BYSTANDER BLOG TOPICS
Bystander (502)
| ||||||||
Stories (62) |
Skill building
An Interview with Jackson Katz - Part II
Dear Engaged Bystander: This is Part II of my interview with Jackson Katz
Joan: What is your vision for creating that institutional change?
Jackson: I recognize that I am using a very broad definition for bystander engagement: ANYONE who has peers, friends or colleagues, or anyone who plays a leadership role in a social group or institutional setting – which means virtually EVERYBODY. What is required is not just individual but institutional change. This is beginning to happen in the military. MVP has been doing bystander-focused prevention training in the military for 14 years, and it is exciting that now all four major branches of the U.S. military have decided to employ bystander programming system-wide to prevent sexual and domestic violence. For example, by the summer of 2012 the Air Force has mandated that all personnel at every level need to go through what they’re calling Bystander Intervention Training. This training includes examining and interrupting behaviors on an abuse continuum, and also includes elements of media literacy education.
That level of commitment represents an institutional shift. It is promising in part because of the potential impact this can have in the larger culture. Just like the MVP program’s initial strategy of targeting men in athletics, men in the military have a kind of elevated status in parts of male culture, and it is possible to leverage that status to make speaking out about sexism and sexist abuse more normal and acceptable among men. When men with traditional masculine authority speak out it gives all of us more credibility – especially with men who are skeptical. When the New England Patriots, the Marine Corps or the U.S. Army does bystander training, average guys can’t as easily write it off as “pc” posturing or anti-male propaganda. At the same time, women in the military play an increasingly important role both in and outside of the military in redefining femininity, and bystander training helps them develop skills that can have a powerful effect in the service and beyond.
Joan: How do you see this affecting those who are not in the military?
Jackson: When President Harry Truman signed an executive order in 1948 that racially integrated the military, it was part of – and had a tremendous impact on -- the emerging civil rights movement. Recently, I participated in a U.S. Army Summit on Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention in Washington DC. Many key military leaders were there, including the Army Chief of Staff and the Sergeant Major of the Army, who gave keynote addresses. What the military is doing today in this area is really ahead of the curve. There is nothing in the civilian world of this scope and magnitude. Imagine what it would be like for some of the largest corporations or religious organizations to gather together for this kind of summit and make this kind of commitment. It really is pretty amazing. We need to encourage and pressure civilian institutions – especially schools – to study what the military is doing and take ideas from them.
Joan: How do you see changes in technology affecting our work in coming years?
Jackson: New technologies provide new opportunities – both good and bad. And those of us who do bystander work need of course to integrate the new technologies of communication and social interaction into our conception of the role of the bystander. One scenario we use in MVP is as follows. You are a young man sitting alone in your room, and you receive a text from a friend with a sexually explicit photo attached of his former girlfriend. No one else is in the room, but you are still a bystander -- to an abusive act by your friend, who’s sent this picture without her knowledge or consent. What do you do? People generally agree that if you decide to send the text to another friend (e.g., “Jimmy you’ve got to see this” and push send) you are no longer a bystander – you are now contributing to that original abusive act. But what do you do? This scenario does not fit the usual bystander paradigm of seeing a friend getting a young woman drunk at a party.
As educators and activists – and as parents -- we need to preemptively initiate conversations with young people about these kinds of situations, where people often make quick decisions that in the Digital Age can have ramifications for the rest of their lives. Here again we need to address the question of institutional responsibility. Educators everywhere need to have these conversations long before that moment of truth! If institutional leaders do not initiate curricular innovations or programming on these sorts of issues then they are being passive bystanders.
Joan: Thank you so much Jackson. I loved having an excuse to call you to ask these questions. Questions that I ask myself every day... And I am truly moved by both your passion and your vision for where we all need to focus for the future. Thank you!
For more information about his books, films and for many useful tools, visit Jackson Katz’s website.
Warmly
Joan
Interview with Jackson Katz - Part I
Dear Engaged Bystander: As my year as the NSVRC blogger comes to a close, I thought about who are the people who can provide insights to carry us all forward. Jackson Katz immediately came to mind. He is one of the first to apply bystander thinking, interventions and strategies to prevent sexual violence. So I am thrilled to have had a chance to speak with him and add his words to these last few blogging days.
For those of you who don’t know Dr. Katz, here is a brief bio: Jackson Katz is an activist, educator, author and filmmaker, internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in the field of gender violence prevention education, particularly in the sports culture and the military. He co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program in 1993. MVP is one of the original bystander programs; it has been widely influential in the burgeoning field of bystander intervention. In 1997 he created the first worldwide domestic and sexual violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps, a program he still directs. He and his MVP colleagues also work closely with the Air Force, Army and Navy in the development of their bystander programs. You might also know him through his educational videos for college and high school students, including Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (2000), Wrestling With Manhood (2002) and Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies and Alcohol (2004) or his book, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (2006).
Part I:
Joan: What advice can you give to those of us invested in bystander approaches to preventing sexual violence?
Jackson: I believe that bystander intervention – broadly understood – is the future of sexual assault prevention. But to be effective, we need a common and comprehensive understanding of the term ‘bystander.’ I prefer an expansive definition of ‘bystander’ that is rooted in social justice philosophy and education. Many people think of a bystander as someone who is present at the scene of a potential incident. Part of the confusion is how the word ‘bystander’ sounds; it sounds like it means ‘someone who is standing by.’ The way we have always used the term in the MVP program is to describe anyone who isn’t either a perpetrator or a victim in a given situation but is in a position to intervene before, during or after the act. Or a member of a peer culture that contains abusers or victims. Or an authority figure in a position to enact prevention strategies. In that sense virtually everyone is a bystander. The critical question is: are you an empowered/active bystander or an inactive/passive bystander?
To really transform our culture we need to go beyond simply teaching individuals the skills they need to intervene in given situations. We need to expand our thinking beyond the individual 20-year-old college or high school student, drinking at a party. For example, a person in a position of institutional authority, whether they’re a governor or mayor, university or college president, school superintendent or the principal of a high school, who does not use their position to initiate, fund and lead sexual violence prevention efforts, he or she is being a passive bystander. Individual skill building is important, but we need to look at systemic solutions. Unfortunately most people hear the word ‘bystander’ and only look at the very narrow frame of the individual response at the site of the abusive act.
Joan: Can you further explain the social justice-oriented approach to bystander intervention?
Jackson: We have different levels of responsibility depending on where we sit on the continuum of social power. Of course individuals have a responsibility to act in their everyday lives and social worlds. But I am concerned that many bystander initiatives have moved away from the social justice roots of the bystander approach in a way that is both degendered and decontextualized. It is useful to compare our approaches to working against ending sexual violence with anti-racist efforts. For example, do blacks and whites have the same responsibility to work against racism in America? Most of us would agree that while we all need to fight racism, whites have a greater responsibility to act. The same is true of sexual violence. Do women have the same responsibility as men to interrupt sexual violence? When men commit the vast majority of it? (Whether the victims are women or men, girls or boys.) I believe women and men have complementary roles to play, but let’s not pretend that responsibility for prevention is shared equally between the sexes.
In our work to develop the MVP program in the early 1990s, social justice was our guiding philosophical foundation. The question I was most interested in was: how do we get more men to speak up to challenge other men about how some of us behave toward women? At the time there were very few men involved in sexual assault prevention work. At MVP we settled on a strategy to address men not as perpetrators or potential perpetrators, but, as we said, as ‘empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers.’ It was similar to challenging whites to speak out about racism, or heterosexuals to interrupt heterosexism. Also, my idea to start MVP was not about the problem of sexual assault perpetrated by male student-athletes. It was about the role that sports play in the larger culture and particularly male culture. Men in sports often have enhanced status, and so we wanted them to use that status to help make it more acceptable for men to start challenging each other about how we treat women along a continuum of behaviors, ranging from sexist jokes and comments to sexual and domestic violence. Fairly soon thereafter we made the program mixed gender, addressing similar dynamics within female peer cultures and empowering women as bystanders as well. We’ve trained many thousands of women and girls, but we’ve never lost sight of the fact that ending men’s violence is more of a men’s than a women’s responsibility.
Joan: How does this social justice approach challenge us in a way that individual change may not?
Jackson: Solutions to social problems of the magnitude of sexual violence have to be social and institutional solutions. For example, there is no excuse for any college or university that has an athletic program NOT to have mandated sexual assault and relationship abuse prevention education for all student-athletes, coaches and athletic administrators. If a college or university does not have this kind of programming – and hundreds do not -- it represents a failure of leadership at the level of the athletic director or university administration. Sexual assault prevention education should be part of the student-athlete experience – for men and women, from the first moment a young student-athlete steps onto campus. For this to happen will require a shift in our expectations about the role of campus leaders – university officials, athletic administrators, and coaches. If they are not offering and requiring these kinds of programs, they are being passive bystanders and hence complicit in sexually abusive behaviors, many of which can be prevented. The same logic about institutional responsibility on college campuses applies to leaders of Greek systems, housing, and other entities.
Look for tomorrow’s posting, Part II of this interview with Jackson Katz.
Warmly
Joan
Listen to How One Fraternity Changed More Than One Life
Dear Engaged Bystander: A few months ago, I had the pleasure and privilege to interview Cassandra Thomas , Director of the Houston Area Women Center for her incredible story of hope. In her story, she certainly busted my own stereotype of a college fraternity when some friends at a fraternity literally pulled her from a car because she was drunk, with a guy she did not know and they also knew she was recovering from a recent rape. Cassandra’s honesty about this event is both moving and profound. She also takes this story and the commitment of these young men into her work today where she is passionately committed to growing the circle of those who will speak out. In fact she believes that we don’t have a right to not speak up when something is wrong.
I wrote about her story in my blog and now you can also listen to her story (1).jpg)
through an NSVRC podcast.
Take a minute to listen to her story. And if you are moved, take a minute to write in your own story. NO event is too small to share. In fact it is these smaller day to day events that truly add up to a new social norm and a new way of just being with each other in the world
Thanks again Cassandra for sharing this story with us.
Warmly
Joan
xCHANGE Featuring Dr. Victoria Banyard -- Save the Date
Dear Engaged Bystander: The xCHANGE is a really unique opportunity to talk with Dr. Victoria Banyard, a nationally recognized expert on bystander intervention and the lead researcher of the UNH program, Bringing in the Bystander. Here are the details:
The National Sexual Violence Resource Center is pleased to announce the first in a series of online forums that will focus on supporting the xCHANGE of information between advocates, prevention educators and researchers. The forums are free and all you need to participate is a user account at nsvrc.org.
Our first xCHANGE Forum will support the National Sexual Assault Awareness Month 2011 Campaign and features Dr. Victoria Banyard moderating a discussion on bystander intervention.
Save the Date!
Join us on April 12 from 2:30-3:30 PM Eastern where a live real time xCHANGE of information will occur on the effectiveness of bystander intervention approaches moderated by Dr. Victoria Banyard. Bystander intervention serves as the central theme and approach in the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s 2011 Sexual Assault Awareness Month Campaign: It’s Time…to Get Involved.
If you cannot join us on April 12th please participate in the continued discussion on bystander intervention that will occur through April 15th. This exchange will not be a real time discussion but the forum will be open for questions, responses and comments; responses will be posted daily.
More information and how to participate is available online. If you have any questions or need any assistance logging in or creating an NSVRC account please contact Jenn Benner at jbenner@nsvrc.org.
warmly
joan
The Guts to Create a World We Want to Live In
Dear Engaged Bystander: In this blog, I invited Jennifer Rauhouse of Peer Solutions to talk about her work to engage bystanders in sexual violence prevention.
Joan: Can you tell me about your approach to bystander intervention:
Jennifer: To really have an impact, we have learned why and how to move beyond individual level bystander interventions. We believe that we all must shift away from putting the responsibility on the person harmed to prevent their own assault. We need to empower communities to be a part of the solution while holding those that harm accountable for their actions.
Joan: I am intrigued in what you have learned about HOW to engage people:
Jennifer: One important strategy we use at Peer Solutions is to use the words victimization, perpetration and bystander-intervention as verbs rather than nouns. This approach focuses on the behaviors we want to change while avoiding labels, stereotypes, myths and blame. When used as verbs, victimization and perpetration also mean the same thing. The action we want to encourage is to place full accountability on the person harming. Community level activities can then be focused on learning why individuals victimize as well as understanding and working to prevent the perceived norms that perpetuate the culture of harm. When the “Bystander Intervention” concept is used as a verb, we are able to empower everyone to be part of the solution.
Joan: Have you developed a specific program that focusing on engaging the community in taking on responsibility?
Jennifer: When we begin, our STAND & SERVE members are activated to “build the world they want to live in” as a safe bystander strategy. We find it helpful to begin with that positive vision rather than focus on the individual skill building surrounding the infinite possibilities about what they “should” do if they see/hear of an individual planning to sexually assault another. We have learned this strategy provides the best guarantee that our participants, who do witness a potentially dangerous situation, no matter where they are or what it is, when they perceive it to be safe, they will most definitely SPEAK UP and seek help.
Joan: How do you bring this positive world view into reality?
Jennifer: STAND & SERVE activities include weekly lunch meetings at local high schools, weekly after school meetings at community centers for elementary-post secondary level students and monthly STAND & SERVE Coalition meetings. In January of 2011, the STAND & SERVE Coalition launched THE GUTS TO BE GOOD (G2BG). Through G2BG we work towards creating a world where all humans are safe and are treated equally and with respect. G2BG promotes five simple acts of kindness.
1. The guts to be RESPECTFUL,
2. The guts to be COURTEOUS,
3. The guts to SPEAK UP,
4. The guts to be HONEST and
5. The guts to LEND A HAND.
We believe it takes everyone to end sexual violence. We are all Peers, We are all the Solution. We would like to thank Carol Hensell at ADHS guiding and supporting our bystander approach for the past ten years.
Click here for more information about the STAND & SERVE Coalition and their programs. Although their website is under-construction, but sure to check back in with them soon.
Warmly
joan
FREE Online Bystander Course
Dear Engaged Bystander: OK this is shameless promotion. And I am letting you know about this new FREE online course because it is an easy to use, quick overview of the bystander approach to sexual violence prevention.
For about six months, I have been working with NEARI (the New England Adolescent Research Institute) and with NSVRC (National Sexual Violence Resource Center) to create a FREE online course based upon the booklet I wrote "Engaging Bystanders in Sexual Violence Prevention." The online course allows us to build in links to useful resources, interactive exercises to help make the key issues clearer, and creates a mapping exercise for the student to build. I would love to know what you think of the course if you can take an hour to review the work.
Here is the official announcement and the link for this course:
The newly released Engaging Bystanders in Sexual Violence Prevention Online Course provides 1-2 hour, interactive tutorial on research, concepts, tools, and methods on effective bystander intervention. The tutorial, produced by The New England Adolescent Research Institute Inc. (NEARI) and sponsored by NSVRC, aims to educate and motivate individuals, groups, and communities to take action to prevent sexual violence. Joan Tabachnick, our bystander blogger, developed the online tutorial, basing it on an NSVRC publication released in 2008.
Please contact the NEARI Training Center info@nearipress.org with any technical questions regarding the course.
warmly
Joan
Part 2: Emerging Technology as a Tool for Bystander Engagement
Dear Engaged Bystander: Here is the second part of a great conversation with Marianne Winters of Graphix for Change.
Joan: So given your expertise, how do we meet these challenges using this technology?
Marianne: Here’s the challenge to those of us working in organizations addressing sexual violence. To the general public seeking basic information, our knowledge base is one of the best kept secrets on the internet. Search engines have certain rules. They find information based on their matrices that involve key words, phrases, and links to good information. Search engines don’t discern between survivor-centered and supportive messages and victim-blaming non-supportive messages.
We can meet this challenge by strategically building our expert status. We need to create and publish the website pages, blog posts, articles, and links to the information that we know bystanders need. We can do this by getting savvy about how the internet finds and prioritizes information and optimizing our own websites to respond.
Joan: Do you have any advice for organizations moving forward?
Marianne: From the technology end, we need to realize that the internet which at first was a convenient place for organizations to post an electronic version of their brochures and reports, is now an interactive, changing, breathing thing. Many organizations are now catching up to this trend and they’re seeing results. The organizations and the messages that rise to the top are building websites that also become platforms for news and information, for discussion and trends. These website are more than just posted information, they help communities engage and connect, they attract donors and supporters – in these situations, their work is more often coming up on the front page. Yes it changes things, it often requires changing job descriptions, workplans, updating skills, and increasing knowledge, but the payoff can be huge – survivors can more easily find you, donors can more readily support you, communities can more easily engage with you.
Joan: What does that mean for bystander work?
Marianne: When building your platforms, think about your audiences. When you post information, be sure to think about how it will be read by survivors and then how it will be read by the friends and families of survivors and victims. You may also want to consider what it means to be reach out to people who may know someone at risk to abuse or to someone who has not really thought about the issue much. If you find ways to interact with ALL of these audiences, you will have built a much more interactive and responsive conversation for your organization and your community.
If you are using your website as a platform to engage bystanders, we’d love to hear about it.
Marianne Winters is a leader in the movement to end and address sexualized and domestic violence and is passionate about progressive movements that are visionary, inclusive, current, responsive and proactive. Some would say that she’s “all over the place”. She prefers to say that she thrives on variety and is energized by the multi-faceted, never ending, interconnected and always exciting work of social change. She is the Project Diva for Graphix for Change and consultant and trainer for Praxis for Change.
Part 1: Emerging Technology as a Tool for Bystander Engagement
Dear Engaged Bystander: I have a teenager at home and I see how Facebook, texting, instant messaging and so many other social media tools are the mode of communications in their nearly 24/7 world. We often hear about the negative impact of these emerging technologies through bullying stories. I asked a national expert, Marianne Winters of Graphix for Change to talk about these same tools as an opportunity for bystander interventions.
Joan: Where do you see the match between the work you do and bystander intervention?
Marianne: There is an exciting match between the goals of the sexual violence movement and the opportunities created by the emerging internet technologies. We believe that our movement needs to jump into these new technologies to ensure that our voices are heard in this new and exciting environment.
Let me give you a concrete example. 
I just googled the term sexual violence in the city where I live. Here’s the list of sites on page one.
- the local sexual assault service provider,
- a training event that happened last year,
- 3 defense attorneys giving advice to someone accused of sexual assault or domestic violence,
- some general business links to the local rape crisis center and some other law firms.
- a listing of local newspaper articles on sexual assaults,
- some links to law firms 90 miles from here and some national organizations.
Then if I scroll through the entries, I begin to find sites that give messages about sexual violence – this is where it starts to become a problem.
- a YouTube video of a sex scene that is really a simulated rape.
- an entry in a website on college stories where a survivor of date rape shared her story and then received a long list of comments, some supportive, others victim blaming and abusive.
Here’s the good thing about this list. If I were a victim of rape looking for help, I would have found the local hotline easily enough.
Joan: And then what is the challenge here for bystander engagement?
Marianne: Here’s the challenge as I see it. Putting on the hat of an interested bystander, I did not find any information about what I could do to help end sexual violence. I easily found news and resources, yet I could not find any information about what I could do in my community. None of the important messages of the movement such as what role my school, sports team or my church could play in setting new social norms, increasing safety, support and comfort for victims or interventions for those at risk to abuse were anywhere in the top 50 listings.
Even more problematic for the sexual violence movement and the communities we serve, I didn’t see any simple information about what’s healthy and normal, what to expect if I report sexual abuse, or what to do when I someone I know discloses abuse to me. I can’t readily find out what will happen if I witness an abusive joke or have a friend who has attitudes that blame the victim.
Joan: So given your expertise, how do we meet these challenges using this technology?
Stay tuned for the next blog posting and conversation with Marianne Winters, Graphix for Change.
Dispatch from Vermont: The bystander approach through a health promotion lens
Dear Engaged Bystander: I’m all for the bystander approach and it seems as if the bystander strategy has taken a firm hold in the violence prevention field. I see many merits of the approach including reducing defensiveness in our conversations with men and boys, giving tools to address and interrupt problematic behaviors and attitudes on the spectrum of violence and empowering individuals to see themselves as part of a community response to violence. Wherever we have tried using the bystander approach there have been important shifts in our communities towards holding perpetrators accountable and involving everyone in the role of keeping each other safe; both key elements in our movement’s work.
During this same time I have also seen the rise of a health promotion framework for violence prevention. Health promotion strategies push our primary prevention efforts in a new direction. Instead of redirecting attitudes that may already be deeply entrenched away from violence and highlighting problematic behavior we don’t want to see, health promotion builds the vision of what we DO want. Through health promotion, the core of our work becomes creating conditions that allow people to develop and nurture their sexuality. Through developing a deeper sense of understand and respect for their own healthy sexuality, I hope that people with develop a deeper respect for the diversity of expressions of others’, a respect that does not leave room for the perpetration of any form of sexual violence, abuse or harassment.
In Vermont we are about to roll out a statewide educational campaign around consent that uses a health promotion framework. There will be train the trainer programs where teams of adults, youth and youth serving organizations come together to learn and plan for how to bring the information back to their communities. One key aspect of this campaign is the involvement of youth in both the planning and educational efforts. Another is developing tools and activities that work across the social ecological model.
It was here that we found a new blend of heath promotion with bystander strategies. Within the Consent Campaign we offer tools and resources that encourage youth to become not just active bystanders who are ready to intervene, but youth who have an expectation that it is their responsibility to talk to their peers and share the information they gain around consent. Many research articles tell us that youth are most influenced by their social peers and we have learned that the messenger counts for so much in youth relationships. We are using that basic concept and empowering the kids to take the conversation out of the classroom and to their friends. We should be talking about these things with each other.
We are encouraging the expansion of the bystander role: not just there to intervene, but also to educate and engage. This model of collaboration with youth keeps our prevention information alive, passing it from one to the next. Hopefully, as we increase the level of conversation happening around healthy sexuality we will help break down the veil of secrecy that keeps so many victims from seeking and receiving support as well. By combining the bystander and health promotion approaches we build community capacity, expand our reach, and empower youth to become involved in our movement towards real social change.
Bethany Pombar is the Prevention Specialist at the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, where she has worked for 7 years. She has a B.S. in Prevention and Community Development and lives with her family in the smallest state capital in the nation where there are no fast food chains and only two traffic lights.
Interview with Alan Berkowitz
Dear Engaged Bystander: I had a wonderful opportunity to talk with Alan Berkowitz to learn more about what he is focusing his work towards these days. If you don't know of Alan, he is an internationally recognized expert on bystander behavior, violence prevention and social justice issues; author of Response Ability: A Complete Guide to Bystander Intervention; and always an inspiration to talk with.
Below is a part of the great conversation we had last week:
Joan: Why do you think there is this growing attention to bystander approaches to prevention?
Alan: It is a very exciting moment in the prevention field because we are beginning to frame the solution as a community responsibility. In the past we tended to look only at the impact of sexual violence on the victim or to invest in the punishment of the perpetrator. Now people are seeing that sexual violence takes place in a community and that community either inhibits or unintentionally encourages that violence. 
Joan: I love the deep values that you bring to this work, can you talk about that a little?
Alan: I believe that most people have a good heart and want to do the right thing. But as professionals, we often approach a community with ideas about how to “fix them”. We tell them there are things they don’t notice or don’t seem to understand. I am taking a radical step here, and saying that we need to approach people with compassion for where they are and begin there. The good news is that most people want to do the right thing and be part of the solution. We can even approach the perpetrator with the ideal of compassion, while holding him (or her) accountable for their behavior. If we believe that most people want to do the right thing, it gives us a way to engage them as bystanders and help them act on their concern.
To change this around, we need to start with the positive, what people do notice. I am convinced that there are a lot of people in every community that are waiting and willing to do the right thing, who are uncomfortable with mistreatment. I am convinced that WE need to figure out how to invite them into the discussion.
Joan: Why do so few people think they can intervene?
Alan: As a society, we have set up artificial barriers for anyone to get involved. Then when someone climbs over those barriers, we call them heroes and we say how very special they are and essentially, we are saying that we can’t possibly be like them. But we can teach people to get involved and lower the barriers.
Take Rosa Parks. One day she decided not to give up her seat and she sparked a huge social movement. What most people don’t know is that she went to the Highlander Center for years for training. One day she got fed up and decided to do something. On the one hand she was undoubtedly a marvelous human being and yet at the same time it was also what she learned through those years of training that allowed her to be an agent of change – and these are things that we can all learn.
Joan: What are the barriers that people face?
Alan: One important barrier is MISPERCEPTION. Human beings are social creatures. We pay attention to people and we are influenced by them. For example, in the research about men we have found that the biggest influence on men is other men. Research has also demonstrated that, the biggest influence on whether a man will intervene is whether THEY THINK THAT OTHER MEN will intervene. And in general we think that others are not bothered, or don’t want to do anything, when they do.. That is a huge misperception that inhibits us from acting on our instincts to do the right thing.
That is a cognitive barrier that we can correct. We can make it known in a variety of ways that we do care and that we would get involved and that we would support others who want to act.
Another important barrier is a SKILLS BARRIER. In general, we don’t know what to do and if we have some sense of that, we don’t know how to do it. We can teach the skills to intervene and we need to make sure that the interventions are both comfortable and doable. That is what my book, Response Ability is all about – choices on how to intervene.
The key message is that doing something is better than doing nothing.
Joan: Can you give me an example of addressing this skills barrier?
For example, someone makes a joke that objectifies someone. Our job is to give everyone something that they can do. It is fine to deflect the situation, rather than confront. Even an abrupt change in conversation shows that what was said was not acceptable. Activists, who have been involved in the movement, will sometimes say that deflection is a cop out. But I believe that we need to give everyone something to do. There really is a RANGE of SKILLS that can be taught, from direct and confrontational to indirect to what I call a place of “generosity” – taking the time to engage in a conversation to find out why they said something so objectifying.
Joan: What do you think is your contribution to bystander intervention?
Alan: There are a lot of people doing great work in this field. Each is offering something valuable. I feel that my unique contribution to the bystander discussion is the essential belief that we are all part of something bigger. I began this work from a social norms perspective. There is now empirical research which shows that people can change their actions by correcting a misperception of their peer group, and that intervening is a skill that can be taught. Our desire to act shows that there are values or a connection to something bigger that we share –even though we may not realize that it is shared.
Our desire to act shows that there are values or a connection to something bigger that we share – our job in the bystander movement, is to tie our work to this common desire to act. When we are successful, we will begin to see the kind of changes we so passionately want in our communities.
For more information about Alan’s work, you can visit his website.
