​Reframing The Discussion: Ten Truths About Sexual Assault and Child Sexual Abuse

1. It’s more pervasive than folks want to believe
2. Most abusers who target teens or even children are not pedophiles in the clinical sense; they’re abusing power.
3. Sexual grooming of teens and children is real - and not just one-on-one. It’s happening through popular media and other cultural messages.
4. How men and women are socialized to date also normalizes power imbalance and violence.
5. Sexual assault is not just bad people doing bad things. It’s also regular people doing bad things they know they won’t be caught or punished for.
6. You know rapists and child sexual abusers. They don’t always act like monsters and are also part of our culture and families.
7. Locking up all rapists is not the answer.
8. We have to start dismantling patriarchy to address this problem.
9. Bystanders (aka the third party) are important - and men have to take a braver role in ending sexual violence.
10. Everything in the culture is in us too.

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