Sept. 16, 2025
86-Unmasking Sexual Violence: Survivors, Systems, and Solutions With Tracy DeTomasi
When we talk about sexual assault, we often dance around the topic. We use euphemisms, passive language, and subtle victim-blaming that shifts focus away from perpetrators. Tracy DiTomasi, CEO of Callisto and a licensed clinical social worker with 25 years of experience in gender-based violence, refuses to participate in this societal avoidance.
Throughout our conversation, Tracy clarifies the often-confused terminology surrounding sexual violence while challenging widespread myths. She explains why sexual assault isn't about sex but power and control, why survivors frequently freeze during attacks rather than fighting back, and why we struggle to reconcile when respected individuals commit sexual violence. Most importantly, she addresses why our systems continue to fail survivors, highlighting how the burden of accountability unfairly falls on those who've been harmed.
The most groundbreaking portion of our discussion focuses on Callisto, a nonprofit technology platform Tracy leads that's revolutionizing how survivors can find justice on their own terms. Using end-to-end encryption, the platform allows anyone with a .edu email address to securely record information about their perpetrator. If another survivor enters matching information about the same person, they can be connected through a confidential advocate who explains their options if they so choose.
Whether you're a survivor seeking resources, someone supporting a loved one who's experienced sexual violence, or simply committed to creating a safer world, this episode provides crucial insights into the complex reality of sexual assault and the innovative solutions emerging to address it. Listen, share, and join the movement to change how we respond to sexual violence.
Tracy’s Links:
https://www.1in3podcast.com/guests/tracy-detomasi/
https://www.projectcallisto.org/
https://www.instagram.com/callisto?igsh=MTZudXJ2bHVnNjN2Yg%3D%3D
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracydetomasi/
1 in 3 is intended for mature audiences. Episodes contain explicit content and may be triggering to some.
If you are in the United States and need help right now, call the national domestic violence hotline at 800-799-7233 or text the word “start” to 88788.
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Thank you for listening and please remember to rate, review & subscribe!
Cover art by Laura Swift Dahlke
Music by Tim Crowe
00:46 - Episode Introduction
01:46 - Defining Sexual Violence
10:13 - Trauma & Healing After Assault
18:05 - Understanding Perpetrator Behavior
31:28 - How Survivors Can Fight Back
41:10 - Introducing Callisto's Survivor Technology
53:46 - Final Thoughts & Episode Closing
WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, ingrid.
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Sexual assault, sexual violence and rape are topics many people shy away from.
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Let's be honest, the same is often true of domestic violence.
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These issues can run parallel to each other and, at times, overlap.
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Today's guest helps us unpack the realities of sexual violence what it is, how it's defined, its lasting impact it has on survivors, the role of perpetrators and, equally important, what can and is being done to create change.
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Please welcome Tracy LCSW and CEO of Callisto Hi.
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Tracy, thank you for joining me today.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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So before we jump into our conversation, do you mind giving a little bit of a background, just so listeners can get to know you a little?
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Yeah, I would love to.
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So my name is Tracy DiTomasi and I am the CEO of Callisto.
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We are a national nonprofit that has built technology to help survivors of sexual violence, and I will get into that a little bit later as to what we do, but I am a licensed clinical social worker and I have been doing gender-based violence work for 25 years now.
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I actually started my career as a therapist for adolescent sex offenders, and so I've worked a lot with both offenders, perpetrators, and victims and survivors.
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I worked in group homes for about 15 years with adolescents, mostly boys, but I also worked with victims of child victims of sex trafficking, and I ran a domestic violence shelter, and I've also helped with global campaigns about getting awareness about domestic violence and sexual assault.
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So it's something that I'm really passionate about, and I've been doing a long time.
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I you know, when Me Too happened, I had been doing it for 18 years, and it was definitely a watershed moment that changed the conversation.
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But I am just really happy to be here and to be able to talk more about this issue that a lot of people don't want to talk about, and to tell your listeners more about Callisto, as well, loads of experience and expertise to be talking about this topic.
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So sexual violence obviously it can be a form of domestic violence.
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It's not always a domestic violence situation.
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But could you just define sexual violence?
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There's a lot of myths, misconceptions regarding that the act, the victims, lots of stuff there.
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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I think that that is.
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One of the problems in this field is that we all have different definitions of what they are and there's legal definitions of sexual assault.
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Those legal definitions vary by state and by jurisdiction and then there's kind of a general societal definition of a lot of these things.
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So how I define sexual violence is really the umbrella term of anything that happens to your person without consent and that can be physical or non-physical.
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So sexual violence can be the unwanted sharing of photos, of nude photos or deep fake pornography, it can be child sexual abuse material, it can be rape, it can be incest, it can be coercion, it can be a lot of those things.
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And then sexual assault is really an umbrella term for anything physical, so it can be groping, it can be touching, it can be rape, it can be molestation.
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A lot of people use sexual assault and rape interchangeably and they're not.
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While rape is sexual assault, sexual assault isn't always rape, and that is because sexual assault is more of that umbrella term, and so I'm really glad that you started with the definition because, again, I think that we use these terms and a lot of times, you know, with creators and podcasts and stuff.
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We use essay or we use sexual assault because rape doesn't get through the filters and rape is a word that is really harsh to people, and so we have toned it down to say sexual assault, because people can't handle the word rape, which is why that word isn't used as much.
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I have found that quite a lot is the difficulty in using the word rape.
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Do you think that and I just thought of this question on the fly do you think that actually using the term rape, do you feel like that gives any extra sense of empowerment, like if a victim were to actually be able to say I was raped, versus that person sexually assaulted me?
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I think it can.
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I don't think it does for all survivors, but I do know that there are many survivors that when they are finally able to say this person raped me, it can be really, really empowering.
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Because I think the other interesting thing with language is that and Jackson Katz has a probably 10 to 15-year-old TED Talk about this that's brilliant is we have pacified our language, so I was sexually assaulted versus he sexually assaulted or he raped me.
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But I do think that there are a lot of people who have been assaulted that can't say the word.
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They're not ready for it.
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It means something different.
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There's a weakness about it.
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There shouldn't be, but there's a shame about that.
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That happens, and so I think that people really struggle with that, about that that happens, and so I think that people really struggle with that, and so sometimes it's easier to say I've been sexually assaulted or even that person sexually assaulted me, versus saying the word rape, because there's a different connotation around that.
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I think that part of that is about how we view rapists, and I do a lot of talks about this, where we talk about we think rapists are either really good or really bad, like we think people are really good or really bad, and rapists are in that really bad category, when in reality, rapists are both they're really good people and they're really bad people who've done really bad things.
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And so a lot of survivors, particularly if they know the person which 80 to 90% of survivors know who assaulted them if they know that person, it's hard to reconcile the fact that they're a rapist.
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And so I think that us not wanting to label the perpetrator as a rapist or even a perpetrator, changes what victims and survivors feel like.
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If it's their family member, if it's their significant other, if it's you know, somebody that they've admired a coach or a teacher for a long time, and they can't reconcile that.
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And I also think that the response that they get from other people if they say this person raped me versus this person sexually assaulted me, a lot of person like are you calling them a rapist?
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Well, yes, but they're more willing to say, like they're more willing to be empathetic if a person says I was sexually assaulted, rather than naming that perpetrator.
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And we need to change that.
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That is really really problematic and we absolutely need to change that.
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So I think that is a brilliant question.
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Yeah, I have become I've noticed for some reason this year, specifically personally more sensitive, I guess, to the use of certain words and terminology, especially with media, when media is reporting.
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So, for instance, if there is a victim who is murdered by their abuser, it is an altercation or it's some sort of level of where perhaps the victim had something to do with the fact that they were murdered, but if it was a stranger, it's murder in cold blood and so, like saying I was sexually assaulted or I was raped by that individual, it almost is taking some sort of sense of ownership and I don't think that that individual necessarily is saying it's my fault, but victim blaming is a huge thing, it's my fault, but victim blaming is a huge thing.
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And it almost and again I don't want to say this in a way of you know, a victim is wrong, by using whatever verbs, verbal, like oh, my gosh, I can't talk whatever words they want to use, but it's almost like that opens a door of somebody being able to say well, okay, you were sexually assaulted by that person.
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Why, what did you do to become assaulted?
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So victim blaming is a huge, huge aspect of sexual violence and rape?
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Absolutely no-transcript.
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So a lot of people over the years, through a healing journey, have used the word survivors and in the past, you know, victims is typically used in the criminal justice system and so there was referred to as victims.
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Survivors and in the past, you know, victims is typically used in the criminal justice system and so there was referred to as victims.
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But there is this movement of certain people that were assaulted, that are using the word victim because it shows what happened to them and not who they are, or even not even naming it as a verb.
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I am not a victim.
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Somebody assaulted me, he assaulted me and using that person-first language to say this is what happened to me and I am not defined by it at all either way.
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But that is every survivor or victim's choice.
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If something's happened to you and you find power in that, that is the word that you should use and whatever helps your healing is exactly what you should do, and I think that in 10, 20, 30 years it's going to look different and that's great.
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We need to evolve.
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Language evolves and our understanding evolves, and so there is no judgment to any person who uses survivor or victim or thriver or whatnot.
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But I think that as a society, we can see how we have put the we've taken often the perpetrator out of the equation.
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Survivor of sexual violence, you know, battered women, you know we are taking the perpetrator completely out of the equation and I think we need to add that person back in.
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I so agree with that, recognized in the country.
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But again, you had mentioned, also this time, how states vary in proof, what levels are needed to determine if it is considered marital rape.
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Could we just talk briefly?
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I don't know how much information there is on actually marital rape, but just a little bit about that.
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Yeah, I think a lot of people are really confused by that of like how do you rape your spouse?
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But I think that it happens all the time.
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And I'm not talking about like I just wasn't really in the mood and but you know, it's fine, I'll let him or her do it, like that is not what we're talking about.
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And I think that, because a lot of people have that experience, that is something different.
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While you should still want your partner to be enthusiastic every time, we know that that's not the case in you know, every time when you're married, right.
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But what I'm talking about and it doesn't have to be violent, it can just be a source of control.
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It can be violent, just be a source of control.
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It can be violent, but I think that that happens a lot more in marriages and, like you said, the courts didn't recognize it for a very long time and I don't think it's illegal in every state and I think in some states they're probably even trying to push those laws back.
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But it's really really confusing to victims because we don't talk about that enough to have experienced that and say this is not okay.
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But this is my partner, this is my spouse, who loves me or supposedly loves me, and I'm still experiencing this thing that I don't want to experience.
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And then nobody believes me because they're thinking about it as like a you know, just let it happen.
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You know, you're married, we all don't want to, all the time we're not in the mood.
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And it's not about the thing about sexual assault in general, no matter how it happens.
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It's not about sex.
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It's about power and control, and so when sexual assault and marital rape happen, it's about power of one spouse over the other.
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That's what it's about.
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It is not about getting your sexual needs met at all.
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It's about the power that you are having over your spouse.
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Well, and that bleeds into, like teenage sexual violence and rape, where there is, you know, perhaps not a lot of education in terms of the victim, where they truly understand that, no, I'm not obligated to engage in any kind of sexual activity that I don't want to.
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But then you get thrown in the well, if you really loved me or if you really cared for me, this is what you would do.
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And then there's more of a, I guess, a coercion aspect into engaging in whatever sexual activity.
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Absolutely.
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I think that there is such a overlap of dating violence and we don't have good words for it because, you know, in the field we say dating violence for teens and for, you know, college-age folks, but they don't ever say that they were a victim of dating violence.
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You know they might say that they were in a toxic relationship or an unhealthy relationship or that they were just in a relationship.
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They don't see it as dating violence or anything.
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Because, you're right, a lot of it is coercion and our media has set that up to be okay.
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If you look at especially you know I'm a Gen Xer and you look at a lot of Harrison Ford movies, including Star Wars.
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It was he pressured her, pressured her, pressured her.
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She's against a wall when him and Princess Leia have their first kiss and that's romantic and in the end that gets him to get the girl.
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And I think back to one of my favorite movies as a kid in Say Anything and John Cusack holds the, lloyd Dobler holds the stereo above his head and I had that poster on my wall and it's stalking.
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If she said no, it's a no, but in the end it's like that's the love stories that we were brought up with, and I think that there is so much pressure and I think that we have, you know, it's the no, I don't want to, I don't think so, I'm not ready.
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And then it's like come on, come on, come on.
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If you're pressuring somebody to do that, that's a form of assault, that is a form of rape, that is a form of sexual assault, and I don't think that we're teaching.
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When we teach consent, we teach people how to say no.
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That is not the problem.
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We're not teaching people how not to coerce.
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We're teaching them, maybe, how not to physically be violent against somebody, but we're not teaching them how not to coerce somebody and to convince them that what they're doing is okay.
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And I think that starts especially in this new generation of sending naked pictures and pressuring youth and significant others to send photos that they're not ready for.
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I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a huge thing.
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And again, it's perhaps I mentioned of a lack of education for the victim, of not necessarily feeling comfortable with saying no, or I'm not going to be coerced into that.
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But there is also a lack of education in if they say no, it's not something you need to convince them to, or, like you know, she didn't seem willing, but she just needed to know that I was really going to be there for her.
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I was.
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You know, that's all part of it and it is romanticized especially I'm also Gen X, for sure.
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All of that was romanticized of well, I don't really want to do this, but oh, he's so persistent, so he must really care for me.
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So, ok, I guess I feel OK doing this now.
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Yeah, I've talked to a lot of men over the years because I used to, I developed and ran a program that got men involved in ending violence against women, and I would always get the question about like, well, what if she's playing hard to get and I'm like, then don't get her.
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You know, like that, that's the thing is that she's not worth your time, because what if you're wrong and she's saying no?
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And she isn't playing hard to get and she's just saying no, then that's on you, that's on you.
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So we need, as women, we need to stop playing hard to get.
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We need to say what we want, and I think that you know that we could get into a million conversations about our society's ability to talk about sex and not shame sex, and I think that you know positive sex culture, um, and positive sexuality is a big prevention for sexual assault, because then we know how to talk about it, we know what we like, we can express what we like, we can say things that like oh, I don't like that, and we can have our partner also respect that and know those boundaries and and know how to talk about that without shame, without going, oh, I just I didn't know how to say it, but I wanted him to like me or I wanted her to like me and this part felt good, but this part didn't feel good, and I'm confused about that.
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And then it got too far and I wasn't ready about that.
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And then it got too far and I wasn't ready.
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That is such and you know I haven't actually thought of that, but it's so true because you know, as a woman I guess maybe more generation I'm not so sure about the younger generations now but we're we're taught to be coy and you know women aren't necessarily out there flaunting their things.
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So it was sort of playing a hard to get sort of kind of scenario.
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And you're not supposed to.
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A real classy woman isn't going to necessarily say like, yeah, I definitely want to have sex, I'm totally into that, and you're supposed to pull back a little bit and make that man or woman reach a little bit more to get to that.
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So, yeah, perhaps I think there is I don't know now more of an open conversation happening where people do feel more comfortable it's not quite such a societal taboo to talk for especially women to talk about their sexuality.
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You know, what's really interesting is that every Christmas, or like at least for the last five to 10 years, it's been in my world for like 20, 25 years but the song Baby, it's Cold Outside comes up and the you know 10, 15, 20 years ago, when I said this is a date rape song, people are like you're just you know, overreacting Tracy, you do these things and then you know it got into common, misconception or not misconception.
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But, like people started talking about this being a date rape song of you know what's in my drink.
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The actual original version of that song, I think, was made in the 30s or 40s and they did it that way because it was supposed to be really tongue-in-cheek.
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Because she wanted to be what—wanted.
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What happened?
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She wanted to have sex, but because women weren't allowed to have sex and to like sex, she had to say, oh wait, I pretended to say no, so then this—that I wasn't the slut and people wouldn't talk, you know.
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And so it was seen as a song for female empowerment of how to.
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This was how you got what you want sexually.
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And you know, within 50 years the culture shifts and we see it as a date rape.
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But I think that that also shows the progression of what we're talking about, of what once women had to do because they weren't allowed to like sex, or, you know, sex was just after marriage, all of this stuff, even though we know that so much sex was happening before marriage and to the point of like, look, this is now creepy.
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The same thing that was empowering is now creepy because our culture shifted, which is important, and now we need to shift again.
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Yeah, Right.
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I mean, all these shifts are great, and some of the labels are great too, because I think it just raises awareness, it raises the need, the, however they want to define themselves, is living with the aftermath.
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What kind of trauma is felt?
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I mean, I'm sure there's a varying degree of what happens.
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I think every first of all, I want to say that every survivor is unique.
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So I think every first of all, I want to say that every survivor is unique, so whatever you experienced is real for you.
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But I think that there are a lot of commonalities over the years that I've witnessed from talking to thousands of survivors, and there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of shame, there's a lot of I thought I would fight, but I didn't.
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I froze and they don't understand that freeze is a biological trauma response that they can't control in their body and so they feel like, well, maybe I wanted it or maybe I didn't do enough to stop it, and so there's a lot of confusion.
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There's a lot of confusion when you didn't know the person or when you sorry when you did know the person and you're like but I trusted this person, what do I do now?
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Especially if they're a significant other or you're you know, if you're married or even if you're at the beginning part of a relationship.
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So I think that where the trauma intensifies is if you disclose to somebody that's close to you and whether or not they believe you.
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That changes your level of trauma or can change your level of trauma to be even more traumatizing.
00:22:56.059 --> 00:23:03.890
So if you tell your best friend and they'd be like, but he wouldn't do that, what did you do?
00:23:03.890 --> 00:23:07.137
Or you tell your parent and to say, oh, they can't hear it because maybe they've been traumatized.
00:23:07.137 --> 00:23:11.768
Oh, I don't, they can't hear it because maybe they've been traumatized.
00:23:11.768 --> 00:23:14.413
You tell the police and the police say, well, what were you wearing?
00:23:14.413 --> 00:23:17.679
Which is still very common or you're married.
00:23:17.679 --> 00:23:18.808
That can't happen.
00:23:19.329 --> 00:23:38.961
You know, whatever the case may be, and that adds another level of trauma because you've had this thing happen to you and now nobody's believing you and so you feel crazy, you feel like maybe I was to blame and you live with that and that settles into your body and that settles into your stress and you can have a lot of different stress reactions.
00:23:38.961 --> 00:23:42.893
Some people laugh, some people just get really giddy and they laugh.
00:23:42.893 --> 00:23:45.266
Some people shut down, they're depressed, they can't function.
00:23:45.266 --> 00:23:58.675
Some people over-function, they become avid runners, they become workaholics, they become whatever to just like, try not to think about it, when all there is is, you know it's still living in your body.
00:23:58.855 --> 00:24:18.122
And I think that that trauma of experiencing the re-traumatization by the systems that are meant to help, that often don't help and often just re-traumatize is worse for survivors and I hope that changes, but we're not there yet by any means.
00:24:18.122 --> 00:24:21.448
You can see Epstein is in the news all of the time.
00:24:21.448 --> 00:24:26.696
His survivors are still not experiencing justice.
00:24:26.696 --> 00:24:36.953
You can see that with the Diddy trial Like we have video evidence of things and the systems still aren't working for survivors.
00:24:36.953 --> 00:24:44.135
But survivors who experience belief when they tell somebody have a different sense of healing.
00:24:45.825 --> 00:25:08.175
Yeah, and I think that there's so many contradictory expectations placed on victims too, of you know you need to say something, but then if it's taken them five years or 10 years or 15 years to finally speak out and say, okay, this happened to me, then there's the question of, well, why did it take you so long?
00:25:08.175 --> 00:25:13.233
So almost that expectation of maybe you should have just stayed silent.
00:25:13.233 --> 00:25:16.268
If you stayed silent for this long, then why are you saying something now?
00:25:16.268 --> 00:25:17.351
Is it because you want money?
00:25:17.351 --> 00:25:18.575
Is it because you want fame?
00:25:18.575 --> 00:25:21.550
Are you jumping on the Me Too bandwagon?
00:25:21.550 --> 00:25:28.855
And yes, just so many different layers of opportunities to get re-traumatized.
00:25:29.545 --> 00:25:31.011
Yeah, absolutely.
00:25:31.164 --> 00:25:37.153
And I think you know, and some people go back to that person who abused them and who raped them, because they're trying to figure it out.
00:25:37.285 --> 00:25:41.916
Our brain, when we get traumatized, we relive it and we're trying to master that trauma.
00:25:41.916 --> 00:25:45.435
We're trying to master control of what happened to us.
00:25:45.435 --> 00:25:56.030
And so a lot of times you go back and you have sex with that person again, and maybe it's consensual this time, because you want to own it and you want to have the power in that, when it was taken from you in the beginning.
00:25:56.030 --> 00:26:32.549
And so that's really common is to go back and have sex with that same person or to have sex with multiple people, because you, especially if and I don't subscribe to the notion that virginity is taken or that virginity is even necessarily a thing, it's either you've had sex or not, because I think that that hurts our understanding of all of this but if that was the case and you think, well, I'm broken now because society says I'm broken, which is untrue then you go on to have sex with a lot of different people because that normalizes it for you, and that's really common too.
00:26:32.549 --> 00:26:35.484
And so there's no wrong way to react.
00:26:35.885 --> 00:26:45.195
It is a survivor's responsibility to take ownership for their healing though, and healing is such a you know, a unique process as well.
00:26:45.195 --> 00:26:59.539
I've talked to a few people where you people where the promiscuity, I guess following a sexually traumatic event sometimes they look at that as a way of having their own control.
00:26:59.539 --> 00:27:05.868
If I go ahead and consent to sex to this person, they can't take that non-consensual piece.
00:27:05.868 --> 00:27:13.134
They can't take that non-consensual piece away from me If I say no and they force themselves on me anyway.
00:27:13.134 --> 00:27:14.174
Now I've lost control.
00:27:14.174 --> 00:27:23.260
But if I just go ahead and say yes to that person and that person and that person, at least I'm having control over saying yes.
00:27:24.021 --> 00:27:59.034
Yep, absolutely no-transcript, which I think is a very, very small majority, but I think that that happens too, and I don't think that that necessarily means that anything's wrong with you either.
00:28:00.525 --> 00:28:05.653
Right, and so now I'm very curious about your work with the perpetrators.
00:28:05.653 --> 00:28:07.715
Do you feel that?
00:28:07.715 --> 00:28:19.269
I'm sure you heard probably every excuse in every way of avoidance of accountability, but do you think that there was actually any true?
00:28:19.269 --> 00:28:22.416
I didn't know that I was doing a bad thing.
00:28:24.726 --> 00:28:28.531
It's a great question and one to really it's difficult to answer.
00:28:28.531 --> 00:28:37.532
I believe that there is a spectrum of offenders, just like there's a spectrum of victims, and I think we want to put all victims into one category.
00:28:37.532 --> 00:28:40.719
And I think we want to put all offenders into one category, and they're not.
00:28:40.719 --> 00:28:59.414
I think that a majority of offenders have some level of manipulation and I think that a majority of offenders think that they've done nothing wrong because they have used justification and different cognitive distortions to prove what they've done is right.
00:28:59.414 --> 00:29:07.394
Look, she wanted it, she was playing hard to get, she consented, she said yes, she didn't say no, she didn't do anything.
00:29:07.394 --> 00:29:09.757
She said yes, she didn't say no, she didn't do anything.
00:29:09.757 --> 00:29:21.730
And you know, or he had an erection, so of course he was into it and it was feeling good for him.
00:29:21.730 --> 00:29:22.070
I, you know.
00:29:22.070 --> 00:29:24.057
So I think that a lot of offenders have completely justified what they've done.
00:29:24.057 --> 00:29:28.866
Or, you know, I knew it wasn't great, but it's, they were too little, they're not going to remember it anyway.
00:29:28.866 --> 00:29:35.750
Or I did really love this person, or I really respected my student and they were a star.
00:29:35.750 --> 00:29:44.556
But it's really about how to justify that power and what they're getting over them and that power dynamic, there are some that are really calculated.
00:29:44.556 --> 00:29:49.558
I mean, I think about Bill Cosby how he drugged women to have sex with him In his fame.
00:29:49.558 --> 00:29:52.820
He did not need to drug anybody to have sex.
00:29:52.820 --> 00:30:04.148
It wasn't about sex, it was the power that he had and it was the whole ritual that he had around all of that.
00:30:04.148 --> 00:30:07.277
And so I think that there are some really ritualistic offenders that are really really awful.
00:30:07.376 --> 00:30:22.173
And then I think that there are assaults that probably happen where it was extremely traumatizing for the survivor and I'm not minimizing that at all and that the perpetrator didn't have any idea what they were doing.
00:30:22.173 --> 00:30:28.411
I think that that's rare, but I still think that they didn't.
00:30:28.411 --> 00:30:32.528
That perpetrator didn't check in to see that they actually had consent.
00:30:32.528 --> 00:30:44.450
I think that in those cases, if you tell that person, hey, you did this wrong and you need to do this better, they will go oh my goodness, I had no idea.
00:30:44.450 --> 00:30:48.085
And be very empathetic and go yep, and this changes their behavior forever.
00:30:48.105 --> 00:30:52.343
Had no idea and be very empathetic and go yep, and this changes their behavior forever.
00:30:52.343 --> 00:30:57.509
I don't think that that is you know.
00:30:57.509 --> 00:31:00.141
So I want to be very, very, very, very clear, because as soon as you say that out loud, people are going to justify that.
00:31:00.141 --> 00:31:00.663
Oh, that's me.
00:31:00.663 --> 00:31:09.880
That is me, because that is the myth of well, it was just a bad night of sex, which I think is bullshit.
00:31:09.880 --> 00:31:18.635
Um, so I think that a majority of offenders are manipulative and calculative and, um, it's again.
00:31:18.635 --> 00:31:19.939
It's about power and control.
00:31:19.939 --> 00:31:22.386
It is not about sex.
00:31:23.928 --> 00:31:47.169
So do you think it's those loopholes and the misunderstanding and the lack of laws in place, plus that manipulation factor for sure, that contribute to how so many perpetrators do get away with their acts and continue to go on to abuse, probably later, yes, absolutely.
00:31:47.269 --> 00:31:48.855
I mean until I think it was the 90s.
00:31:48.855 --> 00:31:57.640
Most of our rape laws said that you had to yell and fight back in order for it to be considered rape, which we know now from trauma that that is not the case.
00:31:57.640 --> 00:32:01.471
The majority of rapes, the majority of rapes, the victim freezes.
00:32:01.471 --> 00:32:07.512
I think that those laws were made by men and I think you know men are a majority of the perpetrators, even when the victim is a man.
00:32:07.512 --> 00:32:09.744
And I think you know men are a majority of the perpetrators even when the victim is a man.
00:32:09.744 --> 00:32:14.733
And I think our whole society has protected perpetrators.
00:32:14.733 --> 00:32:22.053
You can see it in the fact of Harvey Weinstein had a team of people getting the women to the hotel.
00:32:22.053 --> 00:32:32.858
He abused the people who and manipulated them and hurt them if they were going to go forward with what happened and tell anybody what happened.
00:32:32.858 --> 00:32:40.473
He convinced people of like well, you know, in Hollywood, this is what you're getting into and if you want to roll in that movie, you're going to have to experience this thing with Harvey Weinstein.
00:32:40.473 --> 00:32:41.256
Everybody knew it.
00:32:41.256 --> 00:32:54.101
It was an open secret and people just accepted that, and so we try to accept it in a way of like, oh well, she's just leaving her way to the top, rather than she's being gatekept from jobs unless she has sex with somebody.
00:32:54.101 --> 00:33:16.869
You know we need to again flip that narrative of she was abused to he assaulted gender binaries here, but I think that that's the majority of cases that happen is where the perpetrator is a man and the victim is a woman.
00:33:16.869 --> 00:33:18.999
But there's a lot of men who've been assaulted as well and I don't want to minimize that at all.
00:33:18.999 --> 00:33:33.381
But I think that the culture of our movies is the case of, like you know, I recently read this thing where it said what's the number one indicator of if a sexual abuse allegation is going to be believed?
00:33:33.381 --> 00:33:39.979
And that number one indicator is what is your impression of the perpetrator.
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