While teaching a unit on harassment and prevention to a health class of 11-and-12-year-olds, Salisbury asked her students to work in groups to define three words: respect, boundaries and consent. During the next class, they were given different scenarios illustrating sexual harassment and asked to imagine what could be done differently. She then asked them each to write a reflection on how best to prevent sexual harassment.
Out of 26 students, 22 said that the best way to prevent sexual harassment was to avoid dressing inappropriately. But this idea hadn’t come up in class once.
“I tried to debunk it with them, but they were so quiet. Because no one had ever told them that this actually wasn’t an acceptable way to frame sexual harassment. All of the messaging they had gotten up to this point was, you have to protect yourself, and this is how,” she said.

When the LGBT community is not united with social movements that address the issues facing the most marginalized LGBT people, with racial justice proponents (proportionally more people of color identify as queer), with those fighting against systemic poverty, with pacifists, are we really making any progress? Or has the LGBT movement been kidnapped by power elites advocating for their own interests? The dilemma is reminiscent of an image circling some corners of the web: A white gay male couple superimposed over the Human Rights Campaign red equality symbol that dominated Facebook during the gay marriage Supreme Court hearings.