Voices on NO!

“Thank you, my sister Aishah, for this glorious and most important film [NO!]. It should be shown in every place where there are women—and to men. You are a pioneer of discussing what has been kept quiet in this country, hidden in plain sight in our homes, schools, and churches—even within families that do not want to speak about molestation. Through your activism, you help us face what it truly means to live with what so many have been taught not to name.”

(Excerpted from public remarks at the 25th anniversary screening of the making of NO! at the FromNO2Love Conference, October 31, 2019.)

"[Aishah Shahidah Simmons’] political and artistic approach, which [simultaneously] questions the oppression of race, sex, gender, and class, seems relevant to make visible, at all levels, and mainly in the African American community, the violence against [Black] women, lesbians, and girls.”

“[NO!] helps raise awareness about sexual assault and violence. Especially useful for counselors working with high-school and college students facing similar pressures and situations.”

 “NO! The Rape Documentary serves to heal generational wounds within the Black community as well as uphold the dignity of all human beings. When we know better, we do better. Thanks, Aishah! A gift to us all”

"NO! is a necessary message, and how powerful it is to have these women tell it!. Then I thought, what a truly Bodhisattvic activity this is! And then, I realized how long ago Aishah made the film, and how long she worked on it and I just give thanks."

"It is not an exaggeration to say that Aishah Shahidah Simmons's groundbreaking film NO! The Rape Documentary saved my life. The ceremony of this film, and the brave generosity of the survivors who shared their stories showed me how to love a part of myself I would have otherwise tried to throw away. The blessing of watching this film taught me that my survival is powerful and necessary, a divine imperative to transform the world. I believe that EVERYone who loves anyone, anyone who believes in change, anyone who believes a more loving world is possible should watch and study and share and gather around this crucial film."

“A Black woman who has the audacity to vocalize her experiences as a victim of rape or sexual assault still runs the risk of her sexuality and/or her sexual herstories being used to excuse her perpetrator. Further, the Blackness of her perpetrator - which is, unfortunately, still most often the case - will likely be used to erase her own. More specifically, a Black woman who names her rape or assault still runs the risk of being accused of trying to hold “her brother” down, as though him holding her down means nothing. She may have even stood next to her people yelling, “Defund the police!” while simultaneously being told she was a fool for not calling them when she was assaulted, most often by someone close. Aishah has never stood for this kind of empty Black love—Black love with no accountability, Black love that only matters for some of us some of the time, seemingly never at all for others. Aishah has always demanded we take our claims of and to love seriously, aiming for a solidarity that moves us beyond catchy slogans and toward a necessary habit of thinking carefully about and working to genuinely repair the harm we do, even (arguably especially) when we have also contended with systemic and systematic oppression. NO! as a work-in-progress has been doing that for over 25-years, and as a completed film for over 15-years. Whether you’re engaging it for the first time or one of many, may we all join Aishah, her powerful collaborators, and every single victim-survivor of rape and sexual assault by screaming, “NO! No more!” to all perpetrators at all times.” 

“The power of NO! Lies not just in regaining lost voices, but in re-visioning and repositiioning Black women’s history and current reality… One of the strengths of the film is that it does not show the women broken. They come across as whole human beings with agency and insight.”

“Filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons dares to ‘speak truth to power’ with emphatic power that very exclamation NO! is intended to convey.”

  "With the eye of a poet and the rigor of a sociologist, Aishah Shahidah Simmons exposes an ugly reality of sexual violence. This is cinematic activism at its finest, as it is both a call to action and an expertly constructed documentary."

“Heartbreaking, personal, and ultimately empowering… Not only does Simmons’s ground-breaking film break a pervasive deadly silence, it reaffirms the power of a Black woman’s truth.”

"A visionary, essential, analytic, raw, and internationally acclaimed black feminist text on rape and sexual assault. As much as NO! requires we tell the truth about experiences, it implores us to explicitly call out rape and the rapists in our immediate communities. This is where restorative justice begins."

“Aishah’s work is about the [Black] community, the village, and us. Aishah’s work is unapologetically political and irresistibly beautiful. NO! is a healing gift for us all.”
(excerpted remarks during the 25th Anniversary of the Making of NO! screening at #FromNO2Love on October 31, 2019)

“Given the level of violence against women in the U.S, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations not to turn our backs on this film [NO!]. For in ignoring this film we would once again be ignoring the voices of women.”

 “I first came across Aishah Shahidah Simmons' work in late 1998 when I was co-curating a film festival for the OutWrite conference in Boston in 1999. Back then "NO! The Rape Documentary' was only a 10-minute work in progress. I was so moved by the piece and noticed how relevant, important, and groundbreaking the work was, that I felt compelled to program it even at that stage. NO! breaks silence on violence against women through multiple voices, with so much sensitivity including the filmmaker's personal experience on this subject. It's a film that still holds so much significance even today, 12-years after it was released, that I will screen it in a course I teach on 'Black Women in Cinema' in Spring 2019."