Will This Strategy Finally Put an End to Sexual Assault on America’s College Campuses?
What is perhaps most radical about bystander intervention programs is that they represent a significant shift from previous efforts that assumed sexual assault is the responsibility of the two people involved in the incident. Historically, advocates’ main line of defense against sexual assault has been to either teach men not to rape, or teach women not to get raped.
“You get defensive and alienated because most men are not rapists,” said Dorothy Edwards, the executive director of Green Dot, a widely used bystander intervention program. “If men were told, ‘Don’t be the rapist,’ women were told, ‘Don’t get raped’ — everyone got tired of being put in those categories.”
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