Get Involved in Teen Dating Violence Prevention!

Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of adults about how to get teens involved in the movement to end teen dating violence. Many adults believe that teenagers really don’t care or they just aren’t motivated enough to stand up and be heard on this issue. Well, I don’t think that’s true at all.

I have met many students who thought that dating violence was wrong and really wanted to help make a difference in their schools and communities. What was the number one thing stopping them? . . . the fact that they didn’t know very much about dating violence until I came to talk to them about it. I think that if more teenagers knew about dating violence and just how prevalent it is among their peers, more of them would want to do something about it. Just think . . . if one in three teens will experience some form of dating violence in their lives, how many people would that be at your school? I bet it’s a big number. Now think about your town or city. Wow, right? So what can you do?

One of the things that I tell adults who want to work with teens is that they have to meet young people on their turf. And who do you think is going to tell adults how to talk to teenagers? That’s right . . . YOU! Don’t wait for an adult to make the first move. Go to them with your ideas. Besides, sometimes teens need adults to get them access to things that can be difficult to get on their own, like video equipment or the use of a building or public space and the list goes on. In fact, I have worked with quite a few groups of students who did awesome class projects about dating violence. Some of them made short documentaries, performed skits and others conducted interviews with their classmates and showed the results to the student body at an assembly. These teens did something. So can you!

If you really want to make your voice heard, you CAN do something to raise awareness about teen dating violence and its devastating effects. For more ideas on how to get started, visit www.thesafespace.org/take-action.

-T

When a man is a baby, -boy!

I will be blogging here from time to time about things relevant to teen dating violence that I see in/on tv/the internet and other media. I decided to join with this cause because I have known teens who have experienced dating violence and have seen the damage it can do. And I want to do what I can to stop what I saw happen to my friends happen to others. Feel free to comment about my blogs or email me @ digital@breakthecycle.org. I hope to hear from you soon! -J

I was eating pizza on Hollywood boulevard and I found myself watching the movie Baby Boy on the TV in the pizza shop. I had never seen the movie before but was stricken by one scene in particular. To give you a little background on the movie, Jody is both the boyfriend of Yvette and the father of her child.

The scene begins with Yvette accusing Jody of cheating on her. Jody denies it at first but then finally admits it. Yvette gets angry, says “I’m sick of you cheating on me,” and starts to hit Jody. Jody tells Yvette to stop. She keeps hitting him. Jody hits her in the face. He says he won’t do it again. He promises he will make it up to her. He says he loves her.

Granted, this is a movie, and the characters are assumed to be fictional. Nevertheless, it still says a lot about abuse and how people think about it. First of all, abuse can happen to anyone. In this case BOTH of the people are being abusive. Jody cheated on Yvette and lied to her and Yvette hit him back. As upsetting as that can be, violence is never the right tool to fix something. Then Jody hit Yvette after she started hitting him. Hitting someone in return is not necessarily ok; self-defense should only be used to protect oneself from serious injury or death. Jody escalated the situation by hitting her when he could have backed off. Violence is NEVER ok.

And for my second point, abuse can continue even when the physical abuse is over.

Take Jody for example: He goes over to Yvette’s house the next day and “apologizes,” saying “I’m sorry I hit you, okay? You blacked my eye, too.*” In this attempt at apology, Jody both says he is sorry, and tries to make an excuse for his actions by bringing up the fact that Yvette also hit him. This is really just an extension of the abuse he already subjected Yvette to. By making Yvette feel guilty for hitting him, he is trying to make hitting her OK. Abusers often make the people they abuse feel guilty about what happened to them in an effort to make their abusive tendencies OK. BUT Abuse is NEVER the victims fault. The abuser is the one who makes the decision to hurt another person. NOT anyone else. NOT the victim.\

What do you think about Jody and Yvette?

Check out www.thesafespace.org for more information and resources on teen dating violence.

*taken from http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/b/baby-boy-script-transcript.html