Fresh Take: Meg Stone on Campus Sexual Violence and Empowerment Self-Defense

This episode includes discussion of rape and sexual assault.

As parents, we have been horrified by the reports of sexual violence on Cornell’s campus in 2024, and dismayed that so little seems to have changed since we were in college ourselves. How do we teach our children to protect themselves from sexual violence on campus? And how mad do we get to be at the institutions that still aren’t protecting them?

On this episode we interview violence prevention expert Meg Stone, executive director of IMPACT Boston and author of The Cost of Fear: Why Most Safety Advice is Sexist, and How We Can Stop Gender-Based Violence and Don’t Fight Back and 10 Other Myths About Crime, Personal Safety, and Gender-Based Violence.

This conversation explores why sexual violence is usually committed by someone the victim knows, why common safety advice can be both ineffective and victim-blaming, and what research says about empowerment-based prevention.

Meg also discusses practical skills, boundary setting, bystander responsibility, and the role parents and institutions can play—without placing responsibility for violence on those targeted.

We discuss:

• Why the “stranger jumping out of the bushes” is a misleading picture of sexual violence
• Why one-time online campus trainings often fail to change behavior
• How victim-blaming has shaped conversations about sexual violence
• What empowerment-based self-defense programs teach—and why practice matters
• How stress can make it harder to respond in the moment
• Why refusal skills and boundary setting can be protective
• How friends, bystanders, and institutions can interrupt abuse
• Where families can look for empowerment self-defense and comprehensive sex education

The conversation emphasizes practicing refusal and interruption under stress, bystander responsibility, and finding trainings via the Empowerment Self-Defense Alliance and the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation.

Here’s where you can find Meg Stone’s work and the resources mentioned:

• Impact Boston: impactboston.org
• Meg Stone: megstone.org
• Empowerment Self-Defense Alliance: https://www.empowermentsd.org/
• National Women’s Martial Arts Federation: https://nwmaf.org/
• The Cost of Fear by Meg Stone
• Don’t Fight Back and 10 Other Myths About Crime, Personal Safety, and Gender-Based Violence by Meg Stone
• Sexual Citizens by Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan

If you or someone you love has been impacted, help is available. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE or by texting "START" to 88788. RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-HOPE.

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What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

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