Love Lives - Soma Sara on how sex education perpetuates rape culture and harmful myths about sex

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

*Trigger warning: This episode contains themes of rape, sexual assault and sexual violence which some viewers may find upsetting*This week on Millennial Love we chat with Soma Sara, author and founder of Everyone’s Invited, an anti-rape movement that focuses on exposing rape culture by allowing survivors to share their own experiences of misogyny, harassment and sexual assault.We discuss how experiences of sexual harassment at school can shape our attitudes towards sex and how widespread slut shaming, victim blaming and policing of girls’ uniforms internalises harmful myths about sex and sexuality.Soma’s book, Everyone’s Invited, is out now.If you or someone you know has been affected by child sexual abuse, call Childline on their helpline at 0800 1111The Victim Support helpline provides emotional and practical help to victims or witnesses of any crime, whether or not it has been reported to the police. Phone: [phone] (24/7)Check out Millennial Love on all major podcast platforms and Independent TV, and keep up to date @Millennial_Love on Instagram and TikTok.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. This episode does feature discussions of sexual assault and sexual violence, so do please bear that in mind before you listen. Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week you will notice we are again not in the studio. I am very sorry about that. We are still moving offices but we will be back in the studio very soon and for now we have the lovely view of our remote working setup. So this week, I am very excited to be joined by author and activist Soma Sara. So for those who don't know, Soma founded the Everyone's Invited platform back in 2020. And it was a movement that invited sexual assault survivors to share their stories,

specifically focusing on the ones that happened when they were at school. They also were encouraged to name the schools where these incidents happened. And it started a national movement and conversation where thousands of people were sharing their experiences. Now, Summer has written her first book, also called Everyone's Invited. And I'm looking forward to discussing all of these things with her about how the book came to be and where we are at now when it comes to conversations around violence against women and girls. Hello, Summer. How are you?

I'm good. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I remember when Everyone's Invited started and I wrote a piece about it and it just really, it really struck me because I thought, why has no one encouraged people to talk about this before? Because specifically the experiences that you have at school of sexual violence, they really shape your understanding of sex as an adult and of your own identity as an adult. So it's really important. And so I'm so pleased you started it.

But for those who aren't familiar with it, you know, I gave a brief introduction. But can you explain what Everyone's Invited is and what led you to start it and and how you went about starting it? Yes so Everyone's Invited is now a charity and it is a safe space which allows people to share their stories of rape culture and sexual violence completely anonymously and it began quite spontaneously in my final years of uni, in my final year of uni. And I basically was just having lots of conversations with friends at that time. And we began to realise just how many of us had actually experienced sexual violence and harassment and abuse. harassment and abuse and we felt that these weren't really one-off rare occurrences that they were very much entrenched into our lived experience especially whilst we were younger through our teenage years and also during university as well and it just became clear

that it was totally normalized and accepted and I think that while we were young we weren't really sharing the experiences and we didn't really seek support or talk openly about it because there was so much stigma and shame and I guess we didn't also we didn't have the language or the confidence to really articulate and communicate what was happening to us and there was a sense of like you just have to get on with it and this is what it is to be a teenage girl um so I decided to share um some of my experiences um on my Instagram and um and the experiences of my peers and I was just talking about a culture of misogyny and abuse where boys were rewarded for having sex. There was a lot of sexual bullying and misogyny while girls were slut shamed and abused. I was completely overwhelmed and inundated

with messages from my peers, my community and girls reaching out to say how much they resonated with everything that I was saying and how what I went through and the way that I was speaking about the culture really reflected their own experiences and how they felt about it too and they started sharing their stories with me and then I and then with their permission I shared them and it became like this avalanche of sharing and it was a really kind of overwhelming and emotionally difficult time because a lot of the people sharing were people I knew and people I grew up with but at the same time it was so moving and so empowering to form those connections and those bonds and just to know that I wasn't alone in what I went through it was like so I guess groundbreaking and transformative for myself and from from there, I just felt, you know, I just have to do something.

This feels like such a huge issue. And I do not think it's limited to my community. And it just felt so widespread, so universal. So I decided to create Everyone's Invited, which was just, you know, bringing that very simple idea to the fore of that anonymous safe space for people to share those stories and it was a website and an Instagram and it was just I was building it over the next few months and then it was not till March sorry March 2021 when it just exploded in the media and in the press and people were sharing experiences within their schools and universities and it went really viral on Instagram and on TikTok and the media international media and national media were picking it up and it just became this really extraordinary national conversation where people

were discussing rape culture and sexual violence and porn and image-based abuse and digital sexual violence. It was such a privilege, and it is still a privilege, to be able to amplify those stories and allow survivors that sense of catharsis and relief. And they often, you know, say that when they share, they get an opportunity to heal to be validated and what they've been through and um i think most importantly to know that they're not alone yeah i think that's the most powerful thing with all of this isn't it because fundamentally what we need in order to stop this stuff from happening is a huge systemic societal change and and we need lawmakers to impose better restrictions and to reform the criminal justice system so that it lends itself better to

to survivors of sexual violence because it's all you know the thing is the higher up you get in the system of reporting things like this you realize the system is very much against you from the thing is the higher up you get in the system of reporting things like this you realize the system is very much against you from the get-go you know you quote some stats in your book about how uh how low the conviction rate is for sexual violence and how few survivors actually report their experiences because of the shame that you talked about so it's this huge issue but i think it can feel like you know know, what can we do? And I think one of the very small things we can do to help people is let them know that they're not alone. And that is a very powerful thing, like you said.

I guess on that note, when you started receiving the testimonies from people, were there some experiences that came up that were pretty common that, you know, happened among a lot of people, along with a lot of students at school? And would you be willing to share what some of those common incidents were? Because I think when we talk about sexual violence, it's really helpful to give specific examples of things that happened because I think it can I think since Me Too we get to a place where it's very easy to dissociate from the stories that we're talking about because people hear terms like sexual violence and violence against women and Me Too and possibly even Everyone's Invited and they detach themselves from it and they don't realize that it might happen to them so that's why I think specific examples can be really helpful so

could you share any kind of common experiences that you were receiving and things that you know came up time and time again yeah so I think that's why um we are testimony led is trying to bring that human experience to the fore so people do connect and do emotionally engage with it and relate to it um and in that way understand it and empathize with it the test and testimonies are really kind of extraordinary in that they are this it's a collection of a huge array and diverse um collection of stories and experiences and there are the patterns that you see coming again and again and um for example one um common experience in reading the testimonies is actually people reading things and realizing oh my goodness this could have been my this could have been i didn't write anything but that's that happened

to me that that could have been my story in terms of like showing how common these experiences really are so what we saw is um a lot of kind of sexual um harassment in schools school environments so things like being groped and grabbed in corridors being being pushed up against lockers, being kind of stripped in school or having their like bras detached, kind of upskirting, taking pictures underneath girls' skirts and being assaulted in the bathroom. A lot of like a huge problem was the institutional response in the school and staff members not taking these issues seriously enough or not um properly uh punishing perpetrators or taking people yeah victims seriously when they came forward um there was a lot of image-based abuse and digital sexual violence that came up

increasingly um which really seems now to what it, you know, from the stats that we have, pretty much a ubiquitous experience, universal experience for young people. And nine out of 10 girls receive unsolicited dick pics. So there was a lot of kind of sharing of nudes, like nudes being shared like wildfire without any consent. Nudes being shared on Google drives, on WhatsApp groups and being accessed by hundreds of people, underage children and intimate images of them. Just like a lot of pressure to have sex when you're really young and to participate in sexual acts. And there seemed to be such an emphasis on male pleasure and male entitlement to sex rather than female pleasure in those experiences, too. entitlement to sex rather than female pleasure and those experiences too. And then again,

this blaming and shaming culture, when things would happen, when someone would be assaulted and they spoke out, there was this sense of they were blamed by their peers, their friends, their communities, their teachers, their parents, and they were incredibly isolated. So not only do they have to go through the trauma of an experience of sexual violence or abuse, they are then ostracized and humiliated and shamed by their community. So it's often that survivors are actually re-traumatized in the aftermath. And it's known as a second assault because often that, you know, the experiences that they have afterwards, the victim blaming, the doubting, the invalidation can feel as traumatic as the initial assault itself. So it's just a huge array of different experiences and it's hard to kind of summarise it in one in kind of one go. in terms of how rich that data set is in showing the diversity and array of so many different experiences that people go through. And this is happening in so many different environments, whether it's schools, you know, house parties on the street, being cackled, followed, groped

by strangers and intimidated and stalked intimate partner violence within relationships there's just kind of there's so much so I could go on and on but yeah it they they were in many cases just quite really it's it's's really hard and harrowing and devastating to read and also to confront the scale, the scale of sexual violence and abuse and how many young people and how many people in general are touched by it and have to live with that and carry that trauma with them. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's horrific how widespread it is and also what i think is horrific is like you mentioned the way that teachers would deal with it um a lot of the time because i think what we need to remember is that this rape culture is so um insidious that it's not

just the students who are operating within it. Sometimes it is the teachers and the people that are supposed to be protecting us. And sometimes they actually don't know any better. Another huge thing that kept coming up was the policing of school uniforms and how girls were dressing in school. And this emphasis, like measuring their skirts with rulers making them stand on tables for me just like really disturbing sounding um kind of attitudes being represented things like teachers saying oh you know you'd you need to change what you're wearing so you don't entice the male teachers and you know even just just to think of that, that in itself is incredibly disturbing thing to consider. Again, it is putting, you know, how a young girl, how she's appearing, her appearance ahead of her freedom and right to education.

So sending a child back, sending a girl home from school to change. It's like, you know, you have to be mindful. What from school to change it's like you know you have to be mindful what are you what are you really doing this for you know um where are the priorities obviously you know i understand the importance of dressing appropriately for school but when you know that you know what someone is wearing is coming before someone's right to an education I think there is a serious problem there um and yeah it was it was really quite sad and and devastating and um to see I guess sometimes the failures that were happening in schools in terms of kind of staff members and teachers taking things seriously and mediating these situations. But at the same time, I think, you know, I have a lot of empathy for schools and staff members and

teachers who are in a really difficult position in that it is really hard to kind of monitor and police this behaviour, especially because a lot of it is happening outside of school and also a lot of it is happening online and on people's phones and how do you have control you know you don't and it is really difficult and challenging for them as well because they're learning so much too the older generation which has come come of age in a very different landscape the younger generation you know has had porn which is completely accessible and available and everyone's seen it. And then social media is a very different world. So I think, yeah, for an older generation, for catch up and understand how these platforms really work. And then they have the responsibility of trying to support their own children and young people who are navigating those spaces. So I think it is so vital that we are empowering that generation with the knowledge and the understanding and the tools to really support their children going through that. And a lot of it is about reframing the mindset. So for example, thinking about, you know,

it isn't enough to just say, stop sending nudes to kind of, that doesn't solve the issue. That would be like saying, don't have sex because that generation, for that generation, digital sex is real sex, because they've come of age online, where they've developed their relationships, their personalities, where they're consuming news, the online and the offline, they are inextricably linked. That's just, you know, it's a very different way of growing up. So I guess it's really about reframing the way we approach and coming at

it with an attitude of empathy and understanding rather than judgment and shame and hostility because that's what's happened to my you know why my generation suffered so much and my peers is because we were experiencing all of these things but we weren't able to get any support or talk openly about it because we were just shamed by the adults who didn't understand how complex those and nuanced those dynamics were online and how um yeah it it was like that's not as simple as sending a nude and you know that that's what happens it's like you know often there's a lot of coercion at play maybe someone's being manipulated um there's a lot of pressure it's normalized everyone does it um it is a legitimate form of intimate behavior um but it

can easily um be kind of used as a tool of coercion and abuse and things can go wrong really easily so it's very complex and I guess that was my intention with the book is really helping bridge those those gaps and trying to get them to understand how young people are navigating, what young people are navigating, and then allowing them to support their children. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because you are a couple years younger than me. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that you're talking about with social media, I guess porn as well. But when I was growing up, I mean, this stuff at my school, But when I was growing up, I mean, this stuff at my school, I find it really hard to talk about, to be honest, because it makes me so angry. Some of the stuff that happened to me and my friends and people I know, it makes me sick that so much of that happened. And that's just the stuff that I know about. And I'm sure there is so much other stuff that happened.

know about and I'm sure there is so much other stuff that happened but we weren't growing up with social media we were uh because Instagram launched in what 2010 that's when I was 16 um and we weren't really on it in any way I mean we had Facebook but it wasn't really it wasn't really that kind of dark space that social media uh had the capacity to become back then I think maybe um I think maybe porn and other influences would have would have played a factor but it was the rape culture at my school was just so widespread it defined my school experience and that of many of my friends and when I look back on some of the things that happened you know we were we would arrive at school 13 14 and we would be the year nine the bottom year the older boys the sixth form boys would walk around whispering fresh meat in our ears and that was something that they

did to all of the younger girls and then there was a whole though and I've written about this well after you started everyone's invited I kind of reflected on a whole though and I've written about this well after you started everyone's invited I kind of reflected on my school experience and I wrote about some of the things that happened and I remembered some of the things that I had internalized back then that now just seemed so wild to me you know people would we had a horrible dining hall at school where it was like a runway and it was a big central alleyway with two sides of tables either side and when certain girls would walk down the gangway with their trays the boys would sit at the back of the dining room they would shout they would rate them out of 10 sometimes there was a phrase there

was a phase of pulling people's trousers down and when you're holding a tray of food someone pulls your pants down you're just there in your underwear and that would happen a lot and it was so normalized and like you said image-based violence as well the sharing of nudes because it was a boarding school so the boys would receive a nude of someone and it would go all around the boys boarding house and suddenly everyone in that house would have seen that really intimate photograph um and then at parties there was a lot of sexual abuse and women were just treated as these objects and and it wasn't just women by the way either it was boys as well um so it's just it makes me really angry as you can tell um And I do find it incredibly hard to talk about.

And it makes me really angry that it's still happening for people your age. And I suspect it's still happening now. Although I hope to a slightly lesser degree because of the conversations that we are having and the movements that people like you are starting. I guess I want to ask how it felt for you to receive so many testimonies from people, because now I think everyone's invited has had, what is it, like over 60,000 testimonies. And I saw on the website, you guys aren't posting them regularly anymore, because there are just too many, which I completely understand. But how does it feel? How many it sorry 50 000 it's great it's crazy it's so many um so how do you feel when you get these stories and how do you look after yourself do you get angry do you get re-traumatized how what kind of steps are you taking because when i have whenever

i've written about this stuff and i get messages from people telling me that this has happened to them, they've never told anyone, they've never spoken to anyone about it, I find it really hard to handle that because it just really, really upsets me that there are so many people out there who, A, this has happened to, but B feel like they can't talk to anyone about it apart from a random journalist whose article they read on the internet, you know?

So it, it, it really upsets me. And I find it, I find it very difficult to deal with. So how on earth have you managed to look after yourself during this time? Yeah, I think it has been incredibly difficult and I basically, it's been a journey of of of healing and prioritizing my mental health. I definitely I mean, I I could never have imagined or expected to receive the for everyone's invited to blow up in the way that it did and for it to receive such an incredible, enormous response from survivors. And, you know, there is nothing that can prepare you for something like that. And, you know, I'm, I'm incredibly lucky. I have this amazing team of

volunteers who are the most passionate and caring and empathetic, engaged people who, we really went through it together. And we had that community and solidarity within us. And, you know, we really supported each other, which I think really was integral at that time. And yeah, it was just really, you know, as you talk about anger and, you know, there is this sense of hopelessness and you get you feel so I guess broken and it's devastating um but at the same time it was also so empowering and incredible to see so many people finally having the confidence and the strength to share and just holding on to that, I think was really important.

I was definitely, while I was writing the book, I was very unwell. I was really struggling. I think in the aftermath, everything had exploded and things had calmed down. And I think that was a time where I was really kind of processing everything. And I think on so many levels, it was really challenging. I guess not only, you know, it's coming from, it began as, you know, my trauma and my friend's traumas and people I knew growing into something, which was about holding a space for tens of thousands of people's traumas. So kind of processing that. And then not only that that you have like the response and the backlash and the anger and the hate and so and then also feeling like your identity and your face is kind of being in a

sense objectified and known for something that is so like traumatic and triggering for so many so there are so many levels as to why like it was really challenging on like a personal psychological level um I basically just had to do a lot of therapy and like a lot of healing and a lot of prioritizing my my things that would make me feel better taking time out and looking after myself um but I was really kind of unwell for probably, you know, for a long time, maybe around six months, I was really in like survival, fight and flight, kind of panic attacks, couldn't sleep, incredibly, incredibly paranoid. And there was a period of time where I couldn't go outside without or like go to an event or a social something where people wouldn't come up to me and share their like most traumatic experience of rape.

And like while it's so incredible that they feel like able to do that, it was also just too much. I think like it was just really a lot for like, I guess, a human being to kind of handle and cope with. So something that we talk about a lot with our team, with my team is vicarious trauma and how, you know, it's a term that affects many. Anyone who works with survivors or anything of a trauma of a triggering and traumatic content. So doctors, psychotherapists, people, you you know journalists who work on the front lines in war zones or even if you're close friends with a survivor and you're supporting them. Vicarious trauma is like a really common experience where you basically get traumatized through their kind of sharing of trauma themselves and it was a really difficult

thing that we had to cope with and I guess it was really about prioritizing and knowing it is impossible to continue with this work. And especially activism in general is exhausting without prioritizing your healing and making sure that you're okay. You just, it's impossible, you just won't survive. So you have to look after yourself. And I think it's just taken time and learning and healing to get to a place where I finally feel comfortable in this role and I'm actually really enjoying the work again and feeling rewarded and engaged and hopeful but it definitely is it really is a learning curve and a process it definitely helps that I have like a really strong team and support system and family

and network um and lovely amazing friends and people in my life who kind of hold me up um but yeah I mean it's really been quite quite a quite an experience even knowing now what I would have to go through I wouldn't change it. However, there were definitely moments where I felt, you know, why did I do this? I regret doing any of this. I think this is ruining my life. But now, after I've been through that really challenging, difficult time, and I've come out the other end, and I've found like peace and light and love and hope again in my life. I know that I would not change that experience because it's just been such a gift to be able to do this work and to, I don't know, witness change actually happening. And knowing that the work that you've done with your team and your community is actually having a positive impact and transforming people's lives. I think there's no feeling like that. This Giving Tuesday, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is on a

mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And we've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. Together, we can create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at CAMH.ca from November 25th to December 3rd, and your gift will be doubled for twice the impact. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands

of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. I think, you know, the stuff you were talking about there, it highlights how it's really important to set boundaries with this kind of stuff. And I wanted to ask you because I've noticed that among everything that you've been doing, you haven't spoken about in any depth your own experiences with this stuff and with rape culture and with sexual violence. And I think that's really important that people see that just because

you are working in this space, you don't owe anyone your own story. And so I want to talk to you about why you decided to do that and how you have been imposing your own boundaries, I guess, yeah to protect yourself and to and to make sure that you know ultimately your health and well-being has to be your main priority among all of this so talk to me a bit about that decision to keep that to yourself

at least for now yeah I think it was a really important decision and I'm really glad. I mean, I'm so grateful that I did that and I was advised to do that as well. I think that it is so crucial to set boundaries, especially when you are engaged in really triggering and heavy and emotionally exhausting work. and emotionally exhausting work. I guess the whole point was at the time I didn't want to make it about like myself or my experience and the whole point was showing that you know nothing that happened to me was rare or unique or out of the ordinary. The whole point is what happened to me was normal. It was like what everyone else experienced too. And it doesn't matter. You know, I didn't, I just felt like I didn't want it to be sensationalized and kind of made this huge deal when actually the whole, the issue is that it happens to everyone this is a universal societal problem sexual violence is happening on a societal level it is like everywhere and um I didn't want to make it seem like it's rare or one-off I want to talk to you about the backlash a little bit that you referenced earlier and you write about in the book as well how um you you were doing a talk, I think, and a mother came up to you afterwards

and was quite angry and said that you sort of made her son and other men that aid young boys feel like they don't know what to do and they don't know how to behave and they feel really scared and they feel like everyone's walking around calling them rapists um how do you deal with criticisms like that and why is that woman so uh so wrong in her in her judgment and that's so not what is

happening here um or what should be happening here and i think it feeds into this sort of misinformation culture when we talk about violence against women um which is you know if you go into one sort of men's rights website or a reddit thread there are plenty of people spreading myths um about rape uh you know saying that men are falsely accused of rape all the time and painting survivors as vindictive, vengeance-seeking people, which is just not what happens. The rate of people falsely accusing people of sexual assault

is so, so low. So how do you respond to that and and how how do we um I suppose educate people like that um on what's really happening yeah I think when initially receiving backlash like that was really challenging and it was really hard for me and my team and um I don't know I think it's a human I guess a human response when someone attacks you you feel like you know vulnerable and attacked and maybe a bit hostile as well and I think it really was a journey to kind of get to a place um you understand that basically having empathy for those people and trying to understand their predicament in that you know it's coming from a place of fear

it's coming from a place of yeah fear of of of something like rape which which, you know, in itself, the word, the phrase, sorry, the word and the connotations are violent and brutal and ugly. And they don't want anything to do with it. They don't want any association, any responsibility because it is so brutal. They don't want to confront something so ugly in its face. And I think that is where, where you know the instinct is to just push it away from you box it up into a stereotype of an evil stranger who lurks in a dark alleyway you know really like brush it under the carpet make it as far away from you as possible so that you remain in this kind of bubble of safety where you're good and they're bad you know and I think that's almost like a survival instinct so it's so human and yeah a lot of these mothers it genuinely comes from a place of fear

they're looking for someone to blame something to blame they don't know what to do but if you want to make change and progress and move forward we need to be having those conversations with people who don't agree with us otherwise you, you're just shouting to, you know, people who already it's, you know, nothing is moving forward. You need to be, you know, finding the common ground, you know, coming at, you know, going to that conversation with respect, with empathy, trying to relate to them, finding, you know, that shared experience, it is so important in order for, to get those people to try and understand, you know, the reality and the perspective of survivors and what they've been through. And yeah, ultimately we are living in

incredibly polarised, post-truth, divisive, kind of really um difficult hostile times where people are so angry and dismissive and it seems it seems like the bridges have been broken where you know people met um and there was tolerance and acceptance and you know understanding of other people's experiences it really feels like um you know there is a lack of that and people would rather just retreat into their um i don't know to their view or to the view that they've been radicalized to believe um rather than considering other perspectives that may differ or jar with their own perspective or own life experience. So, for example, a lot of the backlash came from that older generation of parents who did not grow up in an age where porn was completely ubiquitous

and everyone was on their phones talking on Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp. Very different world. So obviously it is challenging of them for them to to try and understand you know we saw the same with me too when an older generation of women you know kind of issue there was a huge letter that loads of women signed um actresses um a lot of french women um in particular uh saying you know this you know we this is not true. Women are not victims. And this is just part of the culture. And it's, you know, it's flattering if you get catcalled. And it's a very...

But I think that, again, could that also be a survival instinct to actually confront that you may have been a victim? You know, is... Totally totally because no one wants to yeah because no one wants to think of themselves as a victim and which is why you know the terminology is so important you know traditionally we say survivor rather than victim because no one wants to be defined by these incredibly violating experiences which which i understand but i think i guess my concern is how do we actually make a change here because the kind of people who are familiar with your work who are familiar with my work who are familiar with all of the people working in this space there they are informed people they are already pretty well informed people. They aren't the people we need to be talking to here in order to actually create a change. And I think when we think about, you know,

what can women do to protect themselves, you know, cover your drink when you go out, tell a friend when you're leaving home, you know, track your Uber on this particular thing, take a photo of the driver's license. There's all these tips on what women can do to stop themselves from getting raped. But ultimately, the onus should not be on women to stop themselves from getting raped. So how do we change that and talk to potential perpetrators and educate them? And how do you think we reach those people? Because I worry that we're not doing that. And if we are not on the level we need to be in order to actually invoke a meaningful change.

We need to be reaching out to those people and making sure that boys and men feel that they have a place and a voice in this dialogue, in this conversation, because ultimately nothing will change unless they become educated and aware and commit to wanting to change something. you know, it is so, you know, essential that they feel part of this, part of this movement. And I guess it's about encouraging young men to become those positive role models. And, you know, they are very, they will be the influential ones amongst their peers, and actually encouraging them to, you know, value things like empathy and compassion and supporting others and looking out for those who are, you know, are being abused and harassed and actually being those positive role models and change makers and doing that on literally just like a minor microcosmic level within their own communities. I mean, it is so important, just even just keep having these conversations, keep talking about these issues, even on this podcast or, you know,

at home with your parents. It is so important that people continue this discussion and, continue this discussion and, yeah, continue the awareness raising. Reading the testimonies is one thing that a lot of boys have told me has really impacted their kind of view and perspective on these issues, because it really does give that um deeply intimate insightful um kind of perspective into what a young girl actually goes through or has been through and it brings it to such a human level and for them I think it's much more relatable um yeah and for example we've just launched an education program and we're delivering it in schools and our facilitator is young and she's um you know just been recently been through all of this stuff herself she's my age but you know she she's young enough in that she grew up in the digital sexual landscape and grew up with pornography and like she gets it and that's really important as well because a lot

of the sex education is delivered by people who are a lot older who like don't understand um so yeah just like keep talking keep discussing being um active bystanders actually standing up for people who you see um you know who might be victims or um being harassed or if you see, you know, who might be victims or being harassed, or if you see your friend who's doing something problematic and abusive, questioning the behavior, but doing it in a way that's empathetic and, you know, calm and not angry and hostile, because you never get anywhere with that, you just get, you just push people further into isolation and valid kind of validate what they're doing further so yeah just having those discussions so crucial and important um I did a talk yesterday about um uh about my book as well and a boy at the end

asked me a question about um how he can influence his friends and impact change in his friendship group and I think it's just really encouraging to see boys I think I've really seen this particularly in boys my age really like trying to make a difference and make a change and I have too I have too and I think it's really encouraging you know there are I think not enough men are asking the women in their lives what can i do as an individual to to help combat this problem and i think actually one of the best things they can do is a ask that question to the women in their lives b listen to the answer and c talk to the men in their lives about these issues and try and spread the word and start those conversations in their male friendship groups um i could talk to you about this for hours um but i can't because we

don't have that amount of time so um it's time for our lessons in love segment of the show where i ask every guest to share something they have learned uh that has shaped their view on relationships um so i guess for you, Summer, if you could share something that you've learned from this experience since you launched the platform that has influenced your own approach to relationships, if it has, and just relationships with the opposite sex, you know, on a romantic level or on a platonic level

and just how personally you one thing that you will be taking into your own life from all of this so I think the idea that we're all capable of we're very nuanced and complex and defined by our traumas as well as our positive experiences and we're all capable of being of causing harm and of doing wonderful things and loving things and of also being a complicit bystander and we as individuals have moved through those roles of perpetrator, victim and bystander and that you know no one can be reduced to a one-dimensional existence and I think yeah that's really yeah and also kind of how I see and view and kind of treat you know others boys and men who you know maybe have have I know have harmed others and who have been perpetrators I think it's so important that you know everyone is given an opportunity to grow and evolve and become accountable and change their behavior and not reducing anyone to

you know a bad fully bad evil person that is only that thing and you know I think human beings are so much more complex and nuanced than that and we're all capable of good things too no one is fully bad fully good fully this fully that we're all kind of a really complex tapestries of all of these kind of moments and experiences and childhood traumas and we need to have empathy for ourselves and for each other if you want to learn more about everyone's invited and read some of the testimonies i would urge you to visit the website follow everyone's invited on instagram and they are sharing loads of helpful bits of information and statistics that are really really useful and you know do share them on your own platforms and share them with your friends, because that is ultimately how we will invoke meaningful change. So sadly,

that is all we have time for today. I want to thank you everyone so much for listening. If you are a new listener to Millennial Love, please do subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever else it is that you like to listen to your podcasts. You can comment and leave us a rating too so that more people can find us if you are more of a visuals kind of person you can also watch millennial love on independent tv just head to the independent website and keep up to date with everything to do with the show on instagram just search for millennial love i will see you soon. Bye. This Giving Tuesday, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality.

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