Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Chad Sniffen" <>]

Thank you for posting that response, Juliette. I think can see where you
are coming from on that. I also agree that they had a heterosexist bias,
though I thought that they mitigated that with acknowledgements
somewhat. So, I saw the show at a DOJ campus grants training and
technical assistance institute I was at last year, and I also saw them
perform at Arizona State University several years ago with a student
audience (different performers each time). 

At the institute, a lot of people shared Juliette's opinion (that they
are minimizing intentionality and responsibility in sexual assault), and
a lot of people asked them about that in their post-performance debrief
at the DOJ institute. Their response was that they are not a complete
sexual assault education program. The focus of their presentation is to
teach healthy sexual communication strategies, not other types of
education about sexual violence, which is then the job of the host
program. The host program is probably already good at presenting an
audience with a negative, which is warnings and other information about
sexual violence. The goal of the performance is to present the audience
them with a positive... which is how to have a consensual sexual
interaction. That is something I think a lot of our prevention programs
miss.

We have done a good job of warning people about sexual violence  (which
I am very glad about), and now are doing a good job about teaching
people to be warned bystanders (which I am also very glad about), but I
think we also need messages about what people should do. I think it is
the job of a prevention program to do all of those things. Telling
people what they should expect not to happen is only half of a behavior.
Telling people both what should not to happen and what should happen
describes a positive behavior more fully. And, when that positive
behavior does NOT happen, it gives a survivor more tools to recognize
and name what has been done, and hopefully it provides more of a context
from which can some a social acknowledgement that what has been done is
wrong. And, in a bystander context, it helps those around the
perpetrator to identify his or her behavior as wrong as well.

So, that answer did not satisfy everyone at the institute as I recall,
and it may not be satisfying in general, but it is why I don't think
that Sex Signals is a bad thing.