Staff Spotlight
Amirthini Keefe
Amirthini is the Executive Director at the Domestic Abuse Project. She is dedicated, determined, and incredibly knowledgeable about the work that she does. She is also simply a joy to talk to and we are are so lucky to have her at DAP! Keep reading to learn more about the importance of promoting sexual positivity in our community.
DAP: What is your name and your role at DAP?
Amirthini: My name is Amirthini Keefe and I am the Executive Director of the organization.
DAP: What exactly do you do as Executive Director?
Amirthini: My role is to provide overall oversight for the organization. I engage in fundraising and financial oversight, I provide support to each of our directors that are managing finances, advancement, programs, communications, and operations. I also work with our community partners and folks that are part of macro level systems that have impacted the clients we’ve served. And I talk about DAP in the community so that people know who we are and what we do.
DAP: At DAP, we talk a lot about unhealthy relationships. Does DAP also teach about healthy relationships?
Amirthini: Yeah, absolutely. It’s important to talk about what’s good and healthy along with what isn’t so that people can start to explore that for themselves. When we’re talking about domestic violence or sexual violence, we need to create space for our clients to be their own experts and figure out how to define those terms for themselves. In teaching healthy sexual relationships, one of the activities we do in our Victim Survivor Program is about reconnecting with your identity. Who were you before the violence began? What would it look like to reconnect with yourself in a healthy way? What are you looking for in a relationship?
DAP: Is there an intersection between sexual abuse and domestic violence?
Amirthini: Absolutely. It comes out in our Victim Survivor Program once the survivors are more comfortable and have established trust and capacity to be vulnerable. It’s one of the most powerful things about being in a group. You feel so isolated as a victim, you feel like you’re the only person who’s had this experience, but then you hear other survivors talk about their experience of sexual violence in their intimate relationships and learn that you’re not the only one.
As a community, there is a lot of conditioning around having a sense of responsibility to engage in sexual acts with a partner, an acquaintance, a date, without having given consent. In the staff retreat, we were just talking about how when you’re reading novels as a pre-teen there’s already scenes in fiction about feeling pressured to date and engaging in sexual activities without consent.
Even right now, with people in positions of power, women and sexual acts with women are minimized. The violence and the harm that’s caused when people are violated sexually is diminished. This is not an old issue. It’s very much alive, and people that engage in sexual violence are not held accountable.
DAP: What do you think the hallmarks of a healthy relationship are? What are the green flags to look for?
Amirthini: Consent and enthusiasm about the sexual intimacy that you want to engage in. It can be around really small things and it should be around really big things. When it comes to touch, intimate touch, any type of touch. Being with someone who is asking for permission and respecting all aspects of your body coupled with your desire to actually engage in those experiences. That’s definitely a green light.
Also, someone who reciprocates and isn’t just looking for their own pleasure. Someone who wants to make sure that as a partner you’re also having a good experience. You have enough safety with that person to be able to ask for what you need, and it’s not met with defensiveness, anger or shame but with curiosity and openness. It’s also important that you’re in a space where you’re open to hearing what your partner is looking for and setting a boundary if it’s something that you’re not comfortable with.
DAP: Do you have any resources you would like to share about healthy relationships?
Amirthini: There’s a book called Come as You Are that’s great for learning more about your body. This same author also wrote a second book called Come Together: The Science and Art of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. There are wonderful children’s books about consent, (one of which that we are listing above,) and that we would encourage parents to look into as it’s never too early to start teaching children of all genders about how to both set and respect boundaries around consent.
DAP: How can we promote sex positivity?
Amirthini: One way is just thinking about all the different ways we have intentionally or unintentionally engaged in social and gender conditioning. It impacts how people across all gender spectrums see themselves, see their sexuality, and what intimacy and sex looks like. The porn industry, for example, teaches young boys in particular unhealthy ways of engaging in sex. There’s a total loss of intimacy.
Talking about healthy relationships in schools a lot earlier than they do is also important. Not just sex ed but also domestic violence education because that goes hand in hand. Asking, what is healthy? What are warning signs to look for? I wish there were more public health campaigns that talked about the fact that domestic violence is a public health issue as it results in medical issues to incarceration to job and wage loss to mass shootings. There is a ripple effect that society doesn’t necessarily make a connection to. It really impacts everyone even if it is not happening directly to you or someone you know.
DAP: Why is it important to promote sex positivity as community?
Amirthini: Intimacy (sexual, romantic or otherwise) is such an important part of attachment and connection. Being able to have healthy intimacy is vital to being able to have a healthy connection with another person. And healthy connections are how we create healthy families and healthy communities. All that stuff is just a ripple effect. Having a connection to another person is a basic, fundamental human need. We can’t function well as people without having that need met. Also, for many communities that have histories rooted in sexual trauma (childhood sexual abuse, incest, breeding for slaveholders, genocidal rape, etc.), promoting sex positivity can support breaking cycles of historical and intergenerational trauma.
DAP: Anything else?
Amirthini: I’m going back to my home country, Sri Lanka, in two weeks, and my culture is very sexualized. In music, in movies, in the clothes that we wear, there’s a lot of reverence given to the beauty of a woman’s physical form. And at the same time, when you’re there, there’s a lot of catcalling, sexual violence that happens in public transit, and public shaming of victims who have been sexually violated. As a community, we give sex and sexuality a lot of power but then we deem it a dangerous thing and decide we want to control it. What does it mean for people to own their sexuality, to be in control of their own bodies, to choose what that means for themselves? What is it that we’re afraid of losing if we stopped trying to control that as a community? Because it always seems like there’s a hierarchy around it and there’s an attempt to own it all the time and the result is violence.
DAP: What is your favorite Minnesota summer activity?
Amirthini: Every summer we usually go up north to a cabin and hang out at a lake for a week. We’re also a soccer family, and so one of my favorite things to do in the summer is just watch my kids play soccer outside. My kids are in a community soccer league so it’s something we do almost every day. And after work we play basketball in our backyard when the weather is good. It’s two-on-two with our seven- and ten-year-old.
BONUS: visit our Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok to watch Amirthini answer a few of these questions and experience her charm for yourself. All socials are linked below!
