Why this exists

Offense and defense

This started at my kitchen table. We do life lessons in our house, and one of them, with my daughter and my son, turned into something bigger than the news story that prompted it. It was about being a good person. And being a good person has two sides: don't be the victim, and don't be the predator. There's a third, too: don't be the person who watches something bad happen and does nothing.

"We shouldn't have to teach this"

There's a narrative that we shouldn't have to teach girls how not to be victims. In an ideal world, that's true. But I believe the majority of people are good, and there will always be a few who aren't. Always. Pretending we don't need to teach people to protect themselves isn't a principle. It's an idealistic view of a world that doesn't exist.

And it isn't about girls. Everyone should learn how to avoid putting themselves in a position where someone can take advantage of them: male, female or otherwise. Everyone should learn not to be the one who causes harm. Everyone should learn to step in.

It's like sports. You wouldn't teach only offense and expect everything else to be fine. You teach both.

Never their fault

Teaching someone to protect themselves is never a way of saying that anyone who was harmed is to blame. The person who causes harm is responsible for it. Every time. That sentence appears on every story on this site, and it is the reason the stories are here: some end with someone getting away and some don't, and every one of them teaches something.

It's never too late to act

You can get yourself into a situation you didn't mean to. It's never too late to do something about it. That's true if you're the one at risk, if you're the one who's about to make a bad choice, and if you're the one watching. Don't be the person who walks past. That goes for an assault at a party, a mugging on the subway, and a wallet someone dropped on the sidewalk.

Start early

It's easy for adults to say "I'd never do that." But when you were 20, your brain was different, and you don't remember it. So these lessons can't wait for college orientation. They start at three, with "my body belongs to me" and "ask before you hug," and they come back every year with a little more depth, so by the time a kid walks into their first party, they're instinct, not a lecture.

This isn't a skill like algebra. It's an understanding of the world: a nuanced one, not all or nothing. And because it feels like a moral subject, it mostly isn't taught. I want to change that: first with a place parents, teens and adults can come to today, and in time with material schools and colleges can teach from.

How this site is made

The stories here are real, and no AI was used to write them. AI helps me gather and organise guidance from reputable public sources, and I check every claim against its source before it's published. You can see exactly how on How this site is made.

— Stacy Willis