Brain And Steele Reminded That Everything They Say May Not Be Heard The Way It Was Intended.

Brain and Steele,

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, I will attempt to keep it brief as I am sure you are busy. I am a frequent listener of your morning show and enjoy the production that you put on, thank you for doing it.

While listening this morning (August 6, 2014) you spoke briefly on the women that were sexually assaulted at the Keith Urban concert and at the Tim Mcgraw concert. At the end of the segment you took a moment to say that women need to be extra careful when alcohol is being consumed and that unfortunately these things can happen and women should look out for their friends.

I want to make clear that I am not saying that these statements were made with anything other than well meaning concern.

However, given the pulpit that you have at your disposal you had the potential to shape your words to have a much more positive impact. When speaking of sexual assault, it seems that too often the first commentary is for victims (generally women) to be more careful. Why can’t the first commentary be, “Sexual assault is never ok, and outside of the narrow circumstance where you are preventing someone from hurting themselves or others, it is never ok to put your hands on another person without their consent.”

We shouldn’t treat sexual assault as some sort of unfortunate inevitability that should be avoided through planning and group tactics. Focusing on what a person can do to avoid becoming a victim of sexual assault has two important and negative side effects. First, you are telling any victims that they were in some way contributory to their sexual assault by failing to take proper precautions. Second, you are skipping over the most important cause of sexual assault. Someone else commits it. A person could be as “uncautious” as can be conceived, drinking until standing is difficult, wearing whatever makes them happy, not staying with friends, and talking with anyone and everyone, but if no one thinks it is ok to sexually assault them, no sexual assault is going to happen.

I just want to reiterate, I don’t think that you had any kind of ill-intent when you spoke this morning. I don’t know if you are a father, but it sounded like fatherly advice. I have a younger sister, and I admit that when she goes out with friends, I would hope that she is at least mindful of the things that you said. But I don’t think that it should be necessary, and I hope that at some point she no longer needs to be. I think that at least part of how we get there is by talking about sexual assault as a crime that a person chooses to commit, and not as a hazard that a victim failed to prevent.

Again, thank you for taking the time to read my letter,

Andrew B