Sexual Consent, Connection, Courage - A Courageous Conversation with Kelsey Banton

To become a client, visit me at catiaholm.com or leave an anonymous question for the show by calling or texting 956-249-7930. 

We open a hard, necessary conversation about sex, power, consent, and culture with educator Kelsey Benton. We share personal stories, define consent literacy, unpack coercion, discuss college “red zone” risks, and offer tools that build agency and care.

• making mental wellness accessible, compassionate and real
• consent literacy beyond slogans; context, power and identity
• nervous system responses: freeze and fawn explained
• forensic exam access and survivor agency in Texas
• social norms, media messages and decoding coercion
• the college “red zone” and why silence persists
• everyday “safety” habits vs victim-blaming myths
• shifting focus to people who cause harm and enablers
• practical scripts for check-ins and bystander moves
• parenting with open language, boundaries and repair

Visit me at gattheahhallam.com — C-A-T-I-A-H-O-L-M.com
Leave an anonymous question: 956-249-7930

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Send this episode to someone who needs a little light. Remind them they're not alone.

To become a client, visit me at catiaholm.com or leave an anonymous question for the show by calling or texting 956-249-7930. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Intentions
• 1:21 Naming Sex, Power, and Consent
• 3:05 Why This Feels Uncomfortable
• 6:20 Stats, Stakes, and Culture Shift
• 7:15 Meet Educator Kelsey Banton
• 10:20 The Forensic Exam: Options & Agency
• 15:20 Regulating the Body During Hard Topics
• 16:14 Consent Literacy and Coercion
• 20:28 Media Messages vs. Healthy Connection
• 26:00 Early Conditioning and Boundaries
• 28:48 Saying No, Identity, and Safety
• 32:24 Fawn Response and Trauma Language
• 38:00 The Red Zone on College Campuses
• 42:24 Why Survivors Stay Silent
• 46:00 Parenting, Love, and Hard Talks
• 47:40 Talking About People Who Cause Harm
• 53:40 Everyday “Safety” Habits and Myths

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

Welcome to Couch Time with Cat, your safe place for real conversation and a gentle check-in. KWVH presents Couch Time with Cat. Hi friends, and welcome to Couch Time with Cat, Mental Wellness with a Friendly Voice. I'm Kat, therapist, best-selling author, TEDx speaker, and endurance athlete. But most of all, I'm a wife, mama, and someone who deeply believes that people are good and healing is possible. Here in the hill country of Wimberley, Texas, I've built my life and practice around one purpose to make mental wellness feel accessible, compassionate, and real. This show is for those moments when life feels heavy, when you're craving clarity, or when you just need to hear, you're not alone. Each week we'll explore the terrain of mental wellness through stories, reflections, research, and tools you can bring into everyday life. Think of it as a conversation between friends, rooted in science, guided by heart, and grounded in the belief that healing does not have to feel clinical. It can feel like sitting on a couch with someone who gets it. So whether you're driving, walking, cooking, or simply catching your breath, you're welcome here. This is your space to feel seen, supported, and reminded of your own strength. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in. What if we treated conversations about sex, power, and consent not as shame to avoid, but as acts of connection, clarity, and healing? In today's episode, I'm talking with Kelsey Benton, a longtime advocate and educator in violence prevention, about how we actually do this work, especially with young people in communities and across identities. We'll lean into what's uncomfortable, what we avoid, and how we begin to shift culture from silence to care. Friends, I need you to know that this episode is gonna be loaded with uncomfortable conversations. I need you to know that me, as your host, I'll probably share some really difficult personal experiences. I wouldn't recommend this episode for little ears. And I'm just gonna share some hard truths. And I've shared all these truths in my books already, but not everybody reads my books. And there's something different about putting your difficult experience on a page and then being able to close that and like put it on a bookshelf. There's something very different about speaking it into the air. And I just want you to know that I may not have all the answers, and our guests may not have all the answers, but we're not here for that necessarily. We're here to say there are so many of us out there. And my hope and my intention in this episode is to lower the statistics, to lower it, to make it a safer place for our children, for our young people out there, that they do not have to experience what I have experienced, and they don't have to do the healing work on this stuff, and that they don't have to live in fear, and that they have the tools to navigate a moment should they ever be presented with the moment, and that they just kind of have um language around it. I think for so long these types of topics have been hidden because they're really hard. They're just really hard. And you may be thinking, what is she talking about? She just said three sentences and then started on this uh monologue about her own personal experience. So just stick with me, okay? I was once in a circle with college students doing an exercise called Boundaries in Motion. We asked them to map out a time they felt unsure about a boundary. One student shared how they froze mid-interaction. Super understandable because they didn't have the words. Another said they felt shame for not pushing back. Also understandable. Those moments linger, they shape how we show up in intimacy and community in our own bodies. Today's conversation is about leaning into that tension. It's about acknowledging how real messy and relational work prevents violence. Because the cost of silence isn't just for survivors, it's for all of us. When we don't have language, when we don't practice consent, when power dynamics stay hidden, we lose connection, trust, and safety. In this episode, we explore how prevention lives in conversation, just like this one. Empathy, structure, and the courage to sit with discomfort, just like I'm doing right now. And probably you're doing as you're listening to this. Good job. Good job. Stay with me. It's okay to be uncomfortable. Let's take a deep breath. Let's talk about what the science says about consent boundaries and culture. First, trauma and the nervous system. Research shows that when we experience stress, shame, or fear, our brain's executive functioning can go offline, which makes it harder to set or assert boundaries. I teach this every day in my private practice. Second, social norms deeply influence our behavior. Studies and bystander intervention show we often take cues from others. If no one speaks up, we assume it's not our place. And third, our identities shape how safe or unsafe we feel in setting boundaries or asserting consent. So prevention isn't one size fits all. It's contextual. It's layered. And the stakes are real. A 2019 national survey of over 180,000 college students found that about 13% reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact involving force or incapacitation. Among undergraduate women, that number is closer to 26.4%. For undergraduate men, around 6.8 reported the same. These numbers are not edge cases. They're a reflection of what's happening in our classrooms, dorms, and communities. This has happened to us, and this is happening to our children. Today I'm honored to welcome Kelsey Banton to Catch Time with Cat. Kelsey has worked for over 20 years as an advocate, educator, and strategist in violence prevention, especially around consent boundaries and shifting culture. She's trained everyone from youth to law enforcement, and her work is rooted in trauma-informed intersectional approaches. She's also a mindfulness instructor and believes in creating compassionate emergent spaces where conversation around sex, power, and agency are not only possible but necessary. Hi, Kelsey. Hello, Katya.

SPEAKER_00: 7:54

I'm so excited to be here.

SPEAKER_03: 7:56

I'm so excited you're here. This is such a big and heavy topic. Let me start off by saying or asking what drew you to this work.

SPEAKER_00: 8:07

I want to start by recognizing that the heaviness is oftentimes can feel soul-crushing when we are by ourselves and when we do this by ourselves. And your uh introduction around the community and conversation around this is the most important part of how we really get to preventing this from happening in the first place. Um so I just really thank you for using that language and and really kind of like welcoming this environment for us to kind of like dig in and get to kind of sometimes again that uncomfortable piece, but when we do it together, it lifts so much of that off of our shoulders. I started this work in college. I was an individual who was very not directed for anything. I was a uh psychology major when everyone asked what I would do for a living. I was like, I'll be a professional bartender. And I'm not really sure. I had no real ambition. I had no real understanding of what my skill sets were and where I would land. And um, my best friend in college was volunteering at the Rape Crisis Center. And she asked me, Are you volunteering anywhere? And I said no. And she said, Do you want to try volunteering? And I was like, Shh, I can probably do that. And I am forever grateful to Candace for that. And she set me on a trajectory that has made my life um more meaningful, in my opinion, and has given given me so many tools to navigate my personal life, to raise my children, to have this professional space that I really get to talk with people about what they think about consent and cultural norms and how we negotiate those spaces with one another. And so um I started in crisis intervention. I started as a an as an advocate in hospitals. Um, after an individual experiences sexual assault, they now have 120 hours to go to a hospital and receive um what we call a safe, a sexual assault forensic examination. Wait, say that again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:34

What? No.

SPEAKER_00: 10:35

Which part?

SPEAKER_03: 10:37

If somebody has experienced sexual assault, they can ex they can what resource do they have?

SPEAKER_00: 10:42

Oh my goodness. Yes. Oh, I will stop me when I have said too much. Um so um in so the body is where all of the evidence is. And so there is 120 hours after an assault that a person can go to the hospital and they can ask for a sexual assault forensic examination.

SPEAKER_03: 11:06

I see, I see, I see, I see. My brain processed that differently.

SPEAKER_00: 11:09

Okay, so how many days is that? That's five days. Okay. That's right. And it's a great question. No, this is a I usually say five days, but because we're on a podcast, I thought it would be very specific and professional for you. So You are, you are. It's five days, and an individual can go and get that exam done. Importantly, just as like a resource for individuals who are listening, that exam um does not cost um the survivor anything in Texas. It's paid for by the crime victims compensation fund. And an individual does not have to file a police report to get that exam done. And there's so many important reasons for why Texas passed that law. We're very grateful for those types of laws being passed. Most people who are sexually assaulted know the person who sexually assaulted them. And to come forward and to go to the police and report against that person, that there's so many barriers. And so that's that that's gone. So um, why should somebody, I'm sorry to jump in.

SPEAKER_03: 12:06

Why should somebody go get an exam?

SPEAKER_00: 12:09

So oftentimes an individual is trying to navigate what to do and what those next steps are. And this is one of many, many steps that an individual could take because it allows the very highly trained nurses to collect evidence off of the body. And so they'll start at the top of the head and they'll work all the way down to the feet, and they'll do things like they'll comb through the hair on the top of the head or pubic hair, looking for um hair that doesn't belong to the person who experienced violence. If there was any scratching, they'll dig underneath fingernails. If the perpetrator put their mouth anywhere on the body, they're gonna swab that. And then if that individual is um not a minor, they are able to consent um to every part of this exam. But in particular, if there was any penetration, whether it was oral, anal, or vaginal, they'll do an examination as well to collect evidence and swab. They collect all of that evidence and then they hold it for up to two years. And that gives the person who experienced violence time and space to determine if they want to move forward and press charges. They don't have to make that decision on hour 10. They don't have to make that decision on hour 119. They get a they get a step away and really determine what's best for them and what they want. And so it gives them options and it gives them agency, it gives them access to potentially a process through the justice system. But throughout maybe this conversation, it's always, always going back to what access and agency did we give people?

SPEAKER_03: 13:44

Wow. Okay. So, listeners, stay with me. I'm gonna do like body checks on myself while we have this conversation, just so you know what that's like. My arms are tingly, I kind of feel my voice in my throat. I'm feeling very uncomfortable. Um, I am a grown woman.

unknown: 14:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:08

And I'm feeling very uncomfortable talking about this. I'm so going, it doesn't mean it's bad, it just means I'm not practiced at it. And these are hard things. So, listener, if you're feeling like this, you're not alone. These are not everyday conversations, but let me tell you why it's so valuable. Because you will know somebody who experiences something, and God forbid, it's I don't want you to ever have to have this information. But if you ever do need it, you now know, oh, this happened to so and so. They have five days to go to the hospital because when this happens to us, we are not fully present, like we're not our brain is not completely online. Um so having information before it's the fire is burning, so to speak, like knowing where the fire extinguisher is before the fire gets out of control is so important. And the tools that Kelsey's telling us today she's telling us where the fire extinguisher is. We hope we don't need it. But but just in case.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

Yeah. And even when we don't need it, the way in which we potentially will know someone who needs it is such a foundational part of this conversation because it is so prevalent. So I I appreciate you bringing in the body check. Something that's amazing about podcasts is that you get a press pause. Right? Yeah. You get a press pause and you get to go do something for you. You get to wind those shoulders. Yes. Uh you get a maybe never come back to this, or you get a come back in 45 minutes. Um what whatever it is that works for you, you have the ability to do that and please do that for yourself. You deserve, you deserve to be able to press pause and maybe never come back to this. And that's that's also okay.

SPEAKER_03: 16:11

Yeah, I totally agree. What does consent literacy mean?

SPEAKER_00: 16:20

So consent is the way in which we are agreeing to an activity fully, mutually, respectfully. Consent literacy is the way in which we consume information around us to be able to unpack and recognize if that is what's happening in those spaces. Can we identify what consent looks like? Can we suss out the context and environment that you were speaking to earlier, Katya, around maybe why maybe someone is acting a certain way, maybe why they are what we would call fawning. And so they're pretending to like something, they're pretending to engage in a behavior, whether that's flirting, whether that's kissing, whether that's sending nudes, um, because the reality is maybe that they're very, very afraid of what will happen if they don't do those things. Um, we are able to look at the environment and context to recognize and identify what is actually happening in that space. And sometimes, really importantly, when we're talking about sexual assault, sexual violence, we have to bring in coercion. We have to be talking about can we identify what coercion looks like in especially our social norms. And so coercion is the way in which someone is using manipulation and pressure to force someone to do something without ever using physical force. And statistically, that is how most sexual assaults happen. And so we have to sit with maybe some of the images maybe we've seen in movies, right? I can think of I'm a 90s girl, proudly. And I was left to my own devices uh from time to time with my TV. And let me tell you, if I can get a lifetime movie, Cinemax? Cinemax? At my grandma's Cinemax? Why do grandmas always have Cinemax? Because they know what's up. Because they know what's up. Yes, grandma had Cinemax indeed.

SPEAKER_03: 18:24

I Cinemax and Argos, I was like, whoa, this is some intense.

SPEAKER_00: 18:28

Am I learning? And and we were learning. Were we learning pleasure and consent that was mutual? No. Were we learning performance? Yes. Um, and when we talk about connection and we talk about how connection, whether you're having sex with someone one time or a thousand times, um caring that that person wants to be there, caring that that person is enjoying themselves and is is fully engaged, like that is the game changer, right? Um, this isn't about like hookups are bad. This isn't that sex with one person is bad. It is, do you care that that other person wants to be there and doing those things with you? Um and do you can you can you recognize when maybe they don't want to be doing maybe a certain sexual activity? Or when maybe they said they wanted to do something, but oh nope, now we're changing our mind because that's no longer something we're enjoying. And so really getting to what what type of things were did we do we consume and what are the messages it's sending us? And can we unpack that together?

SPEAKER_03: 19:38

Oh my God. I've really never thought about deep breath, everybody. I've never thought about the type of media I consumed as a child or you know, a young girl, and what I was learning from that. I mean, I had broken it apart in terms of, oh, I wanted to marry a prince, right? The like standard Disney prince. I am the little mermaid, I need a Prince Eric.

SPEAKER_00: 20:12

You know, this is like coming out of the water importantly to save me? Yes. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 20:17

My dad, King Triton, he's always against me and the boys, you know, whatever. So like I had unpacked that and then I just checked a box. I was like, that's okay, I know what's happening. Check. I I really never, I never went any, I never went past that point.

SPEAKER_00: 20:33

Yeah. Wow. It's so and when we talk about, you know, what are like action items that we can do with like young people, this is a huge place we can settle in. I uh I have two girls, and I cannot tell you how many times that we are just listening to music together, and there is a lyric in an in a somewhat benign, right, song, and there is a lyric or a type of way in which something is being referred to, and my kids know that it is an immediate pause and it is a it is a like, what are they talking about? What do they mean? And it's not, you know, Katya, like this is for me a really important piece of how we talk to youth, right? It is not, don't ever consume that. That's not that's not gonna happen. That's not realistic. It is we are consuming this. What is it telling you? Do you want that? Right. Do you want that experience? And maybe they're like, I don't know, right? Um, but maybe they're like, I think it's telling me that I should be behaving a certain way to get attention. And then we get to make and sometimes that conversation lasts for five seconds. Right. Uh, because they are uninterested. Um but it sometimes it can go deeper, um, right? What dystopian books are abound right now, and so many of those characters is the the conflict, love, hate uh between the like the protagonist and the antagonist. And it is the way in which like we hate each other so much, we must be having the best sex possible.

SPEAKER_03: 22:12

Uh listener, I am rolling my eyes here because this is the stuff, these are the topics that I unravel with clients session after session, what healthy love looks like and feels like versus this just completely inaccurate version of what healthy love is. Um, so there is this um Mexican singer, and his name is Luis Miguel. And I grew up on this guy, and he is just the king of Mexico. And his songs are pining. You know, he pines for his love and desperate and loves themselves.

SPEAKER_00: 22:54

Oh and loves them so deeply that he would write all these songs for them.

SPEAKER_03: 22:58

Oh my god, and I can't live without you. And I'm like, if somebody's telling you that, you'd better run the other way. Like, you don't want somebody to live, you want somebody to live without you. If there is a pining, that is an unhealthy dynamic. And so, but I grew up on that. That's something I had to unravel. I thought, oh, my partner will just want to need me like a bottle of whiskey.

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

Is that a lyric? I would love it if it did.

SPEAKER_03: 23:29

That's a country song.

SPEAKER_00: 23:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 23:30

So it's a lyric and a country song. I think it's a Tim McGraw song. Like I need not Tim. Not my first love Tim. Oh, so it's everywhere. It's a Mexican thing. It's a country thing. It's all it's in all the things. It's in all the things. Right. Yes. And so, okay. What you're saying is like, see it for what it is, acknowledge it, but don't just dive deep into it and think this is the way it is.

SPEAKER_00: 23:55

That's right. That's right. How do we open up the conversation, whether we're talking to my 14-year-old or whether we're talking to college students, or whether we're talking to adults, children or no children, how do we open up those conversations to critique what we're actually seeing and how that is deeply embedded in sometimes our social expectations when we arrive in places? And you hit it like, I mean, Katia, it's so it permeates. It is so deep in how we show up in our own personal spaces. And just to be able to like see how to undo some of that is work. It does not surprise me that like this is a component of what you spend time in in sessions, because these are messages we started receiving in five and six, right? And it's not importantly, it is not one message, one time. These do not exist in a vacuum. And so the culmination of how we see these from the time that we're watching Disney cartoons, which I love. I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a woman who will watch a Disney movie, um, but also throughout other components of our media throughout the rest of our lives. Like it all, it's all situated the same. And so we have to be able to kind of stop and be like, hold up, what you're saying is not actually something that when I experienced it felt good for me. It didn't serve me. It made me feel responsible for another person's behavior.

SPEAKER_03: 25:20

I even think that is significantly further along. Even knowing that it doesn't feel good for you requires a pause and awareness that most of us don't have. We're like, this is just the way it is. Like, good for me. Nobody's asking me if it's good.

SPEAKER_00: 25:37

It's just yeah. And you know, it goes back to what do we think we're allowed to ask? And what do we think we're allowed to say no to, which is inherent to consent. Do we believe that we get to say no to people when we have set up a space in which maybe it looked like we wanted to have sex with them, or we have agreed to maybe something sexual in the past, but we no longer want to do that thing anymore, right? It's so it is so pivotal to how we think about our own agency and our own ability to create a boundary. Um, that in a if it's if there is safety, you won't get punished for that. You won't get punished emotionally, and you won't get punished physically.

SPEAKER_03: 26:22

I also have two girls.

SPEAKER_00: 26:25

Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_03: 26:26

And they feel very comfortable saying no. To me, especially.

SPEAKER_00: 26:32

Always to the mamas. Because you give space for that.

SPEAKER_03: 26:36

I sure do. That's right. And even though that I pay the price for that in some ways as a mother, and a lot of ways as a mother, I I would rather that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 26:52

I didn't as a young girl, I grew up Mexican. I mean, I'm Mexican, but I grew up Catholic and we're very dutiful. We're very dutiful to our men. When I was dating my husband, my grandma came up behind me, Maya Wilita, and she pinched the fat on my arm, and she said, uh, sirvete a tu sirvete tu hani. She called him my honey. And what she meant was make him a plate of food. Mm-hmm.

unknown: 27:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:22

But I married a guy from Iowa, and he doesn't expect me to make him a plate of food. So I was like, What? Make him a plate of food? It's a grown man. He's 40 years old. Get up and go get your own plate of food. He wasn't even asking. And he was that's right. Yeah, it had nothing to do. It was a it was a it was woman to woman. That's right. That's right. And as progressive and brave and strong and just incredible, I wear her ring, I wear, I wear her on me, her spirit on me so much. Um that was a passing of the baton. I serve you serve. And don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for serving and sacrifice, but but the pause allows us to serve from a different place of intention. I'm happy to serve my husband a plate of food, but it's not about that. It's about the place where I'm coming from.

SPEAKER_00: 28:23

That's right. It's not expected.

SPEAKER_03: 28:25

Right. Am I doing it from worth or for worth? That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 28:28

That's exactly right. Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 28:31

Listener, I want you, I'm gonna ask you, invite you to recall a time when boundaries felt unclear to you. Did you get like a a a lump in your throat? Did your stummy start to feel weird? Did you have to go to the bathroom right away? So when boundaries feel unclear, it uh shows up in our body, but we can only really pay attention if we're paying attention. We can only really only feel it if we're paying attention. What did you say?

SPEAKER_00: 29:06

Yeah, I think when we talk about how it how our fear shows up in our body, it is sometimes incredibly challenging to recognize even what's happening because of what you were talking about earlier, Katia, of the amygdala and kind of what happens to our prefrontal cortex, right? I'm like when we so much of making sure that individuals are supported and believed is I, in my opinion, is understanding trauma and understanding trauma in the brain. Like there is a physiological response that is happening to an individual. No one is making an a decision. No one is saying, I'm going to do this because of this logically. There's no A B. It is your prefrontal cortex goes in the back seat, and our amygdala, which is, you know, the amygdala is our smoke detector. Our amygdala is constantly tagging things, making sure that we stay safe. And when we are in a place where we feel like our boundaries are being crossed, maybe we said what our boundary was and that person didn't care. Maybe we didn't say what that boundary was, but we have stopped moving. We have turned away. We have stopped making eye contact. Um, all of those things, right, um, are happening because now, now we're trying to stay alive. Now we're trying to survive in that moment. And your body is doing so many wonderful things for you to survive. Your body releases four different chemicals. One of them is oxytocin to make sure that if you were to experience pain, it's gonna alleviate that in the moment for you. So you're not feeling that. Um, so it's doing all of these beautiful things physiologically to your body. Um, and sometimes also those can be really confusing moments. So I I have a I've had a physiological response to like arousal that also looked really similar to when I was scared. Um, and my my whole body shivers. And it shivers in a way that is so uncontrollable. It like it was embarrassing in the moment in which I was like experiencing arousal. Um, but when I was afraid, I it made the other person stop because of how like tremendous the con like like the body, my body was just moving. Um, and so it's also just recognizing that like say again, like like safety is a key component here. Um, and when an individual feels it in their body, there is, in my opinion, I have an expectation when I have conversations with youth or with college students or with adults, I have expectations that we become a little bit more responsible to being able to like watch that person and notice when maybe we see some of those things happening.

SPEAKER_03: 31:57

Thank you for sharing that personal experience. I think that that's gonna help a lot of people. I will add to your personal experience with my own. Um listener, I'm about to share some hard stuff, but like I said, I've shared it in books before. I've done a lot of therapy work on it, and so I'm not sharing from a place of woundedness, I'm sharing from a place of resolve. I've worked a lot on this. So when I was in undergraduate school, I was sexually assaulted and I didn't tell anybody. And um, nobody didn't tell anybody. And he was a football player, not to blame anybody, but um there were many power dynam not to not blame, what's the word? Um pigeonhole, stereotype, anything like that. Um I'm more explaining that in terms of power dynamics. Like I thought he was so cool. And yeah. So um he invited me to his dorm room to study. And then uh he had other plans. So that was my first time. Didn't tell anybody, didn't get help because I didn't know, I didn't I literally had no clue what to do or say.

SPEAKER_01: 33:23

Like zero.

SPEAKER_03: 33:25

Um then it happened again in graduate school in another city, and this time, listener, I'm gonna share something so personal, but I need you to hear it because I think it will help a lot of people. I went into something called fawning, and I didn't fight, and I didn't say no. And in that moment, my body made a decision. Like the easiest way for her to get out of this is to accept it. And so I did. But it took me, listener, 17 years to figure out that that's what happened. Seventeen years. Not of thinking about it every day, but of going back to it and it not quite feeling right, and not quite, I didn't I didn't want to call it rape because it didn't feel like that. And I felt complicit and it was just so incredibly confusing. Um that time, thank God, I told my mom and she got me the help that I needed. So, um thanks, Mom.

SPEAKER_00: 34:44

Thanks, Mom. Yeah, thanks, Mom. Thanks, Mom. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 34:48

We were in Dillard's looking at earrings, and I didn't I didn't have the courage to look at her in the eyes. I just stared stayed looking at the earrings and I said, Hey, this happened. She said, Okay. She got me the help. So if you're out there and if that has happened to you, if you've gone into Fawn, it's very confusing. Very confusing. And this is part of the healing work I do with clients all the time. I don't think it's any coincidence that I do a lot of sexual trauma work in my therapy because I've been through it, I've worked through it. And I know how heavy and confusing it can feel. And I literally can't imagine what my life would have been like if I would have known somebody like you or attended a program like that back then. Like I just had no language.

unknown: 35:46

That's right.

SPEAKER_03: 35:47

No language for it. I just kind of was like a weird Easter egg hunt over the decades.

SPEAKER_00: 35:52

That's right. Of trying to navigate a circumstance and an experience that no one put words around. And honestly, even beyond that, uh potentially went out of their way not to talk about it. The way in which the silence assumes the shame that survivors experience. Thank you, Katia. Thank you so much for sharing that right now. I I appreciate how when we're having these harder conversations and we're talking about it, we know that when we uh use our own stories, we also are able to have people relate to those experiences. And people oftentimes will understand sexual assault through people's stories. We can give definitions. I love a definition. I always give a definition. And we have to center experiences of what people what people go through because that is how people make connection to maybe what happened to them or what maybe could happen or what they hear happen. When we have conversations, um like when I have college conversations with college students, one of the ways in which I always appreciate those experiences is that we have to be able to be comfortable talking about the ordinary and the way in which people have women are so disproportionately affected by sexual assault their freshman year. They actually researchers actually have a term for it. Af advocates and educators and activists didn't create the term. The researchers who do the work were so alarmed by how disproportionate the rate of sexual assaults were for women that they called it the red zone. And it is the first eight weeks when individuals arrive their first and second semester on a college campus.

SPEAKER_02: 37:50

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 37:51

And it is alarming. It is it is the highest rate of sexual assaults among a group that exists on a college campus.

SPEAKER_02: 37:58

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 37:59

And so so much of this is unpacking this is something that is happening to a lot of individuals on college campuses. And there is a incredibly just anger-filled moment for me before I do presentations sometimes of how ordinary that can feel. But we also have to talk about the exceptional, and we also have to talk about how these are experiences that people never ever came to campus thinking they would have. And now they have to navigate this whole new community, they have to navigate new friend groups, they have to navigate their academic success around this tremendously traumatic experience. And most people don't tell anyone. That's also part of the ordinary, right? The way in which we know most people don't tell anyone. Most people don't have the language to sometimes even start those conversations. When I sometimes sit down with a college student who um discloses that they've experienced sexual assault, stalking, dating, violence, I anecdotally I have found that a majority of the sentences start off with, I feel crazy. Because they are trying to reconcile what happened in an environment that maybe doesn't feel welcoming and they don't know where to go, and they maybe don't have the information of how to get those resources. So it's a really, really incredible story for you to share that to really help contextualize what that looks like for people. So I really appreciate you sharing.

SPEAKER_03: 39:40

You're welcome. Something that I feel the need to say is that this happens to us no matter if our parents love us or not. No matter if they're texting us or sending us care packages, or if we have a warm bed to go home to. So it's not about bad parenting. It's not about not being loved. It's not about that. And so I think for all of us listening, I would venture to say everybody listening, you're a good parent. You're doing it. You got this. It's not that our love it's that part of our love for our children needs to be having these conversations when they go off to college, and I'm sure before, but especially when they're leaving the home. This is part of the way that we love them. That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 40:42

And I and I'm I'll push that a little bit further. We've been talking a lot about the people who experience the violence. And sometimes what we tend to do in our culture is we don't have conversations about the people who potentially cause harm. And so much about how we stop. Let me let me go back. How we stop this from happening is we talk about the people who cause harm. When we talk about what does it look like to objectify other people? What does it look like to not care about people's boundaries? What does it look like to not care that that person wants to be doing that thing sexually with you, or even non-sexually, right? When we talk about like how we take this to like a sixth, seventh grade conversation, let's talk about how we just respect boundaries outside of sex. And so much of prevention is that we've been telling historically women how to prevent sexual assault from happening since the 80s. And the numbers haven't changed, Gatia. One in four women and one in sixteen men will experience an attempted or sexual assault before they graduate from their institution. And that number hasn't changed since we started collecting the data in the early 80s. And to be fair, I want to say that we also didn't start collecting data on men until the mid-90s, and that just speaks to how like getting data around men is so challenging and there are so many barriers. But I just want to say that we cannot it. That's not it.

SPEAKER_03: 42:05

We need to fold in the rest.

SPEAKER_00: 42:06

We have to be having and what happens, right, when we're talking about a heterosexual like couple who are wanting to have sex with another, what we've essentially done is we've said you are on opposing teams, and one of you needs to be really scared of the other one. And one of you needs to make sure that you don't trust the other one at all. And you need to show up and you need to not give in, and you need to be clear about your boundaries, and you need to make really good eye contact and you need to know yourself, and that protects you. And that is all rooted in falsehood. Those are all myths, right? Most people who are sexually assaulted are sexually assaulted from someone that they know. And so they like them, they're attracted to them, right? Um we tend to talk about people who abuse other people as if they're like scary individuals in the monster, like monsters waiting to like jump out at us. I'll never forget, I was uh when I was in college, um, I was a I'm a runner. And so when I was in college, I would go running at 10 30 at night. That was my peak workout hour, Katia. To be young, to have time. And so I would run outside and I would go running at 10:30. Um, my dad and I um were runners together. It's one of our tethers to each other. It's a very important part of how we connected. And so I would call him sometimes after my run, which sometimes would be 11:30, 1145. And one time he was just like, Are you are you running by yourself? And I'm like, I am. And he's like, Do you have headphones in? I was like, 100% I have headphones in. I could never. And he was so angry at me, got dead. He was and not only because you were unsafe. Uh not only the way in which like I put myself in a position that he thought was bad, but it's like I raised you better than that, right? Like this real in which like I did all of this work to keep you safe. And you're just with both hands, just like throwing that out the window because you don't listen to me per usual, Kelsey. And it was such a moment of like reconciling for myself of how to be able to move with freedom and how to be able to not change my behavior. Wow. So I could be just like everyone else I knew, right? But importantly men who were able to go running at 10 30 at night and never be asked, What are you doing?

SPEAKER_03: 44:28

Why are you being so dumb? I can say with like clear certainty, I'm not there.

SPEAKER_00: 44:32

That's fair.

SPEAKER_03: 44:33

I'm not even I am nowhere near that.

SPEAKER_00: 44:36

But that's so Katya, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_03: 44:38

Nowhere. I listener, I need you to know, I still think about if I'm gonna go somewhere, like just somewhere, I don't know. I'll think pants or dress. And I will put on pants as a way to keep myself extra safe. That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 44:55

I Katya, I do uh I do an exercise with students and I ask them, have you ever woken up in the morning, gotten dressed, looked in the mirror, thought about your day, and changed to ensure that you would be protecting yourself from harm. And nine if I'm talking to uh a room of individuals who identify as women, like 99% of them say yes. Um the way in which like I don't put my hair in a ponytail when I go for a run, Kelsey. Um I keep my thumb above the 911 number on my cell phone as I'm walking from one dark location to another dark location. Um the way in which I invoke having a boyfriend when I feel uncomfortable, because the fact that I have a boyfriend prevents you.

SPEAKER_03: 45:40

It protects you.

SPEAKER_00: 45:40

Yeah, like my boundaries don't matter. But if a man's boundaries for me, is that is that what do I need to invoke a man being with me for you to respect my boundary? And the answer is yes for a lot of people. And so so much of so that's like that is a c we do that because we protect ourselves. And so so much of these conversations, it's like, and those don't protect us.

SPEAKER_03: 46:02

Right. And we need to do the hard work of, you know, I'm of a generation where I'm probably gonna wear, I'm gonna think about wearing pants. You know, like I'm 42, I'm gonna wear pants. But I also need to be active and proactive about changing it, not just like quote unquote protecting myself, changing the cultural landscape, um, which is double the work. Oh, it's Katia. I go ahead. But also you said something really interesting about the 911 and the ponytail, which I don't do, but I'm sure I do other things. So, listener, I am sure that if you're still with us, God bless you. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. I mean, my heart is racing. But how many of these things do are just we don't even think about anymore? We just do because we're like, oh, this is how this is how we keep ourselves safe. They're just baked into our day. And we're not even conscious of these protections. That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 47:18

And I and I just, you know, really quickly want to go back to they are things that we do that make us responsible if we experience harm. So the second half of that conversation is, well, why did you wear that skirt, Katya?

SPEAKER_01: 47:32

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:33

Right? Why did you drink so much? Why did you not know what your limits were before you knew your limits? The the conversation around alcohol and knowing your limits for me is like I can I'll I won't talk all day, but I can talk all day about like people don't know their limits until they're starting to try their limits. Like that's how that works, right? And so all of that victim-blaming language comes in really quickly. And the crux of it is that that person could have been doing everything right, quote unquote right, and they still could have experienced a sexual assault because that is not what causes a sexual assault to happen. A person decided to do that to another person. But we require perfect victims in our society. We require that you be sober, no alcohol, no cannabis. We require you to um be with a group of people. We require that you have not talked about sex or liking sex or enjoying sex, maybe with random men or people.

SPEAKER_03: 48:26

We require full nunhood.

SPEAKER_00: 48:28

We require purity imperfection. And so we we just spiral very, very quickly in how we show up for people who experience violence and not in a way that's helpful for them. Because we don't, because again, we don't talk about the people who cause harm. We make excuses for them, we justify that behavior. I did it even in this episode. When?

SPEAKER_03: 48:50

I mean, we're gonna wrap soon. And I really didn't spend time on that. Oh, and so I'm gonna think about that. This is like a meta conversation here. I have this platform and I thought about one side, I didn't think about the other side.

SPEAKER_00: 49:08

I I also I appreciate that so much because it says that like I still get to do my job, which I'm really happy to do. But it's it's this, it's this whole other swell, Katya, that I think that like you're right. Like we don't spend enough time on it. And so every time there is a famous person who gets accused of sexual assault, um, what I always look for are who were the people in their lives that knew about it and facilitated it or excused it and laughed about it and allowed it to happen. We should be talking about all of that as well. Um, but what we tend to do is we tend to act like that is a bad apple conversation. And there were all of these things that this person who experienced violence should have done. And so my job every day is to switch that script.

SPEAKER_03: 49:51

Wow. Oh my God. Okay, listener, let's do a body check right before we wrap. Um, I'm nervous, my heart is racing. Um, I'm I've been uncomfortable the whole time. I've been uncomfortable the whole time. Uh listener, I need you to know that as a host of this show, I take my responsibility so seriously, and I'm thinking about my children, your children, your heart, my heart, our partners. My head is hot right now. And yet I think it's important. You know, this isn't nearly as far as I could push it. But this is this was my first step.

SPEAKER_00: 50:38

Yeah, I was gonna say, we all we all have to start somewhere. And I like for me, like the takeaway, sometimes we have these conversations and people get really frustrated for a lot of different reasons. I haven't been thinking about this, or you just gave me so much information, and it's actually like information overload, which is valid and fair. Um, and so for me, simple takeaway from this conversation, which I loved, and I just thank you so much for having me here. So glad you're just you're so amazing, and you did such an amazing job. Um, like navigating these conversations went in discomfort, right? Like recognizing that like you uh as you were uncomfortable, Katya, you still kept asking questions. And that's the takeaway. Every person has an opinion about this. No one comes to the table a blank slate. No one. We all have opinions about sexual violence. And our ability to sit across from each other and have those conversations with a full, honest, open understanding of that I want to know what you think, and I want to know what how you think we can move forward. We have to, it's done in conversation. You cannot prevent violence from happening in quiet circles when you're gonna be able to do that. Theoretically, yeah, or at your desk by yourself with a with a theoretical model, which I love theoretical models, but you have to you have to be in conversation. That's how we prevent violence from happening. So thank you for putting it in conversation.

SPEAKER_03: 52:07

Wow, Kelsey. Oh my gosh. This was amazing. This was so amazing. What I'm taking away from today is prevention isn't just policy. It's about conversation, it's about being personal, it's about moving through this discomfort, giving us language, empathy, structure, and boundaries and consent are ongoing and relational practices. Thank you for your clarity, your compassion, your bravery. Thanks for being brave with me.

SPEAKER_00: 52:44

Yes, thank you. I mean, brave together. Yeah. That's how I always have to remind my daughters that like your bravery is not in, is not siloed, right? Yeah. You other people watch and you absorb. And it's the way in which like you you hold hands even in a non-physical way to do things together. So thank you. In a consenting way. In a consenting, can I hold your hand? Sometimes my daughter's like, no, it's sweaty.

SPEAKER_03: 53:13

Listener, thank you for your bravery and for your courage. I know that this was a topic that is not easy to listen to or talk about or think about. Um, but even if you listen to a part of it, I I just thank you. I thank you for your openness and your willingness to do uncomfortable things from time to time. May you trust your voice, honor your boundaries, and remember you are not alone. Take good care of yourself. Thank you for spending this time with me. If something from today's conversation resonated, or if you're in a season where support would help, visit me at gattheahhallam.com. That's C-A-T-I-A-H-O-L-M.com. You can also leave an anonymous question for the show by calling or texting. 956-249-7930. I'd love to hear what's on your heart. If Couch Time with Cat has been meaningful to you, it would mean so much if you'd subscribe, rate, and leave a review. It helps others find us and it grows this community of care. And if you know someone who needs a little light right now, send them this episode. Remind them they're not alone. Until next time, be gentle with yourself. Keep showing up and know I'm right here with you.