About Us

For Crying Outloud was born in mid-June of 2008, as a response to a late winter and spring of rapes in the intersecting diy and punk communities of Seattle.

Two folks had been approached multiple times that season by survivors who needed support and love, but didn’t feel represented or protected by the state. As room mates, the two ladies did a lot to support one another in actively working with the survivors and perpetrators, but finally understood that the frequency of rapes in the community, hand-in-hand with the totally varying circumstances of each violation, called for community dialogue and empowerment.

On a friday evening a call was put out by means of flyers and house-to-house phone calls that the coming monday there would be “An Emergency Meeting to Address Sexual Assault in the Community.” The organizers held their breaths and were astounded when over 40 people from seemingly separate punk scenes all came together to speak together about sexual assault, aggressor accountability, and prevention in the intersecting antiauthoritarian communities.

The meeting began by very simply defining sexual assault and consent–it was a really powerful exercise. At the end of the meeting we agreed to continue the conversation, and as the summer progressed For Crying Outloud was formed. By August we had been meeting every week and forming a powerful group: we were flyering, envisioning our role in our communities, acknowledging our boundaries as a group and beginning to draft a working protocol to offer survivor support within our means, as well as understanding how to support one another in the courageous work we were endeavoring to do.

Forming the individual working groups was an organic response to closely addressing a few of the many dimensions of rape culture. We meet as Survivor Support, Aggressor Accountability, have a Men’s Group, and Consentuality. Each working group is bound to the whole by a dedication to a pro-survivor environment and we work within each area completely confidentially. We aspire to provide safe, confidential support for both survivors and aggressors, while bringing transparency and dialogue to the greater community through events, conversation, tabling, this site, etc!

Come the Mid-Winter Skillshare in 2009, For Crying Outloud was ready to be introduced to the public. We held a series of workshops and discussions at the skillshare to formally let folks know that we’re doing our work and are confident to work within the community as a venue of support. Since then we’ve been lucky to receive a grant from Philly’s PISSED, and we’re marking our 1 year anniversary with a really active summer of tabling, visibility and dialogue!

If you are interested in joining For Crying Outloud, please come to our monthly new-folks orientation meeting!  They are held the first wednesday of every month, at the Bikery (see details in the “meet-up info” page) These meetings intended to give folks who want to be involved a chance to learn about the history of FCOL, and get an update on what different groups are up to so you can find/create a space to be involved.

Yours,

For Crying Outloud