I’ve probably attended a dozen or so of these in my life, all because an organization I'm affiliated with wants everyone to undergo them.
It started when I was a boardingschoolcel in the northeastern United States; the Owen Labrie case was playing out on national media, and my prep school didn’t want to be the next one featured on Vanity Fair. And the cultural backdrop surrounding #MeToo and Brett Kavanaugh didn’t help. Boarding schools are huge breeding grounds for potential sexual assault cases if you didn't realize -- it's essentially a pressure cooker for teenagers who don't have parental supervision for weeks or even months on end. So the administration decided to hire a couple of lawyers whose job it was to lecture everyone, students and faculty, about consent. We’d have to attend a few of these throughout the year. Some seminars would be for everyone, but some other seminars were broken down by gender and year group.
Those seminars were simple: the message was basically “don't rape anyone” and "don't send nudes", so on and so forth. Having absolutely no intention to rape or send nudes, I just sat through them like I would one of those platitudinous "say no to drugs" talks.
I'm now in the U.K. and over the last few years, I've noticed a shift in how these seminars usually go. Instead of saying "don't rape anyone", there's an increasingly large focus on being a white knight. Or, as they call it, being an "active bystander":
www.activebystander.co.uk
It's not enough for me just to not rape anyone; apparently, I now have a moral obligation to intervene in awkward situations.
Here's what really annoys me about the "active bystander" doctrine:
To this end, I am inclined to believe that "active bystander" doctrine only serves the socially confident and the genetically privileged -- leaving all of us subhumans here to rot.
It started when I was a boardingschoolcel in the northeastern United States; the Owen Labrie case was playing out on national media, and my prep school didn’t want to be the next one featured on Vanity Fair. And the cultural backdrop surrounding #MeToo and Brett Kavanaugh didn’t help. Boarding schools are huge breeding grounds for potential sexual assault cases if you didn't realize -- it's essentially a pressure cooker for teenagers who don't have parental supervision for weeks or even months on end. So the administration decided to hire a couple of lawyers whose job it was to lecture everyone, students and faculty, about consent. We’d have to attend a few of these throughout the year. Some seminars would be for everyone, but some other seminars were broken down by gender and year group.
Those seminars were simple: the message was basically “don't rape anyone” and "don't send nudes", so on and so forth. Having absolutely no intention to rape or send nudes, I just sat through them like I would one of those platitudinous "say no to drugs" talks.
I'm now in the U.K. and over the last few years, I've noticed a shift in how these seminars usually go. Instead of saying "don't rape anyone", there's an increasingly large focus on being a white knight. Or, as they call it, being an "active bystander":
Active Bystander Training | Challenging Antisocial Behaviour - How to intervene
www.activebystander.co.uk
It's not enough for me just to not rape anyone; apparently, I now have a moral obligation to intervene in awkward situations.
Here's what really annoys me about the "active bystander" doctrine:
- As one of the least privileged individuals I know, I have to potentially police the behaviour of more outgoing and social peers who are more privileged and influential than I. This puts me in an awkward spot.
- As someone who finds social settings mentally taxing, I find it more difficult than others to analyze social situations and interpret body language and behavioural cues. I have no idea if someone is experiencing an uncomfortable situation, and simply am not confident that I can react appropriately.
- As an ethnic, I can't help but think that everything I do or say will be racialized, and that if I proactively confront a white man (or
womanfemoid) who I genuinely believe is behaving inappropriately, another bystander would be inclined to side with them given their implicit racial biases. - As a subhuman, I don't believe that anyone else would reciprocate and step in if I was the one being bullied, harassed, assaulted, or abused. Nobody gives a shit about men -- especially low-SMV men.
To this end, I am inclined to believe that "active bystander" doctrine only serves the socially confident and the genetically privileged -- leaving all of us subhumans here to rot.
Last edited:
