violence

The Scarleteen Safety Plan

If you're in an abusive relationship, to make abuse stop you've got to get away and stay away. Here's help to do that safely, and to be as safe as you can before leaving.

No Grey Area: A Journey Identifying and Healing from Sexual Assault

Sexual assault and abuse can take so many forms that some people don’t recognize right away or ever. I didn’t initially recognize it. The most simple legal definition of sexual assault is “forcing a victim to participate in sexual acts,” but this definition isn’t always helpful when you’re trying to figure out if you’ve been assaulted. It's so much more complicated and unique than a one-sentence definition.

How to Care for Friends Who've Experienced Trauma

It’s likely that you will or already do know someone who will experience or has experienced trauma of some form. As friends, it’s important that we understand the responsibilities and limitations of our role, so we can best support our friends who are survivors and maintain our boundaries. Has someone disclosed to you a traumatic experience they’ve had? How can you best support that person and yourself? Here’s some information about trauma, the role of friends, and what it means to really support survivors.

We Need Federal Legislation Against Campus Sexual Violence in Canada

As long as rape culture exists, it may be impossible to create perfect survivor-focused policies. However, unlike with Title IX, Canada should create federal policies that prioritize on making sure campus is a safer place for survivors, rather than questioning their experiences.

What's Death Positivity and How Can It Help Us? A Conversation with Sarah Chavez

We are living in a time where death and loss are everywhere we look and is a part of so many of our lives, often before we think it will be. Here's some talk with The Order of The Good Death's Sarah Chavez about death positivity -- what it is, what that means, and who it can help -- and how young people can better understand death, can better talk to each other about it and support each another through it.

Scarleteen Confidential: Helping Youth Handle Rejection

Young people don’t arrive at their conclusions about appropriate romantic behavior in a vacuum; they’re influenced by a myriad of messages, including input from the adults in their lives. Sometimes that input includes ideas that end up exacerbating issues around rejection and dating. One of the ways we can work towards a world in which acts like this no longer happen, a world in which people, and women in particular, aren’t afraid their “no” will make them a target of violence, is to make a concerted effort to help the young people in our lives learn to deal with rejection in healthy ways. With that in mind, we’ve put together recommendations to assist adults in doing exactly that.

No. More.

What should you do when someone says no to or otherwise refuses or declines your romantic or sexual gestures or asks Accept it and stop making those gestures or asks. That's the right answer every single time: just accept someone's no and then back right off.

Asking or otherwise pressing over and over isn't the right answer. "Not giving up" (which often looks a whole lot like harassment) isn't the right answer.  Trying to get them to change their mind isn't the right answer.  Trying to get them to change their mind through their friends or family also isn't the right answer. And while it should be obvious, we so sadly know that it isn't: no kind of violence is ever the right answer.

Sexuality in Color: Indigenous Rights and Resistance

Today's post is not about Thanksgiving, but rather, about the violence and colonialism that indigenous people (especially women and two-spirit folks) have been facing for hundreds of years. My gratitude is not for turkey, but for indigenous remembrance and resistance.