A critique of "just say no" prevention messaging, which puts the burden on potential victims instead of perpetrators. This approach fuels victim-blaming and silences survivors. The speaker argues for prevention strategies that target harmful behavior itself, not victims' ability to refuse it.
Just say no. It's all over the world we hear that message, right? There's a problem with just say no, by the way. Puts all the onus on the person, usually the crimes trying to be committed on. If we were actually focused on a positive culture, we'd say don't make requests, don't do this to the person who's creating the crime, not say to the victim, hey, you make sure the crime doesn't happen to you, right? Which is what we tend to do in our world. And then people go, why don't survivors come forward? Because we victim blame them in the whole education process. So we want to be very careful of doing that when we're having these conversations.
