Studies show that approaching youth with a bystander-intervention model is actually a lot more effective for reducing sexual assault, and it is also more enthusiastically received than programs that bill themselves as anti-rape.
We can tell youth that they are basically “rapists waiting to happen” (anti-rape initiative), or we can tell them that we know they would intervene if they saw harm happening to someone and we want to help empower them to do that (bystander intervention). The kids jump in with both feet for the latter! It was amazing to see children (and young boys in particular) excited to do this work and engage their creativity with it. Also, studies show that not only do they go on to intervene, but they also do not go on to sexually assault people themselves. Bystander intervention also takes the onus off the person being targeted to deter rape and empowers the collective to do something about it. It answers the question in the room when giggling boys are carrying an unconscious young woman up the stairs at a house party, and people are not sure how to respond and are waiting for “someone” to say or do something.
Richard M. Wright, “Rehearsing Consent Culture: Revolutionary Playtime” in the anthology Ask: Building Consent Cultureedited by Kitty Stryker
This is also, btw, how the US drastically reduced drunk driving in the US. Telling people they shouldn’t drive when intoxicated made absolutely zero difference. A slogan-and-ad-campaign for “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk!” changed drinking culture. Going after the bystanders is quite often the most effective thing to do in any social change.
part of accepting love for me also requires accepting grief, dissolution. my pets will die, my friends may drift from me, lovers may have a change of heart. none of it makes the love in vain. part of accepting love is accepting movement. but love is mostly letting myself get lost in the moment, i am learning. letting myself be fully alive in the now. i dont always need to think that far ahead all the time. the potential exists now.
i love codependent relationships in fiction i love watching two messy people unforgivably in love with each other shatter the world around them i love seeing interpretations of love as a cosmic disastrous redemptive force i love watching love consume people whole i love looking at romantic relationships and going “oh that is so fucked up! good for them”
“I found out I was in love with you, winter before last,” she said. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you felt anything like that for me, you’d have known I did. But it wasn’t both of us. So there was no good in it. But then, when you told us you’re leaving… At first I thought, all the more reason to say nothing. But then I thought, that wouldn’t be fair. To me, partly. Love has a right to be spoken. And you have a right to know that somebody loves you. That somebody has loved you, could love you. We all need to know that. Maybe it’s what we need most.”
