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you can prevent gender-based violence when you:
Ending gender-based violence will take a wide range of efforts that will include, community-wide strategies, changes in policy, and changes in the way society views and addresses these acts of violence. It can be overwhelming to consider such broad change, however, change begins within each individual.
You can start to change your world when you begin to address unhealthy behaviors in your own life and those you are closest with.
You can begin that culture change when you begin to talk about gender-based violence and take a stand against it.
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Call out others when they make or laugh at sexist jokes;
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Acknowledge that discriminatory behavior and language are connected to gender-based violence; and
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Spread the message throughout your community that sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence are never okay.
Keep learning about gender-based violence, bring the problem up in conversations and challenge values that create unhealthy behaviors.
You can lead the change.
Actions and words that are discriminatory in nature create a culture of inequality that exacerbates violence. Specifically, actions and words that dehumanize women as objects promote entitlement, sexual assault, and other forms of gender-based violence such as physical abuse and stalking.
Forms of violence and oppression that target marginalized communities -- such as genocide, racism, transphobia, or ableism -- make sexual and domestic violence more likely to happen to people within these communities. This is because:
• Oppression created conditions where people who are power-up are at increased risk of doing violence
• People who are power-down have increased vulnerability and increased exposure to those who could harm them, due to (often poverty-related) survival needs
• Because oppressive structures promote sexual and domestic violence and discourage cultural norms of healthy, collaborative, mutually-respectful relating and relationships.
For more information on the role that anti-oppression plays in ending gender-based violence, please find the document from the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence titled "Prevention Through Liberation: Theory and Practice of Anti-Oppression as Primary Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence here.
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