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So I attended annual sexual assault response prevention training this am. You know what’s missing? It’s damn near 2021 and we still have NO discussion of grooming behaviors.
No discussion of how alcohol is weaponized to manufacture consent and to make it look like confusion over consent when it was a deliberate tactic. No discussion of pressure tactics used
No discussion of enthusiastic consent. We’re still focused on who’s a mandatory reporting person vs not. Which is a key piece of harassment/assault response but nothing on Prevention.
We have zero discussion of power imbalances and who shows up to offer penis disguised as mentor ship and how to tell the difference. We have zero institutional discussion of grooming. And speaking of which, where does grooming fall with regards to UCMJ?
RAINN has an excellent guide to grooming. Let’s start incorporating it into SH/SA prevention training. https://www.rainn.org/news/grooming-know-warning-signs
We will likely never train someone not to rape. We can train people how to spot the precursors/predatory behavior and be more willing to interject. If we clearly define a situation as grooming, we can then clearly decide it is problematic and decide to act.
And we HAVE to start talking about protecting men and boys. How much fucking harm is done every single time we do this training and completely erase the male survivors in our formation?
So if I was in command, what would I do? Well, depends on my audience. If it’s under 30 crowd? Big Mouth and South Park.
South Parks PC Principle and Strong Woman have some work place dynamics going on that highlight DATING between equals at work
South Park has an episode on consent forms which highlights the absurdity of legally defined consent for different sex acts vs enthusiastic consent.
I know folks are mixed on Big Mouth but there are a couple of great episodes that really get at consent and victim blaming.
At the end of season 1, there’s an episode called the Headpush. Older sister is dating a theater guy and he takes her upstairs at a party and tries to get a blowjob. She pushes his hand away and he tries again and then she gets pissed and leaves.
Downstairs they’re playing charades and the older sister says to hell with it and starts acting like someone is pushing on her http://head.one of the other girls at the party goes oh you’re Daniel.
And the “normal” script would be oh she should have expected that going upstairs. But nope, Big Mouth gets into a discussion of how to ask for a blowjob in all it’s super cringy awkwardness. Of course the Hormone Monster has some thoughts.
But the whole episode turns on the idea that the guy should have been ok with her saying no and shouldn’t have tried to pressure her.
Big Mouth has given me a shared language to talk to my teen daughters about hormones and sex and boys. Bc they can now visualize all the madness going on in teenage boys brains, they have a way to understand it now. The show also has a whole couple of episodes on grooming
A creepy teacher grooming one of the unpopular girls.
If I’m talking to the over 40 crowd? Hate to say it but Revenge of the Nerds does not stand the test of time.
