Last week, Lady Gaga gave an outstanding performance of her and Diane Warren's collaboratively written piece, "Till It Happens to You," which was featured in the documentary "The Hunting Ground."
Gaga was introduced by Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime advocate for women's rights and sexual abuse survivors. Biden stated just before introducing Gaga that "we must, and we can, change the culture," referring to the what seems like never-ending sexual assaults that occur on (and off) college campuses.
Gaga's performance is huge for sexual assault survivors and advocates. Not only did she bring awareness to this social injustice that affects millions of people across the world, but she brought inspiration and hope along with it. Hope that maybe, someday soon, there will be an ever-so-slight change in the air. Hope that maybe, someday soon, we can reduce the amount of sexual assaults that occur daily on and off college campuses, if not end the occurrences completely. Hope for survivors, as maybe now they will know they are never alone in this.
The song itself is incredibly emotional. This is clearly an issue that Lady Gaga feels strongly about, and it's evident in her beautiful and powerful performance. And with good reason — Gaga herself is a sexual assault survivor, and has been transparent about her sexual assault and how it has affected her life. She doesn’t just represent the thousands of women who’ve been sexually assaulted, she represents all survivors.
This topic, unfortunately, is nothing new to us. For weeks upon weeks, we’ve watched as stories of sexual assaults on college campuses filled websites and newspapers. From the controversial article published in Rolling Stone in 2014, to the lawsuit initiated by Erica Kinsman against Florida State University for the mishandling of her alleged sexual assault by Jameis Winston, we’ve seen headlines pile up one after another.
Finally, though, we have something we didn’t have before. We have people with great influence and large followings (both Lady Gaga and Vice President Biden) address the issue head-on during a live broadcast that millions of people watched. Additionally, survivors themselves joined Gaga onstage during her performance, making it that much more profound. It’s not always easy to put a face to the name “sexual assault survivor,” but that’s because sexual assault can happen and does happen to all different types of people. Black, white, male, female, straight, gay and everywhere in between. There is no “stereotypical” sexual assault victim, and there is not much aesthetically speaking that those survivors all have in common. What they do have in common, however, is that they stand for the thousands of others who know how it feels, and that, is something to be incredibly proud of.
The first step in solving the issue of sexual assault, is making sure others know about it, that they know it happens everyday in normal places at normal times. “Till It Happens to You” tackled the first issue in ensuring the sexual assault epidemic comes to a halt —acknowledging that there is a problem.
