>> Hello and welcome to the final instalment in our series of webinars
on sexual violence prevention in Ontario schools.
This webinar series is part of Ophea's Campaign Messengers Taking a
Stand Initiative: a school based approach whose goal is to build the
capacity of students and educators in Ontario to be leaders in their
schools and addressing the root causes of sexual violence and
harassment through the promotion of healthy relationships,
consent and equality.
This is the last in the series of free webinars.
So our previous two webinars were presented by Alyx Duffy from
Egale Canada Human Rights Trust and Véronique Church-Duplessis
from White Ribbon.
Today we are very excited to have Julie Lalonde, project manager of
Draw the Line with us to break down some of the specifics and introduce
you to the Draw the Line campaign - a free and useful tool for breaking the
silence on sexual violence.
Welcome Julie.
>> Thank you, so if folks have questions throughout please feel free
to put them in the chat box and I might answer right away or I might
wait until the end depending on where I'm at in the flow and I'll make sure
to leave some time at the end if folks have general questions about
the campaign or something that you are hoping that I would
cover that I didn't.
So, a reminder that the campaign is Draw the Line.
It's Draw-the-line.ca
That's us on social media, as well.
The reason why our campaign came to be is because violence against women
remains a critical issue in Ontario.
Just some statistics to really set the stage about not only the reality
of sexual violence but the intersectional analysis that I think
is really key to understanding this issue.
So, sexual violence costs Canadians about $4.8 billion a year and it is
one of the few crimes where the cost is placed entirely on
individual victims.
So, everything from missed work or class to individual lawyer costs to
having to move and so it is costly to everyone but one of the few in which
the cost is actually borne by the victim themselves.
Statistically, what we know is between 1 in 3 Canadian women, 1 in 6
boys and 1 in 5 trans folk will experience sexual violence
in their lifetime.
You'll notice that we differentiate between women and boys; the reason
being that if you're born a women and you've lived your whole life as a
woman the chance of you being sexually assaulted remain fairly
high your entire life.
That includes elderly women.
But if you are born a boy and you live your life a man and you live to
be an adult and you've never sexually assaulted, unless you're
incarcerated, your chance of being sexually assaulted remains low.
And what we know is as women hit puberty their chance of being
sexually assaulted skyrockets and when a boy hits puberty the chances
of him being sexually assaulted plummets dramatically.
That's why we make a differentiation.
I've been working in the sector for over 10 years.
I did front line nine years with survivors and all of the men I've
worked with in my career were all survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
So, we're talking really about young women and young boys who are at risk
at the same level and not necessarily men later on in life.
But similarly although women remain at risk their whole life, women under
25 have the highest rates of sexual assault and criminal harassment,
which is how stalking is defined under the Canadian Criminal Code.
In terms of intersexuality, not all women are impacted the same way.
So, girls and women with disabilities are four times more likely to
experience sexual violence but their also more likely to experience sexual
violence by someone that they know, a caregiver or a family
member or a partner.
Indigenous women are three times more likely to experience violence,
they're also much more likely to be killed as a result of that violence.
Less than 10% of sexual assaults are reported to police.
This is always my reminder to folks that the stories we hear about in the news
are because it was reported to police.
Media cover stories based on police reports, so what we hear in the media
might feel like a lot but is that 10% of what happening in our communities.
Also important is that 80-95% of people are assaulted by
someone they know.
That's really, really important for folks to understand who work with
youth and even just as a member of the community as a bystander the vast
majority of us assume that sexual violence is happening by strangers
that is people in trench coats are jumping out of bushes.
And when I work with children, I think back to when I was a kid and
the only formal education I ever got on sexual violence was that to not
get in the car with strangers and that I was going to be kidnapped and
sexually assaulted by a stranger even but children are far more likely to
be sexually assaulted by someone they know and if the only information we
give them is stranger danger when they do experience sexual violence that's
part of the reason why there's a lot of confusion because they don't
understand how that possibly could've happened because they didn't see that
the risk and they couldn't even comprehended that as a
form of violence.
But, it's really important when you work with youth to understand that no
one is talking to them about sexual violence unless you are.
So, Draw the Line, knowing that context, the Ontario government
launched the campaign and funded the
Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC),
which is who I work with,
and Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes.
In 2011, we had Ontario's first sexual violence action plan where the
province really wanted to address the fact that sexual violence was one of
the few crimes in Canada that was going up.
Rates were going up.
All of the crime was stagnating or lowering and yet sexual violence rates
were going up and up and up.
So, the province said that we really need to have a prevention campaign
and not to talk about sexual violence after it's happened.
So, they said they funded both OCRCC and Action ontarienne to develop a
bystander intervention campaign.
So, we are currently funded through the Ontario Women's Directorate now
known as the Ministry of Status Women in the province.
Our campaign engages bystander.
You'll see here the big fancy academic definition that we use and
the reason why we make it clear what we mean is that some campaigns work
on the premise that you need to know someone in order to intervene.
So campaigns like Neighbours, Friends and Families that target people in
terms of their relationship to a victim or someone who's been
victimized, which is great and a super important campaign but our
campaign was we've got the clear directive that it was meant to engage
absolutely everybody.
So, is important that unless you are the victim or the perpetrator
you are a bystander.
And what's important about that is that that means that other survivors
of sexual violence can be the bystander.
And what's really important to take that into consideration when you talk
about what it means to intervene because if I'm someone who has
experienced sexual violence I might be triggered or might be scary for me
intervene because it's too scary for me to think about it happening again
vs. someone who is in a privileged position who's maybe never
experienced violence who doesn't view intervening with us in the
same level of risk.
And our campaign rally challenges what we know of the bystander effect
which was first was in the medical community where they realized that
the counterintuitive piece which was that people were actually less likely
to intervene if there were other people around and it was very
counterintuitive because the sound, okay, well you would think the
presence of other people would shame someone into doing something but in
fact generally one of two things goes through peoples minds which is
someone else's business, some else is going to do something, I've got
somewhere I've got to be or this realization that okay well no one
seems to be alarmed by what happening are not doing anything about it so
why should I put myself out there.
What's really important to understand about sexual violence is that it is a
crime and a form of trauma that is rife with myths and stereotypes.
It's not just that people don't intervene because they think
someone else will.
They don't intervene because they've internalized a whole host of messages
about sexual violence.
The idea that women who drink, women who dress a certain way, women who
flirt with men, women who party hard, women from certain neighbourhoods,
women with quote/unquote reputations that they are the only people get
sexually assaulted and therefore they had it coming.
This is were also where a lot of stereotypes: Islamaphobia,
xenophobia, homophobia, trans-phobia, ableism, ageism, this idea that
that's how they are, or you know how people are in those communities,
people from those neighborhoods that classism and all that kind of stuff
comes up about how it's an othering of the issue, so I don't intervene
because that's how they are and there's nothing I can do about it.
People also don't intervene when it comes to sexual violence because they
don't even know what to look.
So, there's a famous case in the United States in a small community
called Steubenville, Ohio were a young woman was sexually assaulted,
was intoxicated at a party, passed out, people literally carried her from
party to party, sexually assaulted her and took selfies of
themselves doing it.
And when eventually made it's way to police and the people in the pictures
were questioned as to why didn't intervene, they all said it was
because she wasn't fighting back so it didn't even register
as a problems.
She was just lying there.
So, people literally don't even know what sexual violence looks like and
that's part of the reason why don't intervene.
Also people don't intervene because they're afraid of retribution.
So, the smaller the peer group, the more difficult it is to intervene
because you know these people and in a youth context, speaking as someone
who grew up in a rural area, you're partying and hanging out with the
same people you've known since kindergarten.
So, why intervene?
If I call out Paul party on Friday, I'm going to have to see Paul the
next day and probably for the next few years so I'm a little bit more
afraid of what's going to happened to me if I say something vs. if I'm in
Ottawa and I'm calling out someone while I'm waiting for the bus that
I'm never going to see again.
So, it's really important that we create that empathy with youth about
the difficulties in intervening and how social capital is your entire
world when you're growing.
And one of the last reasons why people don't intervene when it comes
to sexual violence is because they don't know what to do.
So, they register what they're seeing as problematic.
Maybe they have this gut feeling is not okay but they don't know what to
do about it because we don't give them practical tools and that's
really where our campaign comes in.
So, core campaign principles; it's gender right off the bat.
So, we don't shy away from acknowledging that sexual
violence is a gender crime.
It predominately impacts women.
97% of perpetrators are men.
That does not mean that 97% of men are perpetrator but we have to work
with what the research tells us which is that the vast majority of people
who been victimized are women.
We do have some scenarios that are moving towards recognizing violence
against transgender, nonconforming and non-binary folks but we are very
clear in the gendered nature of this crime.
We also work from a harm reduction standpoint.
So, rather than telling youth, you know, when I go to campuses instead
of saying "don't party, don't go out during frosh week" we talk about
how to reduce harm.
When it comes to online sexual violence which I'll talk about in a
minute, we talk about it from a harm reduction standpoint, rather than
traditionally sort of abstinence standpoint.
We also try to make a resource is very acceptable.
Our campaign was not originally designed for the education sector, it
was created for the public at large, we've since refined some of our
messaging to speak to the education sector.
But regardless it was really important for us to have a very, very
acceptable in terms of language.
Things like we don't have faces in any of our posters or materials, we
use infographics to tell a story so that actually anybody can see
themselves reflected in the campaign.
We also have a practical focus which is really important and as a public
educator is the thing I'm the most obsessed with, which is we can't just
say if you see something say something.
People absolutely need tools.
They need to know what to say.
They need to know who to say it to.
What to do.
And that's what the research has shown us that unless you give people
practical tools at best they feel disempowered from doing something but
worst case they become apathetic because they think the problem is too
large and nothings going to change so why would I bother putting
myself out there.
So, when we launched in 2012, we launched with six original scenarios.
And for those of you who haven't seen it before, you can see here that we
really ask sort of ambiguous question.
Nothing is very blatantly black and white and that was purposefully.
We felt like if we asked questions where the answer was too obvious,
people would just tell us what they think we want to hear.
And so, it is important for us to situate people in scenarios that are
realistic, that are relevant, these are things that happen to everyday
folks all the time, we see this on the news but also that are a bit on
the line where people or maybe not even sure that they're seeing it as a
form of sexual violence and that was purposeful.
So, these are our first scenarios that we launched.
Then we partnered with folks like a Egale for scenarios on violence
against transwomen and girls, Nishnabe Aski Nation for scenarios specific to
violence against indigenous women and girls and then White Ribbon for
scenarios specifically talking men engaging other men.
Now of course all of these scenarios can be relevant to anyone in any
context but that's sort of the initial intent was to sort of refine
the message to speak to the reality of certain communities that are not
traditionally represented in these kinds of conversation.
And then just recently within the last few days or so White Ribbon
has launched a new scenarios to speak directly to the elementary and
secondary sector.
These are just a few here, there's whole slew of them that speak to
really specifically to the elementary and secondary sector but of course
are relevant for all kinds of folks, as well.
In terms of their content, same thing, visuals that are really
eye-catching that put people in a position of thinking about their
role as a bystander.
All our resources can be downloaded for free and I will remind you of
this a few times throughout our conversation but if you go to
draw–the–line.ca you can download all of our graphics in
high-resolution free.
We have the most posters, not just the graphic that you see there, but
also as a postcard style templates where you have a scenario on the
front and how to draw the line on the back.
All of our resources are free even in print form, so if you want to
connect with me afterwards I can send you out resources for any of our
scenarios in your community and it's free including shipping.
What I want to do for the next piece is really just walk you through
examples of what our campaign looks like on the ground and how we
approach it from a different way than most traditional campaigns, so here
you'll see here is one of the first scenarios that we launched which
sadly is as relevant today as it was in 2012.
Which is: "a friend sends you a naked a picture of a girl he knows.
Is it a big deal to share it with others?"
And they are also available in French, as well.
So, the typical approach to this question, this scenario.
And I can say this with complete confidence as someone who travels
across the province for this campaign and has conversations with everybody
from people in the fifth grade to Parliamentarians if folks remember
when sexual harassment and sexual violence came out as something that
was happening to members of Parliament on Parliament Hill.
I live in Ottawa and I was tasked with going and training members of
Parliament on how to intervene around sexual violence.
So I had the pleasure, the privilege and the difficulty of talking to
average folks every day about sexual violence.
And this is typically how we would approach that issue, so it
would be this sexting.
So, I would say this is a case of sexting and I'll unpack why
that's not the case.
Secondly, this idea of she shouldn't have sent the photo in
the first place.
The real issue is why was even taken a picture of yourself.
And three, a focus on a penal approached that's very punitive and
focusing on how this is problematic because it's against the law.
So, that's sort of the typical approach to
conversations such as that.
We look at it a bit differently, that we pivoted a bit to talk about how if
we are going to agree that sexting is a term that exists in the world,
which I guess you have to accept that that's our contribution
to the dictionary of the 20th century, sexting is consensual.
It's the sharing of photograph between consenting adults.
Online sexual violence is not consensual.
It is a form of violence and this is actually a conversation
about consent.
And the reason why we think that we can make that differentiation is not
just because it's a semantics issue, its because if we tell youth or even
adults that all sexting is bad in all contexts all the time then the second
youth takes a picture or second a youth gets a picture sent to them
they think they've already done something wrong so it doesn't matter
what I do next because I'm already in trouble.
That's one of the main reasons why we make the differentiation but secondly
it because you want to reinforce that it's an issue of consent.
This is a problem because she did not consent to you seeing her photo
and you know that.
And the difference between texting and online sexual violence in the
different sex and sexual assault and we need to be talking about
the role of consent.
Secondly, the photo already exists; so hammering home that she shouldn't
have taken the photo in the first place is literally not helpful.
If the photo already exists, you can go back in time.
What we do now?
And what's important about that, as well, is even for youth who would never
in any context send a naked picture of themselves.
They don't like.
It makes them uncomfortable.
They still have a role to play in this conversation when you just focus
on don't take pictures your tuning out the vast majority of people in
the room who are going to be a bystander.
And that's really what's important for us, focusing on the core issue
which is this is an issue because of bystanders.
If someone who took it sends it onto someone else who sends it
onto someone else.
Things just don't go viral on their own.
Our response is also to talk about how this is an issue of, you know,
feeding the trolls.
People take pictures of their girlfriends or their partners or
classmates and they circulate them because they get the reaction that
they're looking for and we focus on the reaction and changing the reactions,
that's when you see a change.
And so, when we tell people there is an incentive for that person to take
their girlfriends picture and circulate it because he gets social
capital, we get to make fun of her, we get to shame her.
But if there's no incentive for him to do it why would he keep doing it?
And lastly, this is where I talk a lot about lateral violence so women's
and girls being cruel to other women and girls who's photos
are circulating.
And so talking about how if your friends photo is circulating through
the school, even if you would never have taken a naked photo of yourself
it's still really important that you support her, that you ensure that she
gets support, that she gets help even if she makes decisions that you don't
agree with her or that were different than your own decisions.
And then we talk about the practicality because no youth in
Ontario has their minds blown by the existence of sexual violence online,
they know that they're it every day.
What they need are tools, so what we talk about, you know, don't send it
on to other people that's imperative.
If you can avoid it, don't look at the picture in the first place.
If sends you a link or go look up this thing don't do that that.
We're going to solve the problem by not feeding the troll so its
important that you have a conversation with your friend about
how it was inappropriate of them to send that picture and this is
super awkward now.
That's your girlfriend.
I know her or this is a classmate of mine.
And we really need to end the incentive that they currently have,
which is if I do this people are going to give me props.
We really need to nip that.
Also important if you know the person the photo you need to tell them.
Yes, it's super awkward but it's already awkward so just lean into the
awkwardness and have a conversation with her.
Maybe she doesn't even know that her photo is circulating and maybe she's
humiliated she does know and just wants to know that someone supports her in
getting help and in reporting it.
And lastly, after we report it we talk about the legality, we talk
about child pornography laws in Canada, we talk about bill C-13 but
also important is that simply reporting it is not enough, if you
can go back to class and tell everybody: "do you know that Julie's
pictures are circulating through the school, like what a slut.
Oh my god, that's so funny."
And talking about how the rumour that a photo exists can be as damaging
as the photo itself.
This is sort of an example of how we take an issue that youth are hearing
about all the time and I know in my role I oftentimes follow police
officers who come in and talk about "here's the law and you're going to go
to jail for child pornography or your life is going to be ruined or you're
going to be on the sex offender registry."
And we know that does work for some folks.
I would say even myself.
There was no social media when I was in school but if there was a cop had
spoken to me in that way that would have set me straight 'cause I was
that small minority of people who was super keener who didn't want
to get in trouble.
But the vast majority of youth say: "I just don't have to get caught.
As long as you don't get caught you're fine."
Rather than having the larger conversation about how does this even
happen in the first place and at this isn't just bad because
it's against the law.
It's bad because you're harming another human being.
And really ending the incentive for this to continue.
So, I'm just going to walk you through one more scenario and then
open up for questions.
So, alcohol is facilitated sexual assault.
Huge issue.
We have a number of scenarios to talk about it everything from in a bar
context to parties.
I come from a rural area as I said where regardless of how old you are:
you're partying at people houses, you're having bush parties,
you're not going to bars.
So we do have a questions specific to the bars but we also have these two
scenarios here and here on which speak to rural folks and to youth.
And the typical approach to talking about alcohol facilitated sexual assault
is this is why you shouldn't drink.
You drink and something bad is going to happened to you, these things are
inevitable, there's no way to interrupt that.
The second you drink, something terrible happens you.
But then there's a gender component, that I think we really need to be
honest about that I can tell you every September when something
happens on a campus I get a call from the media saying that the issue is
young women binge drinking on campuses and women going to bars
thinking that they can drink like men.
And this is why there's all these rates of women being
sexually assaulted.
This really onus from women that they are drinking and being intoxicated is
what put them at risk and therefore it's their fault, had they not been
drinking that would not be in that position.
But also, a 'boys will be boys' attitude where women who are
intoxicated brought it on themselves but men who are intoxicated absolved
of responsibility because he was just drunk.
He's not a bad guy, it's just he's like that when he drinks.
But the core of that argument that I think a lot of people don't want to
face is that you're basically making a misandrous argument.
If you're arguing that men see women vulnerable, see women intoxicated,
see women isolated from their friends and they can't help but take
advantage of that situations.
That's really the undertone of the typical approaching even though most
people wouldn't want to name it that explicitly but that's really what
you're saying is that men see women vulnerable and they can't help
himself or all men that way when they're intoxicated.
They just take advantage of women.
So, we really challenge that when we talk about our work and we talk about
alcohol facilitated sexual assault.
We talk about how, myself included, when I moved to university and started
school I got a huge lecture for my mother about how to protect myself from being roofied
and drug facilitated sexual assault which is a huge problem and I'm not
downplaying that at all.
But the research has show that alcohol is the number one
date rape drug.
Half of sexual assault in Canada involve alcohol purposely over
serving someone, for example.
So, we talk about how alcohol facilitated sexual assault is
not a miscommunication.
It's not I had a couple drinks, you had a couple of drinks, you wake up
the next morning and all of a sudden she cried rape quote unquote.
We're talking about people who purposely get someone drunk or
purposely wait until someone has had too much drink to sexually assault
them and so we really name the problem is like men are not
inherently programed to see a woman intoxicated and take
advantage of them.
It's a choice that was made and the woman being intoxicated is not
putting herself at risk in that sense.
And the expression I use a lot is that the consequence for drinking too
much for women should be a hangover and not sexual assault.
So we really name that as a purposeful act and then we talk about
consent from not just the legal definition but from a
moral standpoint.
The first question I hear when I talk about alcohol facilitated sexual
assault is how drunk is too drunk?
How many drink should she have before I'm legally in trouble and that's
really problematic to me because you're reinforcing the idea that you
just basically want to know what you can legally get away.
And that's not what we want people to be thinking about.
We want people to be having healthy interactions all the time and if
there's any doubt in your mind that person is not going to be okay with
what happened tomorrow then you shouldn't be having that interaction
like you shouldn't be hooking up with people with this fear of being that
you're going to be accused of sexual assault the next day.
It's really a depressing way to approach it and instead we prefer to
come at it from healthy relationships approach of enthusiastic consent and
talking to people about not just no means no but also what does
enthusiastic consent look like?
What does it look like to check in?
What do you do if someone you have a crush on you and want about them but
they're super drunk and like really kind of acknowledging that consent is
the issue here, not just what the law says.
And then you have really lastly naming this assumption that drunk
girls are asking for it, is in fact when you pivot it the other way,
is in fact saying that men can't help themselves, men have to take advantage of
drunk women or that sexual assault perpetrators are monsters who can't
be stopped when, in fact, we know that alcohol facilitated sexual
assault can be interrupted.
People can disrupt what's happening.
So, I'm leaving room for questions and and any feedback that folks have
but I do quickly want to let you know about what this looks
like on the ground.
So, if you're an educator in a school context or you work with youth maybe
like youth programming, every sexual assault centre in Ontario is trained
to deliver Draw the Line content.
So, you can have someone from your local
sexual assault centre come and deliver a workshop.
If you prefer to have someone out of town, I know in rural communities, in
particular it's more incentive to have someone outside the community.
You are more likely to have people kind of get excited about it.
You can you have a school assembly on that topic then folks can invite me
personally to come and deliver the content.
I have workshops that we deliver from middle school to
high school and onward.
It's free all schools have to do is pay for my travel if you want me to
come; I'm based in Ottawa.
But otherwise your local sexual assault centres are trained to
deliver the content and they also have the advantage of being
councillors and being able to bring front-line workers.
Oftentimes the concern is, you know, what it will bring this conversation
to our school and then we kind of open the floodgates and folks are
triggered, folks are disclosing.
What do we do?
When I come and speak at your school, I will always bring councillors with
me but if you want to talk about this issue on your school and you're
concerned about disclosures, I would connect with your local sexual
assault centre to have councillors come and be present if folks are
triggered or they have questions.
And all or our scenarios as I said can be downloaded for free
of our website.
We also have YouTube videos.
Some learning guides to find ways activated in your school and of
course Ophea is always a great resource.
That's my information there if folks want more information or they wanted
to get print resources sent to them.
And lastly to flag that May is sexual assault awareness month in Ontario
and so during the month of May we have some really interesting
programming that we deliver through social media to kind of get folks
interested in the issue and so if you also want to organize events in your
community for May Sexual Assault Awareness Month and you don't really
know what that would look like we are here to also be a resource for you to
help you activate that in your community or your school.
I don't know if folks have any questions, I'll give you a few
minutes and keep folks are typing if you have any questions about the
content of what it looks like or even about the campaign itself,
feel free so ask away.
>> Thank you, Julie.
So as she says will give you a few minutes to take your questions but
while we are waiting maybe I'll start with a couple of questions.
So, you know, you give presentations across Ontario and beyond the
provinces, as well.
In an education setting, so with other students or teachers, what are
some of the most commonly asked questions.
What topics or what questions do people get hung up on the most?
>> Great question.
So, I would say when we have conversations about online sexual violence,
I can say that youth have made some pretty serious progress since
we launched in 2012.
So when I launched in 2012 and I would ask people "your friends sends
you a naked picture of a girl he knows, is it a big deal to
share with others?"
Everyone was like: "No, screw her, she made bad choices;
why would you even do that? It's obviously not going to end
well," blah blah blah.
Youth have a bit more nuanced now, which is great, but I think there's
still a lot of "she should have just not taking the picture in
the first place."
People really get focused on shaming the woman who's photos have
circulated and have a more wholesome conversation through a workshop.
We talk a lot about why do people even send picture in the first place?
We talk about coercion.
I can tell you that the number one thing I hear from women after young
girls and women after I present is coming up to me and talking
about coercion.
Young women are really, really interested in talking about coercion
and in particular not because we talked with consent which is really
important but when we frame it strictly as a no means no and yes
means yes conversation we don't talk about things that I hear from young women
like this guy's been texting me nonstop for two weeks asking me to
send him a naked picture and I don't really want to but I'm afraid if I
don't he's not going to want to date me or my boyfriend said that if I didn't
send him a naked picture that means I don't trust him and I really want him
to know that I trust him so I did send a picture but now I'm afraid
it's going to get out and if it does I technically said yes but I
didn't really want to.
Those kind of conversations like cohesion is like the number one thing
that you want to talk about in that context and then the biggest question
is around that shaming piece and for me sort of unpacking the visceral
reaction of "oh my God, why did she send that picture that was a stupid
thing" and then completely absolving the perpetrator of the
responsibility.
>> So building on that then, what do you think Educators should do?
So, Ophea does a lot of work with the schools and our primary
audience is educators.
So, what can educators do when they're working with students and
have some of these issues and sort of more generally to create safer
environments at school.
Well, I would say it there's stuff going on in the news you know that
the youth in your life know about it.
Like if there's a big court case, everything from John Gomeshi to Bill
Cosby to the Oscars with Casey Afflect and before that Chris Brown
and even the case in Halifax that just came out.
Youth I know are online, they're seeing the new and I think that's
such a great entry point to talk about like: "hey, you know, at the
Oscars, someone that multiple women have accused of sexual assault got an
Oscar, got an Emmy and there's controversy around that and now he's
forced to answer that and what do you think about that?
What do you think as a consumer of media?
What do you think about that?"
I think it's a really great way to kind of open up the conversation and
then harm reduction approach; I know it's hard when you're in school and
you really have to come at it from like being risk-averse but I think
creating that space for youth to just be real about what they're going
through and things like coercion, for example.
I was so blown away when I started this campaign.
I never anticipated how much that would be a topic of conversation so
if you're talking about consent whether through the curriculum or
something comes up like unpack that and talk about coercion because I've
had sessions where you can literally spend half an hour unpacking
what coercion is.
I've gone into work or to schools where thought I was going to talk was
two scenarios and all I talked about was the one scenario "your favourite
singers assaulted his girlfriend and do you downloaded his latest
single?" We spent 45 minutes with a bunch of high school students talking
about that and them going back and forth and debating and some
saying "I can separate the artist from the art," and other people
saying "no, that's putting money in his pocket."
Giving them the space to have that critical thinking, which we all know
youth love to share their opinion and they love that space where you're
when treating them as someone who has a perspective that you want to hear.
So, I'd say piggybacking off what's happening in the news and talking
about coercion; those are huge.
I'm just going to read out a question for folks.
I got a question if I have any tips for breaching the topic with
elementary students specifically?
Do any of the scenarios tend to lend particularly well to
younger students?
So, great question.
So if you head to our website we just launched new scenarios with white
ribbons that are very specific for the elementary sector.
You'll notice some of the scenarios look like duplicates but the same
scenario is worded differently if you're in the elementary or
secondary sector.
I would say that's a great place to start everything from even if your
friend sends you a naked picture of me and I've had a conversation with
students in grades five and six and some of them had already taken photos
as horrifying as that might be.
But even if they haven't that's true prevention.
It's really important for me to drive that home for folks that alcohol
facilitated sexual assault should be something that we talked about in
high schools, should be something that we talked about with
younger folks.
You can say okay they're not drinking but they will and you want them to
have those tools before they go on to university or college and out into
the world where they're drinking so I think that's a great place to start.
And when I teach the online sexual violence scenario to elementary
school students the only thing I really change is I don't start with
the definition of consent in the criminal code because that language
can be a bit hard to wrap your head around and it's very much framed
around sexual activity but instead have a broader conversation about
consent which you are already doing and in the curriculum and just kind
of expanding that to talk about consent in the in the broader sense.
But I would say that online sexual violence is not new for youth and the
question is really interesting to talk about with youth about what
does it mean to be a bystander when you're talking about a celebrity and
what does that say about your values if you're giving money to the person
or you're supporting this person by going to the show or
watching their movies.
I think it's a really great way to start from where folks are at.
And just a reminder to folks that you can download all of our scenarios for
free, so if you wanted to start a conversation in your classroom you
can download a graphic or you can print them or you can download it and
put it up on a slide and just kind of get people going.
Honestly, I don't know any youth that doesn't want to spend time
and time and time talking about their consumer choices and it's such a
great entry point for getting them to think about what the music you listen
to and the movies you watch says about your values in ending
sexual violence.
It's a great conversation starter.
>> Alright, so just before we wrap up here any final key messages that you
would like educators to take back with them from this presentation or
from Draw the Line in general?
>> I would say that if you're having a conversation with youth you work
with students, thank you, we need to be having this conversation with
everyone and everyone.
It's really, really important for me as someone who works with every
sexual assault centre in the province.
The amount of violence and trauma and harm that could be prevented if we
were just brave enough to have these conversations and to do
them the right way.
So, fear mongering, we know, doesn't work.
Framing this idea that it's up to women to protect themselves;
I really encourage you to flip that on it's
head and say that your encouraging the idea that
men are preditorial and I really think what message are you sending
men or the young men in your classroom or the young men that you
work with when you say that you know it's up to women to
protect themselves.
What are you saying about the men in that room?
And kind of thinking about in that way.
It's brave and it's difficult and I know it's hard when you're in a
school system in particular and you feel like there's just so many
parameters of what you can and cannot say but these kinds of conversations
are lifesaving for folks and what we know that's true trauma informed care
means not shying away from the issue and saying "we just don't want to talk
about it because it's going to upset people" but really
leaning into creating the idea of creating a safe space for people to
open up and talk openly.
And be prepared to hear what you don't want to hear.
I think that's a big one.
If I go in there and every single
question I ask youth they give me the right answer,
I know they're telling me what they think I want to hear and it's
really important for youth to say: "You know, I'm probably going to keep
listening to that music it's my favorite artist and I'm not going to
call the cops on my best friend if he sends me a picture of his
girlfriend.
I know what child pronography and I
know I need to call the cops but that's my best friend.
Like, I'm not calling the cops on him."
And we need to create space for youth to be honest about that, so we
can challenge it.
And so just continue to be brave just be brave in the work you're doing and
thank you from those of us who work with women and men and transfolks
who've been traumatized like thank you for taking on true prevention.
It's such a gift to the rest of our sector that you are willing
to do that work.
>> Alright, so if there's no more questions we'll wrap up but thank you
Julie so much for that presentation.
That was really great.
We would ask that before you go please do take a minute to fill out
the evaluation form.
We've added a link to the chat box there.
And if you have questions and want to follow up, feel free to contact us at
Ophea or Draw the Line directly and ask your questions.
Thank you and have a great evening.
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