Tag: Media

Making Sexual Assault Everyone’s Problem

The past few weeks have been overwhelming for many, especially for those of us who are sexual assault survivors. It’s easy to get caught up in the enormity of the problem – sexual assault happening at all levels of our society, no arena exempt.

And meanwhile, I think it’s important to credit those responsible for the increase in coverage and dialogue:

This moment is brought to you by the power of survivors.

To be sure, survivors are in different places in their journeys. Some are still struggling to understand that what was done to them was wrong; others are still finding the words to tell themselves, their diaries, their partners, and their friends. Others have been speaking out, fighting back against the shame of abuse for years – some for decades, including at consciousness raising groups, speak outs, rape crisis centers, and public protests like Take Back the Night rallies and marches.

As a movement, though, we have stopped short of identifying those who did violence to us.

Right now we are witnessing the incredible power of people speaking out. We know that one person speaking out frees others from shame, encouraging others to also speak out. And meanwhile there is a particular power gained when people speak out and name those who have harmed us. We know that it is incredibly rare for a perpetrator to have only one victim. So when one person speaks out, they not only free others to do so in general, but also embolden others hurt by that very same person to also name the harm done.

This takes working against the socialization many of us have received to be nice and not hurt others – even when we are being hurt ourselves. It calls for us to work against the grooming that person did to ensure we would stay quiet. It makes us confront the (strong) possibility of people dismissing us, minimizing or disbelieving what we have endured, and further violence – whether hateful language or physical harm.

These and more are all understandable reasons to not speak out. This is why Take Back the Night was so profound. Take Back the Night represented huge communities of women naming that what they experienced was not an individual shame, but a widespread social problem. It is no small act when young people and adults of all genders claim that title of “survivor” in our violence prevention and self-defense classes. I am honored to share the journey with others as they realize, truly, that it was not their fault, and all of the powerful things they did to survive.

However, I can’t help but notice that today we have massive numbers of identified “survivors,” and incredibly small numbers of accused.

This invariably has the effect of making sexual violence seem like a women’s issue, or an individual survivor’s issue, instead of the community problem that it truly is. This mindset discourages us from placing the blame for violence where it belongs – on the perpetrators. And we must focus on community change if we want to understand how to prevent future instances of violence.

This is exactly what some survivors are doing when they name those who harmed them– they are leading our movement forward. This means claiming our stories as our own. It means saying with authority: I know my own life. I have a right to speak. It means no longer protecting those who have hurt us. It means recognizing that there is no statute of limitations on our truth.

I find this inspiring, and I can’t wait for the next chapter that this opens up for us as we acknowledge exactly how rampant sexual violence is in our society and that we all have a responsibility for preventing it.

Violent Acts Aren’t Committed in Isolation

How do we cope, how do we respond when overwhelmed with the grief of the past weeks? Orlando. Brock Turner. The man who allegedly murdered his wife and four daughters in Roswell last week.

For some, it seems that we have to choose a focus. That’s simply not true. Homophobic violence and gender-based violence have everything to do with one another. Studies show how deeply connected they are. They are connected in the people who commit these crimes and hold these beliefs, and they’re connected for those of us who feel doubly hurt after these past weeks. Survivors and LGBT people have had our vulnerability to violence confirmed this past week. For most of us, and especially for people of color, this is something we live with and navigate every day, but it is now intensified.

Violence is never just the act of a single person. This is hard to accept when we want to pin the blame, understandably so, on the person who doesn’t even understand what he did was rape and was wrong. It’s hard to accept when we know that a single person walked into a club and committed so many murders in our Latinx LGBT community in a single night. We want evil to be something separate from us. We want to be able to take a quick action – blame – and be done with it. Accepting the idea that the sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism rampant in our society created these acts is difficult to bear, and the responsibility of prevention is overwhelming.
But we know these acts are not isolated incidents. When 1 in 5 women experience rape, and 1 in 3 transgender women of color is murdered – the acts committed in these last two weeks are connected to larger systems of violence and oppression. Fear shapes the daily choices of women and LGBT people of color, and it is our responsibility as a society to change this.
How? Intervention. Intervention is not only acting when we see a man on top of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Intervention cannot only be stopping a man in Los Angeles with explosives and guns driving to a Pride celebration. Intervention and prevention must occur earlier.
Slurs, disguised as jokes, teasing and “edgy” comments, are commonplace. Say something. When you hear these things at the dinner table with family, in the school hallway, locker room, church or other religious gathering place – say something. Write a letter when you see a TV show or commercial promoting sexism, homophobia, transphobia or racism.
Tell them you won’t watch or buy their product anymore. Ask schools and teachers what they are doing to proactively address these themes, not just react after an act of bullying or sexual harassment or assault has occurred.
We can absolutely expect this violence – everyday incidents and national news – to continue if we don’t change these beliefs that are rampant in our society.
Finally, I join others in asking you to stay present to the pain of this moment and avoid moving into xenophobia. Please consider reaching out to those in your life who might be more affected by this – including our Muslim and Sikh neighbors and friends, who we fear might be at greater risk during this time.

It is extremely difficult to talk about and bear witness to violence. Remembering our outrage, shock and pain six months from now and working to make sustained change is even harder. Please remember. Please continue working to create change. Some do not have the privilege of forgetting the threat of events like these.

On Saying “No”: #YesAllWomen

We’ve known for years that the fear of further violence influences one’s ability to say “no” when something is unwanted.

Oftentimes, girls, women and others* are socialized to shrug, smile and indirectly express displeasure, hoping that the other person will get the idea. And oftentimes they do – the fact is that 96% of men see a boundary or lack of interest – however it is expressed – and will back off.

Yet, it’s the 4% of men who do assault women1 that reinforce the socialization that we shouldn’t be too out there. Men like Elliott Rodger, who recently issued a misogynist rant and then went on a murder spree that targeted a sorority house on campus, reinforce the concept that women are at risk when they reject men, however nicely. Men like Chris Plaskon, who recently murdered a girl who declined his offer to go to prom, reinforce the idea that maybe it’s better to be evasive and indirect.

These incidents are considered novel in today’s time, made bigger by the widespread reach of the internet and news. However, how many rapes in the community are necessary before women rethink going out at night alone? How many episodes of domestic violence do we need to hear about before we start thinking that we ought to be careful about letting him down gently instead of being straightforward?

At a certain point, violence isn’t even necessary. The threat of violence creates a change in behavior – girls and women would rather say “yes” than be called a b*tch, they choose their clothing based on how it will be perceived, and they don’t even identify violations anymore. A recent study shows that young girls are unlikely to identify sexual harassment and sexual assault as violations because they accept it as “normal.”

In this context, I see a greater need than ever for redefining social norms like we do in our school classes where we educate boys and girls about issues of consent, bystander intervention and boundary-setting. I also see how deeply we need a spectrum of self-defense – to help us understand our boundaries, to redefine what is okay and not okay for us and to be able to communicate that and protect ourselves when those boundaries are not respected. Quite simply, all forms of violence prevention – individual and community, men and women – are necessary to create safer communities.

If you agree, please sign up for a class or get more involved.

* This article focuses on heterosexual situations and gender norms, because of these recent events. Other articles speak more about violence against men, LGBT people and gender-nonconforming individuals.

1. Lisak & Miller, 2002.

How Our Misunderstanding of Sexual Assault Leads to a Misunderstanding of Self-Defense

We have seen countless movies and news reports that feature scary men behind bushes with knives; we’ve watched countless cartoons where the “bad guys” can always be spotted by their jagged teeth and bulging eyes. As a result, our society is deeply confused about who perpetrates assaults and how.

Combine this with subtle and persistent messages in advertisements and sitcom plots that undermine the idea of consent, and we have created strong misunderstandings about sexual assault and domestic violence. Even assault victims can have difficulty understanding and naming what happened to them.

“He didn’t hold me down” and “He didn’t use a weapon” describe the confusion felt by victims that oftentimes concludes with: “I’m not sure it was rape.”

“Well, he didn’t mean to say that/do that” is a confusion often expressed by domestic violence victims, who were led to believe that perpetration is typically intentional and that someone is either bad or good, not something more complex.

However, we know that the majority of assaults happen by people we know, and typically by people we initially, maybe even the majority of the time, have good feelings about.

Unfortunately, these misperceptions — caused by a combination of misrepresentation in the media and a fervent desire to be able to trust those in our lives 100% — oftentimes lead to vulnerability.

The trouble is that most seeking to prevent assault in their or their children’s lives look for programs based on the misperceptions described above. And many self-defense programs plan their curricula around these same misconceptions. Others, believing the risks as they’ve been portrayed, may declare that they have no need for personal safety training, because they live in a “safe community.”

Fundamentally, a safety program must address these misconceptions and teach defenses that address the real threats our communities face. This does not exclude physical skills, but it understands that the real importance in a class like this is navigating changing relationships, evaluating others’ actions and setting our own boundaries — and recognizing our right to do so.

Fighting Violence Where It Lives

(This article was written by Meg Stone, the director of IMPACT Boston, and originally appeared here.)

Usually, after a trend of violence committed by strangers, media outlets respond by offering women advice about how to stay safe. The tips are sometimes consistent with good research on which resistance strategies are most effective. Other times, though, safety advice consists of laundry lists of ways women should limit their lives (don’t wear headphones, don’t reach into your purse, keep your hands free at all times, etc.).

I am heartened when I see people addressing their feelings of fear by seeking out information and learning more about what they can do to protect themselves. At the same time, the safety advice most people are giving and getting is only relevant to a minority of assaults: those perpetrated by strangers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, only about 13 percent of sexual assaults in the United States are committed by strangers. Perpetrators are much more likely to be dating partners, family members, and acquaintances.

So why do the news media, law enforcement officials and, yes, self-defense experts place almost all of their focus on helping women protect themselves from relatively uncommon acts of violence?

It’s because the steps we need to take to prevent rapes perpetrated by people we know are far more difficult. Looking for taxi medallions to ensure that drivers are properly licensed, or crossing the street when we suspect that someone is following us doesn’t disrupt our core beliefs about the people and places that are supposed to be safe.

We are conditioned to feel afraid in dark parking lots, but when we go on first dates, we want to flirt and connect. What if a new person we’re excited about dating ignores us when we say we’re not comfortable with physical affection in public? What if this person tells us we should lighten up and stop being such a prude? It’s painful to wonder whether those actions are warning signs that the person will disrespect other intimate boundaries.

When the concern about safety arises in our own families, the situation can be even harder. What if a beloved grandfather or uncle is touching a child or teenager in a sexually suggestive way? Keeping an act of abuse from escalating may require several family members getting involved. That means they have to be courageous enough to admit there’s a problem and trust and respect each other enough to address it together.

This can be painful. Sometimes too painful.

So instead, we focus most of our energy elsewhere. We become more vigilant about parking lots and taxi cabs. And as long as this heightened awareness doesn’t perpetuate racial stereotypes or cause us to limit our lives unnecessarily, it’s ultimately good. But I hope that this recent wake-up call doesn’t stop with strangers.

If reading the news has prompted us to have more conversations about sexual assault at our dinner tables and in our human resources departments, I hope we will also think about the thousands of acts of sexual violence that never make the news and what we can do about them.

– Meg Stone
Executive Director of IMPACT Boston

Protecting Our Communities After Tragedy

Imagine, for a moment, hearing about a tragic car accident. Imagine overhearing bits and pieces about a driver swerving out of control and hitting oncoming traffic at a speed of over 75 mph. You see clips of family members of those who died sobbing on the news. People talk about it for over a week.

How would you perceive that story? How long would it take for you to recover?

Now, imagine that same story but that you had never heard about seat belts, never learned the rules of the road, how to maintain safe distance, and how to look around your car and rearview mirror for irregularities. In fact, imagine you were told that you would be cared for in that sort of situation by people who said they could handle it, but still look fearful.

How would you perceive that story and how would you feel about getting into a car again? How long would it take you to recover?

Now, imagine you are seven years old.

Having tools makes all the difference. It doesn’t mean car accidents never happen, but it means that you have an understanding of how to deal with the risk and that the story plays in your head differently.

Just as you wouldn’t teach a new driver about car accidents and drunken drivers first thing, school shootings are not the place to start a discussion about child or school safety. Even trained officers and military struggle with how to deal with shooters — this is not the topic to begin with for teachers, families and children!

Just as car safety begins with learning about adjusting mirrors and looking both ways before pulling out of the driveway, personal safety for children has the same basic steps.

Teach them to trust their intuition. Teach them how to get help and what to say. Help them practice setting a boundary and saying no. Help them learn simple physical strategies to stop an assault.

By teaching them to deal with scenarios like bullying and unwanted touch, you prepare them for situations that are statistically far more likely and that they can do something about, and you empower them to deal with the terrifying stories that, unfortunately, they will continue to hear as they grow older.

I highly recommend the following articles from Kidpower for caregivers and others:

Helping Children Regain Their Emotional Safety After a Tragedy

How to Empower Kids in the Face of Armed School Violence

Tragic Shootings: Kidpower Answers to Common Questions About How To Be Safe

How Leaders Should Speak about Sexual Assault

Todd Akin’s recent comments give us an important opportunity to consider what a true leader for our communities should be saying about sexual assault.
Leadership means sometimes saying things that challenge the social norm. And let’s be clear- in a country where 1 in 3 women experience sexual assault, accepting rape as a tragic yet inevitable part of life for women is the norm.
True leaders would denounce rape unequivocally and state clearly that the blame always lies with the rapist and never the victim. True leaders would acknowledge that there are few consequences for rapists today. They would acknowledge that when 1 in 3 women experience sexual assault, as a society we are doing something to create rapists. They would understand this requires committing to deep cultural changes and invest time and energy into making this happen in our schools and in our media.
True leaders would also acknowledge the power and bravery that women and girls do possess – in their abilities to learn to speak out about what’s happened to them, advocate for themselves and others, and defend themselves in a culture that is otherwise not supporting them and keeping them safe.

Creating change with sexual assault requires a full systems approach. Preventing a sexual assault for one woman is not enough. Even sending one man to prison is not enough. If we truly want our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our wives and our friends to be safe, we need to create change on a much larger level. Our nation’s dialogue about rape deserves more attention than a footnote in a conversation about contraception. It’s up to our leaders to initiate and support these changes.Let’s take this opportunity to re-focus on what we want to see in our leaders and our society, not just what we don’t want.

The Effects of Fear & Violence: Mourning Trayvon

Trayvon Martin’s death, as well as the lack of charges brought against his killer, was horrific for many, but was not surprising.

Women often tell me of their rape aversion plans. They usually include: carrying their keys between their fingers, never going anywhere alone, watching their drinks, not wearing revealing clothes, not going out at night, etc. “Sometimes,” they wearily declare, “I just wish I were a man.” What we don’t usually talk about is the dangers men face, especially men of color.

Men typically are not told to restrict their behavior in these limiting and largely unproductive ways. They are not warned that they’re being reckless, or worse – provoking any violence they might encounter – if they don’t adhere to these rules.

Still, the concept of men as free from the effects of violence in our society is a deeply flawed one. When I teach about violence prevention in schools, teen boys often are resistant until they realize that I’m not just there to teach the girls. Then they express confusion and resentment as they describe learning to evade physical assault by aggressive men and boys, while simultaneously having to demonstrate they are not a threat to others.

A recent story with Donna Britt, mother and author of brothers (& me), on NPR discussed how she raised her boys. She and others are doing a great job of making public what they call “the talk” that African American parents give their boys when they make that transition from cute child to possible threat in the public eye.

This is an everyday reality for boys and men of color, and I’m glad that this is getting some media attention and acknowledgment. Yet, in a culture where we say there’s no way to predict violence, profiling is inevitable.

Soon the evening news will interview another neighbor who testifies the murderer next door “seemed so normal” and everyone will nod that there was no way anyone could have known. Then, everyone, including the police, will grasp at whatever they can– the latest mug shots, the characters from the last movie – to be able to predict the next act of violence. Because we don’t want to be caught off guard.

Safety is not worth this cost to our communities. There are ways of predicting violence – which means there are ways of preventing violence – that don’t include profiling random men of color and blaming victims. Why are we not exploring these?

In an entertainment culture, it is not popular to explore predictability. When there is a mystery, you can be sure that everyone will stay glued to his/her screens, anxious to keep track of the newest development. Meanwhile, this also ensures that sponsors’ advertisements will be watched while viewers eagerly await the next installment of the story.

Despite Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear, being on the bestseller list when it first came out over a decade ago, reporters still choose to interview the clueless rather than interview his team that studies how intuition works and the precursors to violence. As a culture, we treat those who know ahead of time as mystical outliers, never pausing to study how it is that the average person could foresee such a thing.

Those who accurately predict violence use behavior as their indicators, not hoodies or race. Concepts like forced teaming (pretending there is an alliance between you that doesn’t exist), using charm and niceness, giving too many details, typecasting, loan sharking, giving an unsolicited promise and ignoring the word “no” are all accurate ways of predicting when someone is acting manipulatively and possibly dangerous. Of course, in order to give credence to these ways of predicting violence and danger, we would have to admit that most violence happens by people we know and/or includes an “interview” process, rather than being a random shooting or a man behind the bushes who says nothing before grabbing his victim.

To say that violence is predictable is not equal to blaming those of us who have experienced it in the past. It is empowering everyone to have more tools for the future so that we may live fuller lives and feel less fear. It is challenging our society to distinguish between paranoia, prejudice and real intuition.

The Laws of Nature

There are certain laws of the natural world.

• What goes up, must come down.
• If you touch something hot, you will pull your hand away.
• If someone tries to harm me or someone I love, _________.

It’s only natural.

Protecting each other and ourselves is natural.  Unnecessary aggression and revenge are not what I am talking about.  However, knowing that we can, deserve to, and will defend ourselves if someone tries to hurt us is acting in accordance with nature.

Unfortunately, the laws that our society operates upon do not always mesh well with the laws of nature.  At the beginning of our classes, we sometimes hear, “I know I should defend myself but I’m not sure I can or I would.”

There is no reason to criticize ourselves for learning from the system in which we were raised.  But it is a broken system in which people learn to freeze, to consider whether it fits their self-image to hurt another person (or their image of a good woman, etc.), to consider the person’s feelings…  It’s not your fault the system’s a little screwy.  And you do not have to continue to live within that framework.

The student who once wondered, “Can/should/would I defend myself?” can learn deeply, “I can defend myself.  I will defend myself.”

Owning our inherent rights to protection allows us to live with confidence and peace.  This is what it means to be aligned with our natural selves.

Violence in the Media

Violence in the Media Creates Fear, Not Just Violence

I love watching movies with my friends. I deeply dislike violence in the media. But, you know, the one perk to it is hearing my friends shout (at home on the couch!) “Poke his eyes! Groin!” as the poor woman on the screen is unable to do anything in the countless situations she falls victim to. After all, one in eight Hollywood movies depict sexual assault.

Many of us know that the violent scenes in the movies and TV are primarily put in gratuitously to titillate the viewer. Frequently it is not crucial to the plot, and even when it is, they show far more detail than necessary. Thankfully my friends are very adept at helping the (usually) woman get out of the situation – the situation we were all warning her not to get into in the first place. Because we knew, right? There was ominous music that she clearly ignored when she walked down that alley!

Now, putting aside the significant lack of skills that the average heroine [sic] in a movie has, there is another issue to be addressed here… Just how many rapists are hanging out in the bushes with knives or sneaking in windows?? Watching a movie, TV, or the six o’clock news, you’d think that that was the most common threat that people faced. Yet, statistically, 70%-80% of sexual assault victims knew their attackers. But that is not what we see on TV. Why?

It’s less exciting! News stations will search the nation to find the most scandalous act of violence to bring to your home television. The craving for the most extreme violence out there is appalling enough. But what is even more disturbing is what these images do to people’s expectations in life. Those who would walk with confidence become plagued with the dangers that supposedly lurk around every corner. Many become afraid of walking in nature or of feeling a breeze through their window because it appears that that is where the biggest risk exists.

Much of the focus of violence in the media has been to speculate whether it promotes violence in real life. However, it decidedly cultivates and shapes people’s fears. And I, for one, a m outraged that in the name of informing and entertaining society, that it is scaring people I love into living smaller, more cautious lives than necessary.

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