“Me too”: two simple words that ignited a conversation about how common sexual assault and harassment are.
University of Regina Gendered Violence Protection project president Roz Kelsey said the hashtag is a great way to start important conversation because it shifts the conversation away from statistics on how many woman are victimized, and brings it home.
“If you know people that this has happened to and it’s part of you function with those people every day, and you care about them and everything else, it’s part of your reality,” she said.
“Then it becomes this really interesting kind of conversation because it shifts, and you can’t really excuse yourself from it.”
Part of why Kelsey is behind people using “me too” is that way it changes in the conversation.
READ MORE: Why you’re seeing ‘me too’ all over your social media feeds
As for turning these conversations into action to reduce sexual assault and harassment, there isn’t one easy answer.
Kelsey said education is a factor, such as making sure schools have the resources to teach kids about objectification and who is objectified. Additionally she said it would be good to show kids that boys don’t have to grow up to be one thing, and girls grow up to be another.
“As much as we have to educate our young people, we also have to educate the older generation that are in powerful administrative roles,” Kelsey said.
The more difficult step according to Kelsey is a cultural shift. That includes a shift in how these conversations take place, specifically to men.
“Are men allowed to be vulnerable enough to do something as simple as ask for consent? So that’s where I think that we’re missing the mark is that we see this as something that only affects women, and non-conforming folks, but it affects men in how they can function on a daily basis,” Kelsey explained.
“I think men feel a lot of pressure to conform to something called hyper-masculinity, instead of healthy masculinity, which involves being vulnerable, which involves having conversations like this.
Over the past few days there have been several conversations at the Regina YWCA about “me too”. CEO Melissa Coomber-Bendsten said it’s a brave stance to share stories in a public forum like social media, and gives other the power to share their stories as well.
“I think it also shows the incredibly need to have these discussions. If people weren’t interested in having these discussions they wouldn’t have engaged,” Coomber-Bendsten said.
In order to generate positive action from these discussions, Coomber-Bendsten hopes people will reflect on how they’ve addressed assault and harassment.
“We’re all bystanders to it, as well as potentially being victims of it or perpetrators of it,” she said.
“The last time I saw someone being cat-called on the streets what did I do? And what kind of space and support do we give to people who maybe stand up and say this isn’t ok.”
While individual incidents of harassment like cat-calling may seem minor in the grand scheme of thing, Coomber-Bendsten said it all adds up.
“It accumulates and creates a culture where people aren’t comfortable coming forward when they’ve been sexually assaulted or we create a community where we blame victims first before we will critically look at what happened,” she said.
READ MORE: BLOG: #MeToo Should I feel guilty about being silent for too long?
Coming forward is already difficult enough. Statistics Canada estimates there are 600,000 sexually assaults in Canada annually, and it is the least likely violent crime to be reported to police.
In a study released earlier this month, Stats Canada found that 45 per cent of victims don’t report over “not wanting the hassle of dealing with police”.
Elizabeth Popowich, spokesperson for the Regina Police Service, said officers are taught how to handle reports from traumatized victims for cases like sexual assault during police college.
Further training on the matter is conducted throughout their career.
But she said there is room for improvement in trying to strike a difficult balance of compassion and investigation.
“Police officers have to ask a lot of questions, and for someone who, especially someone who is still actively in a state of trauma, that can be interpreted as disbelief,” Popowich explained.
“So we need to do more work to try to help people understand that we do need to ask questions, we need to ask questions to gather evidence, we need to try to clarify every detail of that vitcim’s account.”
Popowich said this is essential, because if a charge is laid it will likely be challenged every step of the way to a possible conviction.
“So we have to work hard to ensure victims, that it’s not that we don’t believe them, but we have to be able to try to gather that evidence,” she said.
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