On Thursday, October 11th (International Day of the Girl), Dominican singer, artist and activist, Roxiny released the video for her powerful song “Golden Prophet,” which touches on the current conversation surrounding sexual assault and violence against women. The song was written and inspired by Roxiny’s own personal experience with sexual assault and the video serves as a visual piece to inspire women to speak up and use their voices.
The powerful video that was shot in black and white shows women of all ethnicities and shades in white T-shirts holding their written hands up. The hands all contain various phrases like “Speak Up,” “My Choice”— all messages touching on female empowerment and resistance.
This past September, she worked to headline designer Rebecca Minkoff’s “I Am Many” campaign for New York Fashion Week. Roxiny helped select rising female activists from different backgrounds to feature. The native-New Yorker and Dominicana takes her activism very serious and it’s large part due to the fact that the causes she fights for are so very personal to her.
“I think I started bucking the system when I was around 7-years-old. This is something I speak about openly now,” she tells HipLatina. “It took me a long time to be able to share this but I was sexually abused as a little girl and I think that really made me face some things that were very harsh very early on and having to really work through that process of really claiming my femininity and not seeing it as a weakness as I initially thought it was, but more as a place of vulnerability.”
Roxiny wrote the song “Golden Prophet” to help other women who are also survivors of sexual violence or abuse to heal and know that their is power in their voices. “As I grew older I really started to find power within it and really understand that obviously this had nothing to do with me but everything to do with the person who did it and that my feminity was actually an absolute strength,” she says. “It’s taken a long time for me to be able to process and work through all of that and I did. Once I did, I felt very confident. My album Rituals for me was very much a purge of all of these things I hadn’t confronted for a very long time or I hadn’t been able to speak about for a very long time and finally having the courage to be able to do so. My activism stems from me finally finding the power to claim my experience and me wanting to use that to help other women work through theirs because it happens to so many of us.”
Roxiny’s video couldn’t have come at a better time. The #MeToo movement which kicked off after actresses in Hollywood spoke out against sexual assaulter and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has giving women the platform and the space to share their stories confidently and with strength. Dr. Christine Blasey’s public testimony and sexual assault allegations against current Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh left many of us devastated but still fired up and ready to take down this patriarch system together. Roxiny wants the world to know that this momentum is not going away either.
“I do feel that overall we needed this for so long and for women like me and the hundreds and thousands of women around the world who have had to deal with the consequences of being victimized, this is a moment. This is a moment that I think is worth owning and celebrating,” she says. “I think every single one of us just needs to continue to do our part. This isn’t just a fad. This is something that’s been going on for a very long time and it’s not resolved. This is just the very very beginning of the conversation. Inherently we know this is just the beginning, we can’t give up. It’s about pushing until we find our equal place in this world .”
Roxiny admits that shame from her assault kept her from sharing her story for years. She didn’t even tell her parents until two years ago. When she was 15 she finally told a few very close friends but that was it. It was only recently that she finally felt the strength to share her experience with the world. It’s because of that, that she’s able to understand why survivors like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford let years pass before outing their abusers or seeking legal action.
“I definitely can tell you right now, two friends of mine for sure that went to the law with their assaults and were completed humiliated for coming out with it. It devastated them,” she says. “This is why it’s so insulting when people say things like, ‘Oh how convenient you’re coming out now.’ Well, you know what? It’s taken a very long time to have the strength—even the strength to feel like you would be believed.”
Aside from her own personal experiences, Roxiny’s passion for women’s rights—for human rights really—inherently comes from her abuelita, who was a strong advocate against the dictator Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.
“What she used to do because she was very educated and knew a lot of the people in her town were not, she would take a lot of the underground information and spread it. She spread the voice for it, which was a risk because she could have been reported,” Roxiny says. “She definitely put a lot in the line for something she believed in.”
Like many, she believes that activism is very much needed today considering our current political climate. She doesn’t just speak out for human rights and causes but she also encourages those around her, in her community, and her fans and followers to vote this November in the midterm elections.
“I think that this particular administration has done everything in the world to demonize our culture and make us into the ‘bad guys.’ I think it comes from a place of racism obviously and absolute prejudice because if you actually look at statistics and if you look at the numbers, the biggest terrorist groups in the United States comes from white supremacy and they are a greater danger than what Republicans like to call the ‘Muslim threat” or the ‘Latino threat,’” she says. It’s so important that we get off of our butts and vote this time around. If we all just do something. It’s so comfortable to just sit at home and do some social media activism but that’s not really going to do anything. Donate your time, donate to organizations like RAICES who are actually helping these immigrant families being separated at the border out.”
Watch the full video for Roxiny’s song “Golden Prophet” below!
