Jordan (00:00)
Elisabeth. We were talking earlier, and you’re from Arizona, and you were saying specifically with Arizona, you don’t have many seasons, so you don’t get to experience fall.

Elisabeth (00:09)
Yes. My first fall was when I was at school, college. Okay. And it blew my mind. Trees, leaves, wow.

Jordan (00:16)
Yeah, you experienced the traditional fall and back to school.

Jordan (00:22)
Okay. So being a college freshman, do you have anything any experience you have with that?

Elisabeth (00:29)
I have many stories from my freshman year. What a time. One thing that I remember that was sort of silly: there was this event on campus called K-I-S-S, KISS, which stood for Keep It Safe Sisters, not to be confused with keep it simple, stupid. The whole event was basically how to stay safe when dating and being a woman on a college campus and whatnot.

And I don’t know, it was interesting. A lot of the stuff was just like, yeah, if you’re like being physical with somebody and they’re starting to go too far, just tell them to stop, or you know, like just kind of stuff like that. And it was interesting that we had that, but then there was no like event for men. That was like a female-only event, and there was no event to be like, yeah, these are some ways that you can prevent sexual assault that are more from, like a male perspective.

Jordan (01:26)
So it’s putting all the responsibility on the women. Right. On campus. Yeah. Especi—specifically freshmen women. Yeah.

Elisabeth (01:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do think that like that is a helpful thing to do. So I I don’t want the message to be don’t ever do that. But yeah, it is kind of interesting that the messaging was specifically for women, but there wasn’t any messaging for men. Yeah.

Jordan (01:50)
Yeah. That’s wild. Yeah.

Elisabeth (01:53)
Well, I wanted to share a couple like viral stories that have been going around. I shouldn’t say stories; cases is probably a better word for it. And you can tell me if maybe you’ve heard of them before or not. One of them that’s been going around and is quite viral on social media right now. There’s a case from Cornell University.

So some frat brothers allegedly gang-raped a twenty-year-old girl at a frat house. One of the frat boys then also sent a message in the Snapchat group chat for this frat, suggesting that a woman was available for sex. They said, “free pussy in alum house,” so pretty vulgar, yeah, saying exactly what was up.

The victim filed a report with the police department, and Cornell conducted an internal investigation. Seven frat members were accused. Only two of them were expelled. The others received lesser sanctions, including suspensions, workshops, or essay assignments. And ultimately, the victim had…was the one that dropped out of school after the assault. You heard about this one?

Jordan (03:07)
Not heard about it, but it’s fascinating to hear someone else advertising someone else’s body for them. Does that make sense?

Elisabeth (03:14)
Right, and so blatantly.

Jordan (03:17)
That sounds like that’s a little trafficking esque, I would say. Someone has the control, someone’s controlling the situation against someone’s will.

Elisabeth (03:28)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And then another story that is also going around quite a bit. This one is at the University of Florida. A nineteen-year-old student there was informed that explicit videos of her were being circulated online. The footage came from two separate nights that she says she could barely remember. And she has publicly stated that she did not consent to any of the acts that happened on camera and did not consent to being filmed either.

The videos were initially shared between students, but then they were posted online by anonymous accounts. And the content depicting the victim naked, incapacitated, and engaged in sexual acts received over 8.5 million views. She and her family were also doxxed online and subjected to extensive online harassment. Three men were charged with sexual cyber harassment.

And again, she was the one that ended up dropping out of school. She moved home and was diagnosed with PTSD. Period of this case.

Jordan (04:32)
I’ve not heard of this one, but I’m not shocked that this is happening.

Elisabeth (04:35)
Yeah. Well that’s that’s I mean, this is happening everywhere. These are two specific cases. I could Google sexual assault on college, and we’d probably have dozens of results popping up. So we know that this is a problem. If people are listening and they’re not convinced it’s a problem or they don’t see that, I can just go through a couple quick stats. About one in four undergrad women will experience rape or sexual assault.

For men, it’s about one in fourteen, which doesn’t sound like a lot, and obviously it’s much more prevalent for women. But on a college campus, male college students are 78% more likely than male non-students to be victims. So even for men, the rates skyrocket quite a bit.

College-age victims account for a third of all rapes reported to law enforcement. And then this is really interesting: specifically in the first year of college, between August and November, so the first couple months of freshman year, that carries the highest risk for sexual assault.

Jordan (05:36)
So back to what we’re saying about fall. That specific time frame of back to school, when I don’t…like lack of a better term, the feral energy of back to school is really like people are just trying to figure life out, and the victims happen to be the newest people on campus.

Elisabeth (05:55)
Hm. Yeah. And just yeah. I I don’t know. What are your thoughts about that? Why specifically about the first couple of months that someone’s in college is the most likely time for them to experience it or for them to perpetrate. What are your thoughts on that?

Jordan (06:12)
I think it’s going off personal experience and drawing to draw occlusion with this, like looking at my children and thinking about how I communicate with them about certain areas of life. And I’ll pick an easy one that most people can agree on, and that’s candy, right?

So we see commercials with candy all the time. Like, there’s no one, like people have problems with sugar, but it’s like in general, people don’t have problems with candy being advertised. But also with candy, we then eventually in school teach them like about portion control, about nutrition, that like not all candy is actually good. Like, it’s not this is bad, never have. It’s you need to learn how to incorporate candy into your life in an appropriate way.

And then, so then take a kid, like trick-or-treating or whatever, they get all the candy and then say the parents are gone the next day, and it’s like all of a sudden, they’re in this environment where it’s like they have unlimited candy, they have an unlimited amount of like nobody telling them no because of that. And it’s like they don’t know the aspect of portion control, like nutrition, any of that, or no guardrails, or a parent saying, Okay, I think you’ve had enough. You know what I mean?

So fast-forward that and put that in a college context with college students. And you have this environment where you can see these young adults, and necessarily they’re learning their morals, their agency, where they can go in life. And did you get them all in that condensed time frame that we just talked about earlier, back to school and fall? And then so then you give the past like early exposure to any kind of sexual media, whether it be porn or anything like that. And then they will only talk about it when parents aren’t around. And now parents aren’t around at all. So now it’s just widely accepted. Right. And then you don’t teach them how to handle rejection, because rejection doesn’t happen in porn, right? So assault can happen there. They don’t teach you the nuance of communication of consent. So porn is making the script that isn’t teaching them how to handle sexual interactions or anything like that on college campus, when finally, for the first time, they have a lack of guardrails around them. So I think there’s a big correlation that you can see between like the candy analogy I gave and then just being in an environment where all of a sudden all hands are off.

And it’s just one of those like I call it feral energy because it’s so exciting and they’re all experiencing it within a condensed couple of months in the first time they go to school.

Elisabeth (08:41)
Yeah. So you’re saying it’s kind of like going from a very controlled environment where maybe even education or healthy conversations are lacking, even in a controlled environment. So then when you are in an uncontrolled environment, and you have no guardrails, you don’t even know where, like, the bound— the healthy boundaries are. So you’re just set loose.

Jordan (09:01)
It’s like you now have this new independence. You have a new social circle. Like some people who are pledging to be in a fraternity or stuff, they just want approval, and there’s no script again of how to handle rejection, how to navigate hookup culture in an appropriate way, how to navigate consent in when alcohol is involved. Like those conversations aren’t happening in porn or necessarily the script of the sexual culture they’re now taking part in.

Elisabeth (09:25)
Yeah. That’s interesting too that you mention, like, validation or acceptance. Do you feel like for young male adults, like college-age boys who are, you know, late teens, early twenties, is that something that does contribute to some of this like sexually coercive or abusive behavior?

Jordan (09:45)
I mean, we all want to be accepted by the community we want to be a part of. So I feel like we just reflect the behavior that we feel will give us the most acceptance and give us the biggest chance of continually being accepted. You know? Like we’ve, when we were kids, where, like, if your friends are doing something bad, just say no and walk away. It’ll take more courage, but you’ll be appreciated later, but it’s like but you won’t be accepted in the moment. And again we’re talking the super condensed timeframe of early on-campus experiences where you haven’t experienced campus life in general. It’s like your first couple of weeks there. And so you don’t know the difference. You just assume this is what I have to do to be accepted.
Elisabeth (10:23)
Where do you think that comes from? Because it’s interesting, kind of from that perspective, that not for everyone, but maybe for some boys or some communities of men, that the default is that. Maybe an element of this is wanting to be accepted by your male peers. Acceptance, to me makes it sound like there’s a status quo or there’s an expectation there. And so if men are perpetrating sexual violence to get acceptance, to sort of fit the status quo. My interpretation of that is that there is an expectation or a status quo of some sort of like power dynamic or re you know what I mean?

Jordan (11:03)
Yeah. And I’m trying to think of, like, how, for lack of a better way to phrase this, is like your hookup score or something is actually a currency of acceptance, right? And so, like the higher that, like if it were money or anything like that, when people have more money, you expect their status to be higher because they have that and I more power. And in college, I feel like, especially as young boys, it’s this whole thing of even in porn culture, it’s like, the more sex you have, the more status you have, the higher power you have in a group. So I think it’s more of the assault happens as a byproduct of just get as much sex as possible and by any means, even if because if they say no, then you’re rejected, and then your ego is hurt and then you’re seen as less than, and you’re afraid that you’ll be the one known as the one that keeps getting rejected, right? Where if assault comes in the picture, it’s like, no, you got what you needed. It’s the sexual currency, and now you are climbing the status ladder.

Elisabeth (12:02)
I think that’s really interesting and helpful to get a man’s perspective on some of these things. It’s sort of what you mean, or what you said makes me kind of think about some of the research that we’re now seeing with, like, AI image-based sexual abuse or like people making non-consensual explicit deepfakes, primarily of women, and then like sharing them among their peers. And there was a study that just recently looked into motives as to why men were doing this.

And they said that their findings on motivation suggests that some form of this is occurring in peer contexts where men create and/or share and/or threaten to share content for purposes such as humor, bullying, or social bonding, which is interesting. So within certain male peer cultures, humor that involves sexual humiliation or image-based mockery may be a way to signal belonging or status. So that’s like kind of adjacent to what you’re saying, where it’s largely just about like wanting to say that you’ve had these sexual experiences because that sort of gives you some power and some status. But then also, like if that is happening due to, in part to, like, humiliation or coercion or whatever, that that could also be kind of a check mark amongst your peers.

So I guess that leads me to think about like a lot of this conversation is focused on like men and boys wanting to feel accepted and wanting to feel like they have achieved something among their peers and whatever. And those aren’t. bad desires. Right. Everybody wants acceptance.

Jordan (13:30)
Belong to our community.

Elisabeth (13:31)
Right. And those aren’t bad desires. And so I guess I wonder if you have any thoughts on how to cultivate those desires in a more healthy way. Cause I think that in itself is sexual assault prevention. Right. That could be a form of that. How can we what does healthy masculinity look like for young boys and men who want to be a part of a community and want to feel accepted, but maybe that’s not coming from, like, your body count or, you know?

Jordan (13:59)
And that’s that’s tricky because it’s literally rewriting the script of what we have accepted as masculinity. And somehow I think it’s this weird pocket coming of age that we can’t tap into because I was reading stats earlier about how the fathers of, like, the 60s, 70s, and 80s, like, close to half had never changed a diaper and they were proud of that. And then you get to now, and it’s like, 99% of fathers have changed a diaper, and they’re more of a hands-on learning experience, and they’re wa a lot more involved. And it’s like there’s been a shift somewhere.

And I’m curious how we get this healthy conversation of talking to these young men, because like there has been a shift in society of toxic masculinity and men culture and changing how men see the world. And so it’s just keeping on having healthy conversations and trying to get theKeep It Safe Sisters group for men, like how we can be better men in society and call men to be better in society.

Elisabeth (15:03)
Yeah, I like that. And I think that just makes me think about like, okay, the Keep It Safe sisters event for men. I don’t know, sometimes we see sexual assault prevention as having to be like some big event rather than everyday attitudes and behaviors. And so I kinda like what you said. If we want to change what masculinity looks like to be healthier for both men and women, like that is gonna be a big societal shift.

So, I have just kind of been thinking about like, micro-preventions, I guess, is maybe what I would say. Like, how can we what kinds of things can we do every day that anyone can do to help prevent sexual assault? Cause I think sometimes we have this attitude of, I am not at risk. Like maybe I’m a man or an older woman or, you know, whatever it is, like, I’m not at risk. So it’s not my problem.

And then we sometimes hear from, you know, men particularly who say, Well, I’m not out assaulting people, so it’s also not my problem. I’m not contributing. So it’s not my problem to fix, but this is like you said, like this is a a problem that is affecting everyone. And I think everyone…it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that we’re all safe. So I had some that I was thinking of that again, anyone can do that does help to prevent sexual assault.

One of them is just like challenging degrading language. So if someone’s like making a rape joke or saying something inappropriate, be the person that says, Hey man, like that’s actually not cool. That can…that sends a message to people. That is sexual assault prevention.

Jordan (16:44)
That specific language is very harmful and the more you say it, the more we get comfortable with it, the more damage it does.

Elisabeth (16:50)
Right. Even just, like, challenging someone who’s like like casual objectification if someone, your buddy or whoever, you know, makes a comment that’s objectifying towards another human’s body or their sexuality or whatever- like, that can just be something where you’re like, you know what? Like that’s actually harmful, or I don’t like that language, blah blah blah. And that can be helpful.

One that you had mentioned that I really agree with is normalizing rejection. Like, it’s okay if you don’t want to go on a date with me; that is okay. And I respect your boundaries on that. I wanted a hug, and you didn’t want to give me a hug; that’s okay. I’m fine with that. Yeah.

Jordan (17:25)
And it’s like it’s checking your ego of you’re not entitled to any of this. And I think that’s normalizing rejection.

Elisabeth (17:32)
What do you think about, like, just having healthy conversations about porn, like with your bros or whatever? ‘Cause we know that that’s something that men struggle with, and there’s a lot of shame around that, so men aren’t talking about it.

Jordan (17:44)
Right. And I think it’s one of those things where we hear it a lot of time, in people who are recovering from compulsive porn use of when I get married, I won’t need porn anymore. Right. We hear that all the time, especially in our line of work, where we hear recovery stories and how people thought they would just be able to get rid of it, but then it’s like if slowly tore apart their marriage. And I think it’s one of those where there is if we normalized not watching porn among our bros, or anything like that. It’d be like, yeah, bro, you’re not getting laid. So of course you’re gonna say that, you know? And it’s like, people, there’s this notion out there that’s like if a man doesn’t need porn, it means he’s getting all the sex he wants or something like that. And it’s like then there’s all these people like, well I’ve never had a date. I need sexual satisfaction, so that’s why I have porn. And it’s one of those things that’s like not both can be true right now. You know? It’s we need to educate men that’s like just because you’re not watching porn doesn’t mean you’re never gonna have sex or things like that, or treating people kindly and not degrading them to only being for sex.

Elisabeth (18:48)
Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. And I also just like hearing stories from people who made a change in their life because somebody else was willing to open the door to have a conversation with them. Like how much change that can bring to be a safe person for somebody else, or to participate in a conversation like that. Like that makes a difference.

So I think so much of the conversation is about the effects of women, which I think is absolutely a huge part of this problem and something that we should be putting a lot of time and attention into. Because again, like this, it’s causing sexual assault, objectification, exploitation for women, and that is a huge problem. And at the same time, a lot of times because of that, I feel like organizations or people are hesitant to talk about how this is impacting men.

And that is also a very real part of this. And if we ultimately want to stop objectification, stop sexual violence, we have to address the role that men are playing in this. And the way to do that is by understanding, yeah, like why men are drawn to it in the first place. What needs is it meeting, and how can we help men to understand that they do deserve better than what pornography is providing for them? Right.

I kinda wanna wanted to mention…connect the dots a little bit more. Obviously, like, pornography is not the only reason why sexual as assault happens, especially on college campuses and whatever. But there is research that does show that there is a connection. So a 2024 study found that college men who viewed violent pornography had greater attitudes of gender inequality, greater problems with alcohol use, and lower levels of perceived responsibility for men who raped. So essentially, that sort of the rape myths element of it’s not, it was someone else’s fault, it was her fault, and she was asking for it and whatever. And then a 2026 study found that violent porn consumption among college students predicted sexually aggressive behavior.

So we know that porn, like you said kind of at the beginning, if if kids are modeling their sexual scripts off of what they’re seeing in pornography. And then they’re let loose in an environment where there are no guardrails like they had growing up. It kind of makes sense that this would impact how they’re engaging with individuals that they’re attracted to and what their sexual experiences look like. But the first study that I mentioned, they say in the study, quote, that findings highlight the need to address pornography literacy in sexual assault prevention programs for college men. And so I love that that, yes, like, this is a conversation that we should be having in this space. We should be having these conversations with men. and that is prevention.

Jordan (21:33)
Yeah. I like that a lot. I think that’s incredible that you can call it out and say, like as you’re we’re teaching you the rest of your life here in college, and it’s a shame that we’re not d doing it on the sexual health or the like how to handle rejection or any of that.

Elisabeth (21:48)
Well, and our whole thing is education. Right. So it’s like educating kids. You know, we have school programs where we go and talk to kids. Like I was just two days ago, in Idaho, presenting to kids and talking to them about these issues. And I, you know, part of it was, yeah, like when you it’s really harmful when you share nude images of people at your school. That’s illegal, that’s harmful. And just seeing the kids’ faces like people were like, What?

They just haven’t heard that before. So it’s like educating kids, educating people in general that, you know, pornography can create harmful ideologies about sex. It can change the way that you view other people, and your perception of sex based on pornography may not be healthy or like accurate. And those are really important things, just like educating people, starting conversations. Yeah, like I just love this idea that that is prevention.

Even like wearing like, you’re wearing a Fight the New Drug T-shirt, that is prevention because someone might come up and talk to you and say, Right, yeah, I follow this organization too, or tell me about your shirt. And you wearing that shirt can signal to somebody that you’re a safe person to talk to about this. That is prevention.

Jordan (23:06)
Yeah. I agree.

Elisabeth (23:06)
Yeah. So I just love that idea that we all have a role to play. Even if you’re not a college student, that’s something that you can contribute to. It’s our responsibility, every single one of our responsibilities, to confront and prevent this type of abuse. And we can all do that in lots of different ways. Yeah.

Jordan (23:26)
Don’t be a downer, but also don’t be scared to have real conversations. Yeah. Don’t be scared if you can lift a hundred pounds, you can have a difficult conversation. That’s my tip.

Elisabeth (23:35)
And then specifically for colleges, one last resource that I will share. Again, a lot of this prevention happens before people are even in college, and it should happen before an assault happens or before someone experiences this. But again, that one study said that porn literacy should be an essential part of sexual assault prevention programs for college men.

And our presentation for college-age students, I think, is a really holistic view on how pornography does impact your relationships. It impacts how you think about each other. We talk very specifically to what sexual consent is and what it is not, and make that very clear. And I think that’s a really great resource for any schools or educators who are looking to more directly target this issue in their community.

Jordan (24:27)
I absolutely agree. And it’s incredible, the presentation. The work we put into that to engage and to be there for college-age kids during this presentation and not just some adjunct professor talking about this and trying to awkwardly move on. We’re not uncomfortable about it.

And we’re here for the conversation, and we want the students to engage. Yep. And we make it engaging.

Going over all this to put a bow on it. Uh-huh. What were the micro-preventions in a list that we can quickly give the viewers and listen to?

Elisabeth (24:58)
Okay, so these are some ideas that I came up with: challenging degrading language or jokes, challenging casual objectification, normalizing rejection, modeling consent outside of just sexual interaction. So, like, asking permission to hug someone or touch someone, respecting and not pushing people’s boundaries, so kind of goes into normalizing rejection. Starting healthy conversations about porn is a good one.

So those are some that I came up with. If you have others, share them in the comments. We would love to hear them. And let’s start a movement to prevent sexual violence using micro-preventions. Yes.

Jordan (25:37)
Join the movement.