E75: Fighting Back | Meg Stone on Self-Defense Myths, Intuition, and Evidence-Based Prevention - Advocacy in Action

In this episode of the Aspire, Advocacy in Action, Chessy Prout and Ray Epstein are joined by student co-hosts Amyra Basu and CJ La Mar, for another conversation with Meg Stone. Meg is the executive director of Impact Boston and author of The Cost of Fear, and recently released Don’t Fight Back And 10 Other Myths About Crime, Personal Safety, and Gender-Based Violence. Together they explore empowerment self-defense, survivor-centered advocacy, and the evidence-based strategies that challenge fear-based myths about safety.

Meg explains how years of teaching self-defense and working as a court advocate showed her that many common “safety tips” are based more on stigma and control than on research. The conversation covers myths about intuition, victim-blaming, resistance, and how media narratives often erase survivors’ agency.

They also dive into the dangers of fear-based advice online, and why fact-checking matters in prevention work. Throughout the conversation, Meg reinforces her principal message: that safety should be grounded in evidence, agency, and community, not fear. 

For Meg's books, visit https://megstone.org/books
To learn more about Impact Boston, visit https://impactboston.org/
To join I Have The Right To's fight for a world free of sexual violence, visit https://ihavetherightto.org/take-action/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Aspire, an I Have the Right to podcast, where we amplify voices, share stories, and drive change in the fight against sexual assault. We explore the critical issues surrounding student safety, institutional accountability, and survivor empowerment. In every episode, our goal is to provide insightful conversations with survivors, experts, educators, and advocates, giving you, our listener, valuable information, resources, and actionable steps to create safer environments and cultivate a culture of respect and consent.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the I Have the Right to Aspire podcast. I'm Chessie Prout, and I'm here today with my co-host, Ray Epstein. Aspire was created by the nonprofit I Have the Right to as a space for honest, meaningful conversations about survivor advocacy, prevention, and what it truly takes to create safer communities. This podcast is about learning together, leaning into courage, and uplifting the voices of people who show up every day to drive real, lasting change.

SPEAKER_05 1:05

Before we jump into today's conversation with our guests, we want to take a moment to introduce our I Have the Right Two interns who will be co-hosting our episode today. So we're thrilled to be joined by two student co-hosts. Hi, my name is Myra.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Hello, my name is TJ.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Amazing to be joined by you all today. And today we are so lucky to be joined for a second time by the incredible Meg Stone. She is the executive director of Impact Boston, a leading abuse prevention and empowerment self-defense organization, and a nationally recognized voice in violence prevention. Her work has been featured in outlets like The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Miss Magazine, and she has spent years equipping of individuals and communities with evidence-based tools to stay safer without relying on fear or victim blaming. In her new book, Don't Fight Back, Meg challenges some of the most persistent and harmful myths about violence, ideas many of us have been taught to accept without question. Through research, survivor-centered insight, and practical strategies, she invites us to rethink what safety really means, who we're told to fear, and how we can build a more just and informed approach to prevention. Meg, we're so happy to have you back here for another conversation today.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Thank you so much, Chessie. I'm really happy to be here.

SPEAKER_05 2:28

Meg, to get us started, I'm curious if you could tell us a bit about all of the work that you did with survivors and in the self-defense space that inspired you to address these myths. What kept coming up? In what context? What inspired you to write this book?

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Right. Thank you for that question. I've been teaching feminist or empowerment self-defense for more than 20 years. And a lot has changed in that time. The most notable shift is that when I first started teaching, my first, you know, very beginner class was in 2004. So it's going on 22 years. And when I worked with groups of teenagers, oftentimes they were unaware that the majority of sexual assaults were from people we know. And the evidence was out there, but it wasn't as widely known. It wasn't covered in the media the way it has been over the past 20 years. So when we presented strategies that were relevant to familiar people, it was a real revelation to people. Sometimes an incredibly painful revelation, but one that I felt was so important because they are at the age where they're going to college or they're going to life after high school, they're forming new relationships, they're figuring out their gender identities, their sexual identities, what they want from their lives. And having skills and tools to be able to recognize the subtle beginnings of coercive control, I knew was going to be more helpful to them. Today, I walk into a high school, or our team walks into high schools, and that is common knowledge. Surprisingly, the work that I have the right to, the work that Chessey, the work that so many other survivors have done to educate all of us has really had an impact. But a lot of the questions that I have gotten from both adults and teens from any number of walks of life have not changed enough. Questions like, well, if I fight back, won't it just make the attacker angry and won't I get hurt worse? That has been disproven by the best available evidence, both comprehensive studies of campuses and national crime victimization survey data. And that's not to say that any person targeted for sexual violence has any obligation to do anything, but just this belief in the culture that if you're a woman or if you're a disabled person or if you're physically small, then a person who tries to hurt you is just all powerful and you have no power, just needs to be debunked. Other myths like pretend your boyfriend is around the block, pretend you don't speak English, get thick curtains and don't undress in front of the window. Um, don't wear a ponytail is my favorite slash least favorite because I wear a ponytail every day of my life. And I have probably saved, you know, a hundred hours by not styling my hair over the past decade or two. Um, and I have spent those hundred hours doing prevention work. Um so there's just so many ways in which women primarily or teen girls, but also people of all genders, have been told to make ourselves and our lives smaller. And many of those safety directives have been regarded as common sense. Um, common sense has become my two least favorite words because people say common sense as a way of not providing evidence as a way of not showing their work. So I go to a lot of personal safety seminars, and you know, somebody says, you know, don't take the stairwell, attackers hide out in stairwells. And I ask a very obvious question, which is what is the evidence that supports the advice you just gave me? And the answer is usually dismissal or condescension or, well, something really bad could happen. So I think the ways in which safety has been mythologized, you know, both, you know, does a disservice to everybody who's being targeted by that safety advice. But what it really does is it protects the people who abuse that have the most political and societal power. So if I'm afraid of somebody who is unhoused or intoxicated, if I am afraid of somebody who is having a mental health crisis in public, then I'm helping to perpetuate stigma against that person. And the well-dressed, clean-smelling person who is engaging in coercive control does not set off my alarm bells because they have been miscalibrated. And so that puts a lot of us in situations where we are afraid of people who lack political and social power and people who repeatedly abuse, people who harm their intimate partners, people who sexually coerce their classmates or fellow students or anyone else in a campus setting, don't get flagged and get protected by this baseless safety advice.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Thank you for familiarizing us with the basis of your work and your book. Your book opens by challenging the narrative of dumb women who get attacked. How does that framing show up culturally and what impact does it have on survivors?

SPEAKER_02 8:38

That's a really good question, and I want to answer it properly. So I started my career as a court advocate. And I was helping survivors navigate not just the restraining order process, but all of the other institutions that survivors who are leaving abusive partners have to navigate. So I was in courthouses, I was in police stations, I was in welfare offices, I was in hospital emergency rooms. And in each of those places, the people whose job is to help other people, the people who are often paid by our tax dollars to help other people, were treating survivors like they had done something wrong, like they were dumb, like they didn't know better. And then I would go to social events, um, oftentimes my parents' friends, more than my friends at the time. And everybody would say things like, oh, well, it's all about what you put up with, or I would never put up with abuse, or, you know, it's, you know, really educated women would never let that happen. And it was just this pervasive belief that not only is the person who is supposed to love and trust you abusing you, scaring you, terrorizing you, but everyone else believes that you are dumb or weak. And it was so hard for me as this one advocate navigating all of these systems to watch people just collapse on themselves when they were at their most vulnerable. They asked for help. And instead of help, they got blame or lectures. Um, I sat with a lawyer who was court-appointed, who gave this survivor like a 20-minute parenting lecture about how she was a bad parent if she didn't leave her abuser. And what we know now is that a lot of folks have the choice between abuse and poverty, that folks who leave are often at their most vulnerable. Um, that is when much intimate partner violence escalates. And that kids love their abusive parents sometimes. So that choice is heartbreaking. So that's sort of my origin story. Um, and as I got more into self-defense, and as I got more into empowerment and resistance and skill building, that victim blame followed. Um, I talked to many sexual assault advocates, many domestic violence advocates who had very reasonable concerns about teaching self-defense within a rape crisis center. Because so much of the messaging in so much of the traditional patriarchal safety advice is about smart, you know, like how to be smart. And the way to be smart is not, you know, what any of us were taught in our fancy liberal arts educations about thinking and reasoning and challenging and questioning. The way to be smart is to follow. And if you don't follow, you are dumb. So to me, what causes the most harm is when supposed personal safety experts individualize the problem of violence and equate personal safety with some sort of moral success and being targeted for violence as some sort of moral failing. And what empowerment or feminist or social justice approaches to safety do is exactly the opposite. Violence is a systemic problem that someone else chooses to direct at you. And because we live in a world where most institutions fail us, we need some practical skills to resist and to keep ourselves and our communities safer. So it is very re-traumatizing, it is very victim-blaming. And um I absolutely respect survivor advocates and preventionists who say nobody should have to learn this. Like I agree. Like I wish, I wish I could write musicals instead of doing violence prevention work, but I we don't live in that world.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

You just gave me an incredi, a horrible or incredible idea of doing a violence prevention musical. Oh my gosh. That could be fun. Yeah. For those of us, and Ray and I have so many conversations about how do you do this work while also feeding the other parts of your personality, your personhood that you enjoy that brings you joy. Um, and and so yeah, that sounds like a perfect bridge. But every time we have a conversation, every time I read one of your books, the synapses in my brain just like are on fire. And I think it might be like have to do with my second cup of coffee as well, but it's definitely the conversation as in conjunction with that. And one thing that I just wanted to highlight from the introduction in your book was this section, which I I my own blood boiled when I was reading your description of sitting in that room and hearing a man say all of these tropes and myths that, you know, don't end up keeping women's lives smaller than um letting them feel safer. And you write that the the man said, your gut instinct is telling you to leave, he tells us. Every fiber in your being is telling you to leave. You know this guy is up to no good. But if you don't trust your intuition and you get attacked, whose fault is that? And I thank you so much for immediately yelling out the person who assaulted you. Um, but his goal with that question seemed to be to tell the women to trust your intuition. Um, other but but but the flip side of that question is or that that thought is that otherwise it's your fault. So it's a double, double-sided, you know, in insult to women. Yep, trust yourself, trust your gut, but if you don't, you're this is your fault.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Right. Um I remember that moment so clearly because he stopped for about a half a second and he looked at me and he didn't know what to do with me. Because he was, he was building up to this big climax. And like I do public speaking, so I I know when I'm, you know, looking for a particular answer from the audience and I don't get it, I too am thrown off. Um, but he's like, You you know you shouldn't go down there, you know you shouldn't do this. And then he says, Whose fault is that? Really loud. And I yelled out the person who attacked you. And he looked at me and he was like, Well, yeah, but you need, you know, and then he just went right back as if, you know, that as if I did not exist, as if my statement was not meaningful. And we see this over and over again. Um, the concept of intuition is very complex. Um in many, you know, some of the most popular personal safety books, The Gift of Fear, The Power of Awareness, there's this argument that humans are animals, and animals operate based on instinct. And humans ignore our instinct or our intuition, and therefore it's our fault. If we don't listen to our intuition, we know something is wrong, but we don't pay attention, then we're somehow irresponsible. Now, okay, animals also like pee in public, and humans don't do that. You know, animals don't have racism, ableism, and all of the other systemic inequities that mess up our quote-unquote intuition by introducing implicit biases. There are many other distinctions between humans and other mammals. Um, but the biggest concern that I have with personal safety advice that relies on this vague concept of intuition is first of all, that it becomes a measure for of victim blame, as you said earlier. If you don't trust your intuition and someone attacks you, it's your fault. But more importantly, it completely disregards the political and societal realities that separate many of us from our internal sense of what's real. If you are taught as a young girl or a teenage girl or a young woman that you need to make the peace and appease everybody and not be rude, then it's going to be really hard for you to set a boundary when you feel uncomfortable because you will equate boundary setting with rudeness. And I actually have taught more than one mixed gender high school group in which people we've demonstrated a basic boundary. I don't feel like going to that party. I'm not a hugger. I'm not comfortable with that. And folks have said, well, that was rude. So there are ways in which we are getting messages that self-advocacy is rude. And we are also getting the wrong messages about what to fear. So trusting one's intuition is complex and messy. And, you know, there have been a million white people who have called the police on black people and said, well, I feel felt scared. I felt unsafe. Is that intuition or is that racial bias? So it is very important to honor our internal sense of what's real and what's true. And it's just as important to check it against the external reality and to have an external reality that is fact-based. So if my external reality is somebody is yelling on the other end of the subway platform and not paying attention to me, then I'm probably just fine. If my external reality is I'm on a second date and I said I don't like action movies, and the person hit play and it's an action movie, I don't know what to conclude about this person in the macro, but in the micro, I notice that this person is treating my needs and my wishes like they don't matter.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

I think everything that you've said and everything that you've written is so valuable, especially for our interns here, CJ and Amira. I mean, both of you are at two different stages of your lives right now. Amira, you're in high school, you're at a boarding school in Virginia, a beautiful school that I really enjoyed going to and meeting you all at. And CJ, you are entering the the next step into the real world, which to me, you know, when I graduated college, I was so confused. And there's no more achievable goals. There are no more goals that are laid out in front of me that are set in stone that I have um, that there are consequences if I don't achieve them. But there was also so much more that I could set in stone for myself. All of these goals were goals that I had to set for myself. And nobody else could set them for me, and only I could hold myself accountable to them. But it also opened up a whole new conversation in my within myself, because I can't have this conversation with anybody else about finding my core, who I am, what I believe to be true. You know, growing up, we're given rules. We're given rules by our family, our home systems, our friend systems, our school systems, our community systems, church systems, religious systems. And most of those rules are I don't want to say fake, but you know, like you can't go swimming until uh like 30 minutes after you've eaten. You're not gonna die if you go swimming 30 minutes after you've eaten. It's not like every time you park next to a white van, that van is gonna be a kidnapping vehicle. It's there are so many other rules that and and like you said, Meg, common sense is neither Nor sensical really, because usually it's used in a way to if evince having to provide evidence. And so I would love to hear you talk about how you balanced those things in your writing, the evidence-based research, the anecdotal experiences of survivors. And, you know, I wanted to share quickly just ways that I felt seen in what you just said as well. When I was in the hospital getting my rape kit done, the victim advocate came into the hospital. And, you know, she probably meant well and she was doing her job. She's been doing this for so long, but she came in, looked at me, and said, Oh God, I thought this was going to be a bloody mess. Thank God you're okay. And when that happened, it kind of, yeah, it threw me off because it made, it reinforced the idea that I was telling myself that, no, I'm okay. This is not a big deal. I don't need to be at the hospital. I'm making a big deal out of things. And it was so interesting. You know, we had a text conversation behind the scenes saying, with my counselor and my mom asking, Well, do you want me to ask her to leave? Is it okay? Like, do you want her to go? But it was not something that I felt comfortable saying out loud. Right. There are so many ways that women are also taught to be safe that perpetuate these ideas that men can get away with different things. And and there is some danger in saying things out loud and being confrontational. Well, a woman saying something out loud is confrontational, which it really shouldn't be. And it's a danger, which is so frustrating. Can you can you share with us what Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

First of all, I'm so sorry that that happened to you and unsurprised in a lot of ways, because advocates who work in systems can get very jaded and very over, you know, overwhelmed and under-nurtured. And I'm sure that person had a very long and very bad day. Um, not that I know who that person was. But in a moment of deep vulnerability that you were in in that space where you're in a hospital, you have had your agency taken away in one of the most profound ways that a person can have their agency taken away. And knowing what I know about your context, there is a way in which an elite cloistered boarding school gets dismissed as a quote-unquote safe place. So there may be stereotypes about class or race that are impacting the way that you are being perceived. And, you know, when I started my career, there was this idea that like a quote-unquote real rape was a stranger jumping out of the bushes, and everything else is just women being dumb, basically. So when we teach the skills of speaking up, the skills of challenging conversations, we are doing so to fortify people against all of the defensiveness, hostility, threats, intimidation that we could get when we speak up. And so a lot of the skills that we teach around bystander intervention or community safety are really about sort of having the support and the skills that you need to be able to challenge somebody who has authority. Like if one parishioner goes up against a popular and well-respected clergy member whose power is entrenched, that's going to be incredibly harmful. If a whole parish organizes, or if a whole community organizes and they have the skills to manage their human brain and stress response and be able to speak up, then it can be more powerful. And there's no, there's no reason why you or anyone else should have to be in that position on one of the worst days of your life. You know, that's not okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Your introduction critiques how safety advice can become a form of control, especially when shaped by men's unprocessed trauma. How can men begin to engage in violence prevention without projecting fear or enforcing harmful norms?

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Right. Um there is a section of my introduction that is titled When Men's Trauma Becomes Women's Marching Orders. And I wrote this section because I really wanted to uplift a dynamic that I've seen both in the published books that men with certain credentials write for women. There's a universe of books, you know, uh called with titles like The New Superpower for Women or Women Staying Safe. And the authors are men, most often men who have law enforcement, martial arts, or military experience. And several of these books include introductions in which men share their own experiences of child sexual abuse or family violence or other trauma. And oftentimes men are given even less space. I mean, no one has enough space to heal from trauma, but men, particularly in the kinds of professions where there is great stigma about mental health and being strong and powerful is part of the job description, like law enforcement or the military, do not have the space to heal. And as a result, a lot of very hyper-vigilant and very unnecessary messages get given to women. So one of the authors whose book I consulted as I was doing research for this book has a history of child sexual abuse perpetrated by a Catholic priest. And following that experience of abuse, he was dismissed by the hospital administration and his family. He was in the hospital when the abuse was perpetrated against him. And what he took from that experience was that women are uniquely vulnerable to sexual abuse. And therefore, we need to have common sense and we need to be more aware. And I, judging by the facial expressions, I don't think that's the message that anyone on this podcast would take from that experience. So later in the book, he says, does this mean you have to be on high alert every time you're in a parking lot? Yes. Now, if you live your life that way, you will probably have health conditions related to stress. And if men had more space to heal, if men had more space to acknowledge the prevalence of child sexual abuse, and if men had more space to express emotions other than anger, then that creates its own kind of change. It's not a change that I'm gonna wait around for, but it's one that I really hope that men will engage other men in making.

SPEAKER_05 30:12

I'd really like to continue exploring some of the myths that you've mentioned and in referring to throughout this conversation. And one particularly that stood out to me just through the advanced copy of your book is that attackers are able to spot a victim based on the way that they walk or they present themselves or they hold themselves in the world. And I'm curious if you could elaborate a bit on what the research actually says about how attackers are selecting their targets.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Yes. And I just, you know, as I was putting together this book, I was joking with my editor. I could write like 10 paragraphs that say this is ridiculous, like myth, this is ridiculous, the end. And that would be a really boring book. Um, so I wanted to have some myths that were completely and utterly false, like crime is going up and don't wear a ponytail. And then I wanted to explore some other myths where a modest finding of a small study is taken to an extreme in social media or popular media to the point where it becomes meaningless and potentially harmful. There was a real study that was published in 1981 based on the impressions of 50 something, 52 or 53 incarcerated men. And what the research method was was to show those men video, because it was the 80s, those beta maxes that the kids don't recognize anymore, um, of pedestrians walking down the street in New York City, and the incarcerated men were told to pick out the ones they would attack. Now, the mythology of this study is all of these millions and millions of criminals picked the same people, and there's a way that you should walk so you don't look like a victim. The reality is that the 50-something incarcerated men had some clusters of who they picked, but picked very different people. Um, and some of the clusters of who they picked were not changeable characteristics, like being an older woman or being an older man. Um replications of this study have asked participants for the reasons for choosing certain people that they would attack. And some of them have, you know, changeable characteristics like the person was looking down, the person looked distracted. But some of them have unchangeable or uncontrollable characteristics. The light was low, the person looked fit or athletic, the person looked small. And so I did this really irritating deep dive into both all of the research that has been published on these so-called ways in which victims walk. And what I've found is that there is not a lot of consistency. There are some clusters of nonverbal communication, but more often than not, the characteristics that are being selected are not changeable, like gender or age or environment. So I went to the nonverbal communication research, and likewise it was very similar. There are some subtle, nuanced ways in which we can carry ourselves or communicate that help us appear more confident. And that probably helps us just as much in like public speaking and job interviews as it does in anything related to personal safety. But what I was told when I entered the field 20 plus years ago, and what is still on TikTok, is all the criminals picked the same people, and there is a prototypical victim walk. I actually had a researcher say to me, there is a prototypical victim walk. And again, that kind of reductive thinking, first of all, does not relate to the vast majority of abuse and violence. Because, like what the crime data show is that the biggest reductions in crime since the 1990s are in stranger crime against the highest income people. And frankly, I think a lot of the quote-unquote muggings have just gone online and now they're gift card scams and financial scams when people used to have their purses stolen, now they just have their bank accounts hacked. Um, but a lot of the most persistent and pervasive forms of violence and harm are embedded in interpersonal relationships and social and political inequities. So nonverbal communication is important in those settings. And we have a stronger message when our faces and bodies line up with our words, and that is not the most important factor, and it could lead to perpetuating victim blame.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Many people are told not to fight back because it can escalate violence. And you talk about this in myth too. But how do you unpack that belief? And what should people do to understand about the resistance and the risk of it?

SPEAKER_02 36:05

So there is, you know, I I purposely in the conclusion, um, the conclusion is more sort of actionable safety strategies. And purposefully, I started with start with your values and your risk tolerance. Because whether you have a high risk tolerance and you love bungee jumping and you think it's fun, or you have a low risk tolerance and you would never do anything like that is individual. Um, whether your values say, I want to put myself at risk to change the political system and I want to speak up for other people, or whether your values say that is not safe and that is not good for me, and I will do my work behind the scenes, is different. Um the realities of fighting back or resisting are complex. First of all, a lot of survivors, particularly survivors who are harmed by people they don't expect to be a threat to them, do are not given a choice. Your body chooses for you. You freeze, you fight, you flee. Your body and your brain, and again, other podcast guests are much more expert than me in this. So I'm not gonna, not gonna jump out of my lane. But sometimes resistance is not an option. Um, other people, such as women of color and LGBTQ people of color, as well as trans women of all races, have done participatory community-based research on the realities that some of the most marginalized folks get criminalized for defending themselves. Even though every state has laws that allow us to do things that would otherwise be illegal if we are defending ourselves, those laws are applied in very inequitable ways. But given those two realities, the vast majority of research on population-based samples in the United States show that resistance does interrupt attempted violence. And that is based on self-report, which is both good because it's not filtered through the bias of who reports to the police and who doesn't, but it's also bad because it's hard to verify. But if something is reported consistently over and over again from 1990 something to 2015 or 16 or 18, there is some reason why I have cause to believe that it is actually credible and it is actually viable information. So, what the evidence shows is that speaking up, yelling, resisting does interrupt attempted sexual violence and some other types of violence. Um, I want to acknowledge that the research is not as robust as I wish it was. It's not as doesn't go as deep into the qualitative aspects of that as I wish it did. And what I want folks to take away from it is that just because somebody is trying to hurt you doesn't mean you are invulnerable and you have no options. And just because somebody threatens you doesn't make their threats fact. So again, like don't fight back is a myth because there is really no evidence that on a population level, it makes assaults worse. And many of the people, even those who are criminalized for resisting, were facing an even more dire consequence than criminalization. So again, you know, don't fight back should not be flipped to you must fight back, because that's like any other victim-blaming advice. Um, but I think it is important for folks to understand that the attacker being angry is not something that any of us should take responsibility for.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

And earlier you mentioned the most partialized groups. I actually had a follow-up with that. Um, you say that they're missing from most of the data and surveys. What would you like? Um what would you say is the reasoning for that?

SPEAKER_02 40:47

So the largest surveys of you know how we have the broadest base, the broadest cross-section of information about crime and violence in the United States is from the National Crime Victimization Survey out of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. There's a much smaller study from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which is not done annually, has a much smaller sample. It, you know, it's everything we need to know about how the United States values public health compared to crime. Um, so basically, you know, to start the answer to your question, CJ, everything we know and everything we don't know is related to our political realities. Um, but even the National Crime Victimization Survey is a very high-quality survey. It follows people for almost three years. It surveys them every six months. It asks detailed questions about the incident. Um, it asks demographic questions. It's how we're able to see how crime trends since the 90s break down differently based on poverty, wealth, and middle class status. At the same time, in order to be included in this survey, you have to be housed. You have to be able to communicate in a way that a trained survey researcher can understand you, which excludes people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are highly targeted, people who are institutionalized are excluded. Um, and the gender categories are binary. So despite the way the world really is, for the National Crime Victimization Survey, you are either a man or a woman. And if I was a trans or non-binary person, I would just hang up. And frankly, you have to trust a government researcher enough to tell them about crimes against you over and over again for a two and a half year period. So what I did my best to do in the book is to look at the groups that are underrepresented and identify community-led data collection efforts. Um, indigenous people, there's an urban Indigenous folks survey, which I think most Indigenous folks are assumed to be rural and assumed to live on tribal reservations. And yes, that is true for many Indigenous people, but indigenous folks in urban areas are often marginalized when it comes to broad-scale data. There's a survey of trans people, and then there are more localized studies of unhoused people, people who live in transitional housing or single room occupancy housing that is run by social service agencies. And every study I found, not surprisingly, showed very high risk. Of experiences of different types of abuse and violence. And folks who are in more marginalized positions are not widely included in the kind of survey that requires you to have relatively stable housing and, you know, answer a survey every six months.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

I can also hop in here because it's just so incredible the work that you're doing and the information that you're providing people with about how information systems are sometimes unreliable and imperfect. So thank you so much for illuminating not just what the statistics and research report, but also how that research is conducted, who it includes, who it excludes implicitly and explicitly, and why we do have to think critically, um, regardless of what a top-line news headline says, um, that things are often pulled out of context, and just because something is a a popular belief doesn't discredit somebody else's lived experience. Right. Um I think we all have to be much more discerning with the or much more liberal with the amount of empathy and understanding that we give people in our lives. Um and and oftentimes I even find myself, you know, falling into these traps of, well, why, well, why did you do that? Oh my gosh. And it's out of, you know, fear from myself. It's about me. And my dad says this all the time. You know, he his first response to hearing that I was assaulted was anger, I'm gonna go after this guy, I'm gonna like I'm gonna hurt him. And and he, in something that I never thought about, he he says, you know, but what was missing from that was Chessie's feelings, how she was doing, her safety. And so I think a lot of the times we can be very selfish when we think about when we we are in a fear response, um, and selfish even for the people around us. And so I want to challenge everyone to think more critically about the fear responses that we have, how we respond in moments of fear for other people, and all of us to take a deep breath and think more critically and really way more internally before we react or draw any conclusions.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Yeah. And that um, you know, I've I've heard the earliest episodes of this podcast where you and your parents talk so beautifully about both your individual processes and all of the institutions that harmed and failed you. Um and your father's response is not uncommon. Um, there's a way that when male socialization interacts with sexual violence, some of the most well-meaning men go into the protector role. And a lot of the baseless safety advice is about finding a male protector. So, ladies, you know, this is from the NRA. Ladies, if you're home alone, don't tell a stranger that. Pretend the man of the house is busy and cannot be disturbed. Um, pretend that your boyfriend is coming. Make a call to your fake boyfriend and act like you're almost home. Um, get your husband to go shopping with you. Um I one of my favorite, one of the things I love about high school students is I'll teach classes and folks will say something I've never thought of. Um, I was doing a lesson a couple months ago about, you know, trying to get some TikTok literacy going and showing folks some TikTok videos that have baseless personal safety advice that have, you know, thousands of likes and thousands of shares. Don't get me started. Um, and there's this one TikTok in which the creator says, turn if a work person, you know, if a workman is working on your plumbing, turn on the shower and pretend your husband is in the shower. And she's giving all these other tips in this cringe worthy video. And a high school student raises her hand and is like, Massachusetts is in a drought. That is irresponsible. That is a waste of water, and we should not be doing that. And I was like, you know, you're right. And again, like that was that was a delightful example, and it gave me hope for the next generation. Um, but but more globally, there are so many ways that we are told to make ourselves safer that are actually bad for us and bad for others. You know, I took a very unexpected detour from my own wheelhouse and I dug into cardiovascular research from Europe that shows that taking the stairs is very good for heart health. Meanwhile, you know, don't take the stairs, attackers hide out in stairwells is all over the internet and all over TikTok. So some baseless safety advice just fills us with unnecessary fear and stress. And some is actually telling us not to do things that are good for us.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

That's, yeah, exactly. It's I feel this all the time, this contradiction that as a woman, as a person, I never feel like I'm doing, I can do the right thing, that I'm I'm making the right choice. And I've had to learn how to really just shut everything out and be like, okay, well, how did that actually did that make my stomach lurch? What is my visceral response to this thing that I've just done? And how does it make me feel instead of constantly thinking about the impact on the people around me, whether it is a safety precaution or if it's, you know, deciding whether or I want to go out to dinner, like or where I want to eat. It's I'm I think as young women, we're told not to trust ourselves. We're told what to do, what to believe. We're told, oh, he's not that bad, he's gonna protect you, he's okay, he's a good guy. You can go, you can go be alone with him and he won't do anything. Um, and then on the flip side, oh, well, if there's a man walking behind you on the street, you've got to cross the street. Well, well, cars are also dangerous. Like there's there's no right way to be safe. And it often can feel just debilitating how how many things you have to be aware of all the time. And I'm wondering, where is this flip side advocacy to, you know, we have mothers against drunk driving? That's amazing. You're teaching kids not to get behind the the wheel of a car after drinking. But where are the mothers and fathers or parents against sexual assault? We and I kind of feel like this is what my my dad and my mom have been trying to do, but where are where are those conversations happening between students and teachers on how to resp respect the the negative body language somebody's showing you at a party that they don't want to be spoken to anymore, that they want to be left alone. How do you these sorts of conversations we're told so often how to stay safe, but not how to be safe, how to be a safe person. Um and I think those conversations need to be happening in conjunction with how to stay safe. And I think you your work is the perfect bridge for both areas because it's not saying the world is a scary place, here's exactly what you have to do to stay safe, and if you do all of these things, you will stay safe. You acknowledge that there's flaws in the safety systems and in the safety advice, and yet you still gotta follow it. It's just like how the legal system, I think, is a mess. It does doesn't serve many people involved. It hurts both the victim and then doesn't provide any sort of rehabilitation for perpetrators when it comes to sexual assault. But the system is still necessary. You can't just live outside of the system. We've we've got to work with it. So thank you for working within the systems while also calling them out. And how has that work been received by your peers and in this space?

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Yeah. And I think just to acknowledge, you know, for my first book, I took a look at some other areas of public health: drunk driving, um the work that was done about 20, 25 years ago to ban smoking in restaurants and bars. All of those public health interventions are easier because the relationship between individual behavior and health is direct. So if I don't drive drunk, then I don't get in a car crash. I mean, that's not totally true because you could hurt somebody else. But the more public behaviors can be addressed with public interventions. You can have sobriety checkpoints, but like you can't have sexual coercion checkpoints to stop people that are headed out on a date who might be about to coerce their partners. And in order for there to be a parents against sexual violence, the way there is a mothers against drunk driving, a lot of parents have to ask themselves very hard questions about who benefits from power imbalances and who benefits from getting told to subordinate their bodies and their realities to people of other genders or people in power. So the amount of self-reflection that your dad has done publicly, which is probably a tip of the iceberg compared to what he's done privately, is not something that the average cisgender heterosexual man is doing in the United States in 2026. So I think we need to acknowledge that stopping sexual violence will upend our society in ways that many people don't want and there is not the political will for. And even among those who have a lot of political will, there's not a hundred percent consensus about, you know, do we reform the legal system or do we develop transformative justice outside of it? Do we work with the police or do we defund the police? You know, any number of philosophical debates that I've been part of over the years are unresolved in terms of majority opinion. So for me, I want people to live in a world where they have skills to embody that social change in their daily lives, regardless of what the systems around them do or don't do. I want people to be able to resist the earliest precursors of coercive control and do it in a way that makes meaningful change. Um, one example that comes to mind for me is that a lot of the men or teen boys that were later found to have serially sexually abused made public statements, you know, saying sexual abuse is wrong and I support the Me Too movement. So the kind of awareness campaigns that work with, you know, you can't leave a bar with a designated driver and then like go secretly drive drunk in your bedroom. The kind of awareness campaigns that work in other public health issues, you know, we are playing three-dimensional chess in sexual violence prevention. And people who are trying to get others to wear bike helmets are playing checkers. So we are, you know, we have a much harder task. And I can't even play two-dimensional chess. So that's an analogy that, you know, may or may not fit my life, but it is complex, it is multifaceted, and I have seen change in 22 years. The teenagers I taught in tw 2004 and the teenagers I taught a couple months ago are not in the same place.

SPEAKER_04 57:33

Thank you so much for that response. And just something that I found really interesting while reading your book was your discussion about media narratives, particularly framing for specific things. And in your book, you discussed that women's resistance is often minimized in news coverage. And in your opinion, what impact do you think more visible stories, successful resistance could have on survivors and on public attitudes towards sexual violence?

SPEAKER_02 58:05

I think the biggest problem that comes from the types of media narratives that get published when a woman resists an assault is that the words that get used are very passive words. She managed to. She managed to get free. Now, managing to get free seems like I got lucky, not like I have agency. A lot of the media research started was led by sociologist Jocelyn Hollander and another sociologist whose last name is Rogers. Um and what inspired them to do this deep dive was that a college student did a first-person article in a campus newspaper about her own experience of resisting a sexual assault, in which she forcefully physically fought back. And a local newspaper wrote a very different narrative about how she was rescued by other male students. And like what happened in her account was the other male students, you know, helped her get, you know, some water and some medical attention after she had already resisted. So I think when we don't hear stories of women's power or LGBTQ people or disabled people or any other group that has been told that they're weak, then we don't believe it's possible. Um, I can't tell you how many folks I've talked to over the years that believe that self-defense belongs to action heroes and not to like everyday people. And knowing that we have power, knowing that we have agency, knowing that young people who have participated in our programs are supporting each other, challenging coercive behavior, challenging those subtle social norms that enable sexual violence really makes me believe that if we heard more about, you know, this woman powerfully resisted, this woman yelled, then we would feel more clear that this is possible. And I have written any number of letters to the editor back in the old days when we all read physical papers about the ways in which local media covers, you know, violence or attacks, usually by strangers. And phrases like managed, she managed to get away, she was lucky to get away, are not respecting the agency of the person who yelled really loud, and a person who later sexually assaulted someone else left that person's apartment. So the power of this person's own voice was able to make this person leave. And it also kind of reminds us that that finale of The Wizard of Oz, where this great and powerful wizard is actually a terrified man, is probably true of many people who harm other people. And if we can be like Toto the Dog and pull that curtain open and expose the terrified little man, then we don't have to feel immobilized by the great, powerful, intimidating wizard. I guess it's analogy day for me. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

In Myth Six, um, you recite a story told by a TikToker, how kind of like how you were mentioning earlier. It has very alarming language. What was it? Such a it was it says, such as a man having primal instinct that he'll turn into a primal animal when he sees a baby fawn, and how this principle relates to how women with a ponytail, when they see this in public, how dangerous do you think these kind of stories are? Gosh.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Um so if ridiculous safety myths on TikTok had like 12 views and three shares, my publisher would not have had to learn the proper citation for a TikTok video in order to do the footnotes of my book. Um yes, that was that was a that was an unexpected learning curve of this project. Is we now know the Chicago Manual of Style proper citation format for a TikTok video. Um it's probably just a website. Um, but anyway, so so many baseless TikTok videos have thousands of shares, thousands of likes, thousands of comments, and are getting a lot of traction. And CJ, the one that you mentioned in particular is a TikTok that is called Predator versus Ponytail, in which a young woman is sharing a story of a teacher she had in high school saying who said that women should not wear ponytails because you look like a baby doe or a you know, helpless little animal. And, you know, that animal has a tail, and your ponytail looks like a tail. And that awakens the primal predatory instinct in men, and they want to go after you and catch you. And then even in her video, which, you know, did very well and got some media attention actually, she said, Well, I think this might be bullshit. I hated that teacher, I had beef with that teacher, but if I can help just one woman, I want to do it. And that, you know, made me cry because that that urge that we all have, that most of us have, to help one person. And that visceral fear that we have of somebody inflicting bodily harm on us is very real and very sincere. So she passed along this completely ridiculous advice that frankly, if I was a school administrator, I would take some pretty serious action if educators were sharing this information with kids. Um, but she just was like, well, if it can help just one woman, then I've done my job. And she stitched in this like fashion video about how to wear a flowy ponytail, which are all over TikTok. Um, but again, this completely nonsensical piece of advice that ponytails are somehow dangerous has a ridiculous shelf life on TikTok. Like I had to, I had to like fact-check ponytail crime. Like, why? Like, I want to go write musicals. I don't want to fact-check ponytail crime, but it's out there. Um, but uh it's, you know, the other sort of more insidious and more harmful impact of this advice is when it takes our mundane routines and the decisions we make every day that we give zero thought to, and it casts them as irresponsible risks. And that creates a situation in which. Any of us could get into this cycle of being afraid all the time, then being afraid we're not doing enough to keep ourselves safe, and then being worried that it would be our fault if we wore that ponytail or went shopping when we got off work or bought three grocery bags instead of two because who has time to go to the grocery store twice in one week? You know, and suddenly we have committed an irresponsible risk. And again, like I don't want to live like that. I don't want anyone to live like that. And I think the only people who benefit from us living like that are the most politically and socially powerful people who abuse others and who have the attention taken off them so that the ways in which they make others unsafe are not legible, but I'm afraid of, you know, putting up my hair.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:02

It's amazing this advice that you've given us because, you know, obviously somewhere someone has been, and maybe multiple people have been, you know, pulled by their ponytail. And, you know, the world is so large, the world is so vast, and so many incredible things happen in this world every day, but so many horrible things happen in this world every day. And if we had to fear every single horrible thing that has one at one point in history happened on this planet, none of us would be mobile. I feel like we'd all be frozen in in fear. And so it is, like you said, examining your own risk tolerance and how much you you I don't know how much you can bear of towing the line between care and um paranoia.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:58

Right. And like just on that topic, because I have nothing better to do, um, I went on newspapers.com and actually did a very extensive search for news reports of ponytail crime. And again, this is why I'm so much fun at parties. Um Same.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

Maybe we could just go to the same parties and talk about sexual violence. A lot of change that way. Yeah. You know, and uh and then other people can just talk about normal topics. Um, but of you know, newspapers.com is a giant database of newspapers dating back dozens and dozens and dozens of years. And every news report of a ponytail, you know, somebody being pulled and grabbed by their ponytail, the person was an abusive partner or a former partner. The couple of stranger crimes I could find in the newspapers were like a guy walks up to a woman in a shopping center and cuts off her ponytail. She yells, he runs away. And the end of the article is her saying, I guess I have to head to the hairdresser now. Um and the only news story of any incident that looked anything like the baseless safety advice was that very tragic story where a dolphin pulled a trainer by her ponytail underwater. Um so what I, you know, why I believe in self-defense and why it goes to the point that you just made, Chessie, is because we don't have a 0% chance of ever being grabbed by a ponytail. You know, stairwells are not 100% safe. Some people who drive white vans harm strangers. So if we have some basic resistance skills that we can access in the moment, then we don't have to avoid life and live in fear. And, you know, I did a video. I'm still trying to figure out how to get on TikTok. And if any of the young interns are extremely patient and want to help me, um, I did a video of an instructor grabbing my ponytail to illustrate that when someone grabs your ponytail, they leave the rest of your body free and they put themselves in range for an elbow to the face. Strangers jumping out of the bushes and attacking people does happen more than 0% of the time. So having the skills to walk confidently through a dark parking lot, like when I walk through a dark parking lot, I envision self-defense skills if I'm feeling fearful, and that, you know, helps me feel less fearful. So that I don't have to make myself smaller and I don't have to depend on men who may try to control me in order to avoid violence.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:15

This is my favorite accessory in public because it's got a handle, and I do imagine that when I'm walking around. Like, how can I just be in my power and not even, you know, protect myself or be scared? But like I how can I use up as much space as possible with my arms and the strength that I've built through all the physical activity that I do? And and yeah, and and it's an and like we spoke last time on our last episode together, how important it is to practice these things out loud, to make our bodies used to s yelling no forcefully and for like taking up space and and moving our arms into the elbow space of somebody else who's trying to encroach, you know, practicing taking up space and being loud and and standing up for ourselves is super important as well. And sorry, Amira, I'll let you go next.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:08

No, thank you so much for that. I think that just falls in with what I was gonna say about I think as someone who has fallen into those cycles of fear and has seen that on my TikTok for you page, I think these myths are so important and they're so necessary to be bunk debunked because living in that constant system of fear is so unhealthy and just it's a really sad way of living when instead you can move with empowerment and you can move with strength. And so thank you for that. And as we begin to wrap up this, um, we just want to ask, as we do with all our guests, your I have the right to statement. I would assume you're familiar with this since you did last as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

And I thought of one last night, and now I have to remember that. Oh, I I remember it now. I have the right to fact-check. That's that's that's the theme of the second book. I love that. The first book is I have the right to resist, and the second is I have the right to fact-check.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:10

I love that so much. There's so much power and empowerment in education and knowledge. And I think it's so important for all of us to claim that power and use the the resources that are available to us, our public libraries, databases, newspapers.com to check on whether or not ponytail crimes are a real thing. And so thank you so much, Meg, for joining us and for challenging all of us to fact-check and resist and to think more critically about the stories that we've been told about protecting ourselves and risk and responsibility. And all of your work reminds us that real prevention is not about fear or control, it's about evidence, empowerment, and collective action. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:03

Thank you so much for listening. Like and subscribe to the podcast on all platforms. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star rating and tell your friends about Aspire. Follow us on social media at I Have the Right To. Learn more about workshops and programming available for students, educators, parents, and community members at IHavTheRight2.org.