2. Considering our lesson on Abusive and Healthy relationships; What are some signs of an abusive relationship? What would you do if someone you know is in an abusive relationship?
I think that a sign of an abusive relationship is one in which either one or both of the people involved don’t feel safe with the other person. When a relationship lacks communication and people act in an erratic/unpredictable way, it’s usually a sign of an abusive relationship. In addition to this, relationships, where there is a constant cycle of doing something that hurts the other person, apologising and then having this constantly repeating, tends to indicate that it could be an unhealthy or abusive relationship both psychologically or physically. If someone I knew was in an abusive relationship, I would provide them with my advice. Depending on the situation, the most common advice I would give is to separate themselves from this abusive relationship and spend time with other people or themselves. After this, hopefully they will see that when they are not in an abusive relationship they are in a better situation overall.
2. Consent Lesson: What were your main takeaways from the consent lesson? (the BBC video with the boy and girl at the party)
After watching the consent video, I learnt more about how some people might view consent differently and the possible implications of this. But more importantly, I learnt that there is only one way to get consent and that is by asking and receiving a confident response from someone who is conscious and in the right place mentally to decide if they give consent. The video makes it clear that no response at all means no. The video also showcases how alcohol can severely impact our decision-making ability, potentially even causing us to ignore consent entirely which would be classified as rape.
3. Bystanders- In the ‘night out’ video with Emily; we saw a number of bystanders who did NOT intervene to help her? What factors (real or perceived) do you think prevented them from stepping in?
In the video ‘night out’ we saw a variety of bystanders who observed clear signs of someone taking advantage over someone who was under the influence of alcohol and not stepping in (her friend in the club, the bartender, the people outside in the line and her roommate). Potentially some factors causing them not to intervene was that they were not 100% sure of what was happening, but they had some idea. In this situation, it’s better to take action and be wrong than to do nothing at all and end up being right.