Changing My Mind Set to Stop Sexual Assault
Recently in my dress and humanities class we talked about something called intimate assault by means of implicit bias. Those words resonated with me long after the class ended and I found myself looking around thinking about what implicit biases I had about other people. I had in no ways associated myself to be a potential sexual assault offender, but I wanted to see what negative biases i might have that needed to be changed. Had I ever looked at someone and had a thought pop into my mind about the type of person they might be? Had I stereotyped someone based solely on the way that they looked? The knot in my throat seemed to answer my question. This brought me back to the statement of intimate assault by means of implicit bias. These people responsible for the sexual assault had subconscious biases that told them, because of the way they perceive this other person, they would sexually assault them. This made me sick. The thing about implicit biases are they aren’t usually something we are aware of. These subconscious feelings or attitudes about someone based on their appearance are sitting in the back of our mind shaping the way we live our lives. Sexual assault is a serious thing and should be stopped, but how are you supposed to stop something that started as something the person wasn’t completely aware of at first? The answer is to educate, and conquer. Educating yourself about sexual assault and the ways to avoid it help to decrease the chance of it happening. Trying to think about the personal implicit biases you have about sexual assault is also another great way to avoid sexual assault. Implicit biases are malleable, so even if someone does have negative biases it is possible to change them. Sexual assault may not stop by eliminating negative implicit biases alone, but it will stop when everyone decides to educate themselves about the problems around them and do something about it.
