patricia before and i think her message and the information she provides for the community is important enough that we have to keep having her back welcome hi thank you for having me so you know again you know i said jokingly but not jokingly we do need to know about this not everybody knows about this so describe a little bit about what m j cost and specifically what your mission is yeah absolutely well it's of the new jersey coalition against sexual assault works with sort of put it in normal language every county has a nonprofit organization that works with sexual assault survivors and also works to prevent sexual violence from occurring in their communities so every county in new jersey has such an organization so we work with each of those twenty one county based organizations and then we have the added pleasure of having the rocker's university office of violence prevention and victim assistance as part of our membership as well so that's the main part of our coalition that's our membership and so the work that we do at the statewide level is really taking the voices from those local organizations and the perspectives and the experiences what they're experiencing as far as trends in who's coming forward who's not coming forward what are the barriers that they're experiencing we take those experiences and those stories that we're hearing from the local level and we elevate them up to the statewide discourse yeah and you know it's really vital because you have to have this connection somebody who's in the game who repped represents all these other organizations and then who can make a difference legally and i listen to an interview a radio interview of you recently and you talked about so some of the things that you hear when you go to legislators that are so arcane in the way they think about things and we're kind of shocked so your job is also to educate them yes so much of our job is about education on education for policymakers for media for other service providers to understand where there might be intersections between the work that's their priority focus area and ours were really so much of what we do is just providing basic information so that people can make sound responsible decisions based off of facts rather than sort of what's transpired through the social narrative that has all been accurate so let's talk about the social narrative you know i'm always shocked i think where you know i think we're evolving some of the time and but i start seeing the the subtle nuances of you know women being victimized and i think women need to be educated as well because they've bought into the view of themselves and i remember recently saying something in this may seem bizarre as an example but someone on television who was like you know and her boobs exposed and and it's like all of that and they brought in this young group of girls with braces six or seven to grade and this person this personality famous person out the says i will of bad girl power and i thought how is that a reflection of girl power girl power based on my boobs showing my makeup perfect my hair perfect i mean you know there's something about that so i think we've had this a little we've touched on this before and i love an opportunity to have this conversation because i think we can even talk about sort of the generational differences in a feminist perspective yes that's a huge part of like the discourse that's going on right now between like feminist advocates and i think that i come from as do most of the people on our staff of the coalition the feminist philosophy that says women can and should wear whatever they want to wear and they should be honored and respected for their minds and if i feel comfortable  exposing more of my skin or more of my body that doesn't make me less valued or less valuable or less of a role model and that the real issue is where we're focusing our attention we weren't focusing our attention on the beautiful mind that this person has were i don't think our attention on her physical being we don't do the same thing of men i think to a degree we do in a different way and i really want to correct myself i don't think i think women should dress the way they want and you know whatever it is somehow in the media it gets translated as this is the most important thing yet value and that's what i kind of  resent or get suspect of yeah and so i think in the instance of the scribe and i think the real focus is on why is the media focusing on that rather than the message that's being delivered and that's very similar and when you tie it back to the work that we do with the coalition around sexual violence prevention or even working specifically with survivors so often the first things that are said to a survivor or why we wearing that why are you there why are you hanging out with those people so it's often the blame of the individual who is having really egregious crimes committed against them and that narrative is sort of being perpetuated all over the place is more subtle subtle ways so you think you've got you you know you're open minded and then you get slammed with another subtlety and it's why wait a minute how am i thinking yeah i think when you talked about you know we need to educate i think that it i mean open discussion like challenging each other like what does that reflect i mean why shouldn't she be able to dress like that you know  and but i think also we need to educate and i think you do have that this this kind of media awareness like what is the message being portrayed and do you really relate to that and then you know kind of having everybody examine what they're buying into automatically yeah and you know we started this conversation talking about that radio interview that you heard and i think that the other thing that's really interesting when you tie all of this together and you brilliantly talked about there the things that are going on behind the scenes that people aren't even aware of and so there's also we're doing our work at the coalition level or around policy making often what will happen is the public will see the final vote so they'll see and celebrate as they should that their policy makers and their legislators voted affirming increased access for survivors rights that they have made strong public positions around anti sexual violence work or appropriations or policymaking and so much of the work that we do has to do with the behind the scenes education that no one else sees blood like how all how long will it take us to get a bill posted to be heard in committee because we have to deal with and work through all of the social norms that might lead a legislator to say well why would we need to provide this for survivors why are survivors looking for this why are they getting you know why are they being victimized to begin with we're not why are we not pointing the finger at them and so we take a lot of time providing statistics really taking a look at what's going on nationally across the country where other states have passed legislation that support survivors and really benefiting from some of the arguments that they've been able to make to support our cause and our mission and so at the end of the day what the public might see is how often we pass this bill and we do feel victorious every time we're able to increase access to justice but we're also really reminded every time we take a step through that process how much work we still have to do because we're all part of that same social fabric we're cardosa what we're always play whether we're in the media or a teacher or a parent or a policy maker we're all being influenced by the same norms and you know one of the things that i don't know if it was just about toll e on college campuses or just universally that i think it was universally that only two percent are actually prosecuted and only maybe thirty percent are actually reported so there are a lot of criminals walking around out there who can commit the same crime again and not even see it as a crime yes that's exactly right and i think that's what it is and also it's important to note that th i recognizes rape as being the second most violent crime the first most violent crime is murder and next to that is right yes and so we're talking about you know a crime that's committed against an individual and then they live in the crime scene oftentimes survivors don't come forward because they to your point have been groomed to not see the it is that having been a crime committed against them or they know their perpetrator you know we're still having to function inside of that social structure wherever they are in seether per hour eater well and i think that's the thing really we're really conditions that put so much of our education is about walking groups carry your me be wary  stranger but seventy five eighty percent of sexual thoughts are committed against people by someone they know they're not strangers so that makes it more difficult yes absolutely because you're protecting yourself against someone that you've already built up a trust and a reporter with it seems counter to authentic relationship building and i think it probably also if you're in a particular social circle you don't want to impact that and lose all of that and then i think it's easier to doubt yourself if when it's someone you knew and you know i heard you say you know any point along the way you should be allowed to say no yes and just an absence of no doesn't mean you can progress you know that you need to check in and so i think that women don't themselves as well why was it really did i should i could i have so the question is why do we dealt ourselves because we've been conditioned ourselves we've been conditioned to be passive we've been conditioned to be subordinate or quiet or permissive and so i think all of that i don't think that we in neatly or or or we're born feeling as this were doubting those things that we did so wise to doubt it and you know i hate to extrapolate but it's you know i kind of live in the realm of i get to create my reality create my reality create my experiences intentional you know i'm a coach so and i don't try fall into a lot of the negative diatribe about anything because it doesn't serve me to do it but as just you hear snippets of news of where women are stoned to death women are you know there's  put it all together it could easily send me into you know insanity really yeah we've got a lot of work to do and i think what's interesting is it's very easy for us to look at all these different scenarios and say it's someone else's responsibility it's happening in other countries or it's happening in another community but it's happening everywhere and it's part of the same thing it just gets you know created differently and different actions are taken but it's part of that same mentality yeah and to me it's like on fathomable like what would allow somebody to think that that's ok great and i think you and one of your interviews said this is about power right so sexual assault is never about sex it's always about power and control and then we think about how that plays out in gender norms how we groomed boys and men and women and girls all of those things you know saying that your coach is actually a really important piece because that is the level of intentionality in all of your actions but a lot of us don't have the time to be intentional and certainly there is no one train yeah there's no great guy book on how to be the most intentional all adult or a caring parent and most of us are kind of making it up as we go but also as a result of that sometimes we're making some mistakes not intentionally and certainly not with with harmful intentions but they start to be compounded both they start with the messages that we're providing to children in our lives and then they hear those same messages repeated through the media or through the school bus you know discourse and then it all sort of snowballs out of control and you end up in these situations where women are doubting whether or not they created a scenario and were really confident and strong in our statements that say the only person who is responsible for stopping a sexual assault is the person thinking about committing it and when you can deliver that message to a woman and affirm the fact that she isn't responsible for the crimes that can commit that have been committed against her you can start to make some progress i think one of the things i want to talk to you about is when people are married and then they come forward and say my husband raped me thinking is they sure husband yeah so let's talk about i mean you like to get into the juicy topic or you don't make it easy for me at all and i love it was i think that's a really important thing i mean we i'm pretty sure don't hold me to this but i think there are still states in this country that say that marital rape is not an actual thing i would imagine that's the case yes and so again it comes back even if it's not the law i think think women marital rape doesn't exist i would argue that also men think it doesn't exist right that it does actually yeah so i think that that's the mean that's a really great example of you know a marriage is nothing more than like a legal construct it's a piece of paper that pairs two people together and you're sharing assets and whatever else but it doesn't give any one decision making authority over my body and my being and it kind of goes back to what you had mentioned before about the absence of a know does not equal yes and so if we can talk about that way before people are even married if we could talk about that even with children as they're growing up and if  tickling my son and he tells me to stop if i honor that and stop then i'm yes change him that when someone says no i respect it as should you and then that kind of carries forward and so the same kind of thing can happen if you fast forward a number of years now you're in a marital relationship and the one partner says like i don't want to anymore if you've built that foundation of respect in listening to your partner's desires  wishes and they say no then you stop but the instances of it happening in a merrill relationship first has any other relationship i think the parameters are still the same it's still someone thinking that you are what you have which is your body is mine for the taking and i'm just going to take it and yeah and it's so again per vases i think that when people you know and i know in some churches i think it was a catholic church where they have pre k now i don't know if they do that anymore but lessens you know kind of marital premarital counseling and i think it would be so useful besides discussing money is like what are your expectations sexually do you think that every time he wants sex you're supposed to say yes and vice versa and then what if she says no or what if he says no what does it mean and kind of creating those agreements ahead of time because we're unconscious about that i know in my marriage you know nothing violent ever happened or anything like that but internally what i had internalized was you really shouldn't ever say no like somehow you owe your body to that person which is really like well i think what's interesting too in order to even get to that conversation would be us for us a society to shift our comfort level and actually talking about sex at all yes great so i know i keep bringing this back to the most foundational parts of like grooming young people but if we're telling a young person the nose is a nose and an eye and is an eye and an elbow is an elbow but we're giving fake names to other parts of our anatomy because we have a level of discomfort of using the real anatomically appropriate words then we're already placing young people at a disadvantage to say no i don't want you to touch my vagina no i don't want you to engage in an act that involve these two body parts and so i can imagine even though i love the idea of thinking about two people about to be in a committed relationship talking about this and even that no matter what age that is where it's really likely that we're going to find that they're talking to different languages or because they've been taught different words for those parts of their bodies so we have t a comfort level talking about sex we have to of a comfort level talking about respect and physical autonomy caring for each other very hard when the other guy we could be here all day talking about all of these things and all of these intersections all play into what we talk about those of us that do this work we talk about rape culture and our inability to engage in these substantive meaningful conversations even even at a young age not talking about rape and sexual violence but you're talking about respect and boundaries and listening and listening to both with your ears but with your eyes if you see that someone seems physically uncomfortable with what's going on stop but we're not we're not there yet when we're talking about sexual violence so much of what we experience is everyone saying what are you doing about it what are you doing about it what is everybody else doing about it but the real hard truth is we all have something to be doing about it and that requires a level of self tender is a dating app and it's like a social network where you if you're single or i guess not single if you're looking to date and you put a bolter have sex at will it's billed as a dating app and isn't beating up a place where you could go and look for people that you might want to meet and they have profiles and you can you know recent information about them and obviously there's pictures and so there's a it's a really interesting kind of conversation because tinder pops up when people are talking about we you don't know where you're meeting on the internet or you don't know who you're meeting on these apps and that kind of ties back to really what's happening is by the time most people are physically meeting up with someone that they've met on tinder for maybe you facebook with them i mean you feel as if this person is now someone trusted and you might be maybe you shared some intimate things with them and so when you're meeting with them physically oftentimes they're no longer a stranger and so i think that people want to say that that's another like stranger danger high alert but that but it's not for your put yourself in that so yeah asian right but if you met someone at a bar or party or whatever it's a meeting and then you engage in a particular way and then you decide whether you want to connect further that or you're saying it's basically the same it is and what's so interesting about what you just said is that the thing thing that's being told this to victims and survivors is well why would you have met up with someone but that's the same narrative that we're still asking of people who met people at bars or met people at a party or meant someone in class the finger is always being pointed to the person that is victimized and this is the rare crime where that actually happens most crimes are that are committed against people i shared in the radio interview that i was the victim of a crime i was mugged at knife point and at no point when i called the police that someone say prove to me that this crime happened to you or with what did you leave your bag know you sure you didn't just you know use your credit cards to go buy a bunch of things and now you're trying to get out of it but it's really great example and i in my experience was so being taken care of and believe i felt as if the system respected me honored me and would do everything that it could to protect me and to it's a sex crime yes very rarely do victims of crime have to prove that a crime was committed against them before the system acts responsibly and sexual f is one of those rare instances where the where the victim is often on trial where before and way a longer than the perpetrator would be so you know we've all watched those programs that tell a sad like and we're shocked and oh my god the poor girl she's being slandered you know her whole sexual history is you know being laid out there and we have empathy and yet it continues to happen i mean the real answer is i think that people have to be able to do the self reflective work to figure out how do we rebuild a societal fabric that doesn't perpetuate that and that's hard it's not even just just the good you know the whole just say no which was you know flawed and didn't work  it's kind of just keep your hands off me that your hands to yourself right it's like with until i give you permission i mean it's a simple as that who and what's so interesting about that is so often people will say i have a young daughter who's getting ready to go off to college what do i need to do and very rarely do we get asked what do i need to do for my young boy who is going off to college but the real answer would be to flip what you just said would be to say here's what your son needs to know when going off to college and have you taught them to respect people when they say no at the top then physical boundaries have you talked in that seat consent to they know what consent is very often in the homes there aren't any financial boundaries so yeah you know sort of somewhere that got to get educated about this which goes back to there's no one easy answer it's very you know new jersey should be proud we have sexual violence prevention programs in twenty of our twenty one counties right there in grades you know like middle school and high school and we actually to bring the conversation full circle a lot of our focus is on media literacy and how does the media perpetuate gender and ask what he how does it perpetuate doing in the colleges and then you give them not answer but if you turn the question around and say well what do you do in your home or what are you doing in your community it's much harder to answer that question because we've all been again groomed in social as with the thing norms and pervasive feelings around masculinity and femininity and what it means to be in a relationship and all of these things we're all product of it sure and you know one of them that comes to mind and i was just thinking about media literacy i mean my god if we developed any media literacy we wouldn't be buying all that crap that yeah telling us to buy you know and to the drugs of this and the that you know it's kind of we'd be living our lives in india i saw this thing once where the purpose of life is to buy and consume products and so it kind of is that's what they're telling us you know so we're brainwashed and it's really you know i challenge people to kind of think why am i reaching for this what's the motivation is it me who really des it or is it some voice of the back of my head that's told me i should desire this you know and what's the end result you discern the difference anyway most of us can't i was saying at the close of mine recently i said you know we don't have stockholm syndrome i mean we've been co opted to believe that we need all these things and we're on their side now we need all these things so it's you know it's again this is a very specific area but i think people really just need to be challenged to start dismantling their belief system and really examining what is it that i really want to i mean you know it it can be simplified much more simplified than it is now because most people it shows oh it's cool it's this and intentionality and being aware of what we're consuming what we're repeating what we're sharing on so it's like we're consuming and then think about if our sons or daughters or young people in our lives were to share those same messages how would we feel about that and start modeling by could be a really basic place for all of us that start that you know we have to and thank you so much for being here again and of course we'll have you back thank you so much my name is natasha sherman thank you for joining us