explained that the statistics are about the same. However, what has changed are the services, which there’s more of, and the evolution and improvement of those services. 

Vera looking over materials in the collection

Example of the files within the LACAAW collection

I have been a part of the Mazer for six years and I’m always learning something new about Los Angeles’s lesbian and feminist history. LACAAW is one of our collections that has been processed through the California State Library grant. This grant has made it possible for the Mazer to hire archivists to work on processing our collections. The archivist responsible for processing this collection is Vera Tykulster. The items within LACAAW’s collection at the Mazer seem to have been created for a volunteer training program. I have experienced a number of volunteer training programs but based on those materials, nothing compares to LACAAW’s program. However, such an extensive training program makes sense considering the services this organization offered and still provides. One of the services described in this collection was the option to have a volunteer meet the person who was assaulted, at the hospital, so they were not alone. Additionally, The LACAAW collection includes literature, essays and articles concerning topics such as LGBTQ experiences, disability, ethnicity, and how they insterect and diverge around issues of sexual violence. Other sections in this collection focus on the following subjects: 1) child abuse, 2) legal procedures relating to domestic violence, 3) medical care, 4) peer counseling, 5) rape (legal definitions and survivor care), 6) identity and social violence and much more.

What I was most drawn to was the literature used for their guerrilla theater skits. Thumbing my way through this section, I was able to imagine those women activists in the 1970s performing on streets and at bus stops. The contents of this collection are uniquely feminist to me. Specifically, intersectional feminism because the collection takes into account the diversity of women’s experience when it comes to sexual assault, across differrent demographics.