Explore Bystander Education During Sexual Assault Awareness Month
The #MeToo movement has not only forced a long-overdue reckoning with the prevalence of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual violence, but also shined a spotlight on the role silent bystanders have played in perpetuating a culture of abuse.
This has been welcome news to leading experts in the gender violence prevention field who have been arguing for bystander education programs for years. But according to some of these same experts, too many of the bystander programs that are now being implemented in schools and workplaces around the country are sidestepping the root causes of the problem.
“What’s happened in the field is that some of these programs are moving toward a bystander intervention model that focuses on intervening at the point of attack, like the TSA’s ‘If you see something, say something’ campaign in airports,” said Jackson Katz, one of the early architects of the bystander approach to gender violence prevention and the subject of MEF’s new video The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at Its Roots. “The problem with this is it leaves out the underlying attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are at the foundation of these abusive acts. And even more critically, it ignores how cultural ideas about manhood contribute to both the perpetration of sexual abuse and the complicit silence of other men in the face of this abuse.”
If you’re an educator, community leader, or activist looking to explore bystander education and examine the role that social norms and dominant cultural attitudes play in perpetuating sexism, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other forms of gender violence, we urge you to screen The Bystander Moment in your classes, organizations, and communities.
In the film, Jackson Katz ranges from peer cultures to popular culture to the highest levels of our political culture, bringing us face to face with a continuum of harassing and abusive behaviors experienced by women, from catcalls and unwanted groping on the streets to revenge porn, stalking, sexual harassment, and rape. He also zeroes in on how social norms – especially dominant ideas about manhood across race, class, and ethnicity – have worked to enable these behaviors.
In the end, The Bystander Moment offers a positive and ultimately inspiring conception of bystanders as friends, teammates, classmates, and co-workers who have a crucial leadership role to play in challenging and changing social norms that contribute to sexism and gender violence. The result is a practical and ultimately hopeful blueprint for transforming the culture of abuse.
