Be A Swede
Chanel Miller, the survivor of sexual assault on the Stanford University campus in 2015, has released her painful and beautifully crafted memoir titled, Know My Name. She has written about the physical and emotional trauma she suffered and the ongoing struggles that any survivor endures.
Although Miller became further victimized by public criticism and the court system that demonizes sexual assault survivors, the game changer for her was the intervention of two Swedish graduate students, who discovered the assault in progress. The Swedes halted the assault, preventing further damage; they then chased and detained the assailant until the police arrived. Without their involvement, the outcome would have been far worse and the assailant likely would not have been apprehended.
Borne of their intervention, the hashtag Be A Swede went viral. If we are to survive the madness of verbal and physical assaults on innocents, we must all be ready to intervene. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recognizes this with their slogan, “If you see something, say something.”
Why We Don’t Help
Why many of us look the other way when someone needs our help is complicated. Every media story that reports of Good Samaritans, who interceded and became victims themselves, reinforces our behavior to look the other way, mind our own business.
One story that rocked my foundation occurred on a light-rail train in Portland Oregon in 2017. Two men confronted a White Supremacist/Neo Nazi, who was verbally accosting two teenage girls wearing head scarves. The White Supremacist turned on the men and fatally stabbed them. Senseless tragedies like this one bolster our fear of helping an innocent being assaulted by a stranger, who may have a weapon.
The Bystander Effect
The brutal murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 spawned a wave of social psychology studies and experiments to determine why others don’t help strangers in need. Genovese was stabbed multiple times outside her Queens, NY apartment building. News sources reported that 38 neighbors heard Genovese’s cries for help but no one intervened or even called the police. Although this account has largely been refuted (a number of neighbors reported that they did, in fact, call the police), the bystander effect was coined shortly after this tragedy.
The bystander effect comes into play when the presence of others discourages any individual from taking action in an emergency. According to this theory, the greater the number of witnesses, the less likely any one person will intervene. The notion is that people believe someone else has or will help.
The bystander effect has been replicated in numerous social psychology studies over the years, but anecdotal stories of strangers helping those in need are also evidenced. Certainly, stories about strangers assisting others during natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, fires) are numerous. Nevertheless, strangers intervening in one-on-one assaults don’t seem to make it into the media reports to a great extent.
A more recent study reported in the American Psychologist (June 2019) used surveillance cameras in three different cities across the globe to document real life situations where strangers witnessed public conflict. The study revealed that when someone was in distress, regardless of the number of bystanders or the level of distress, strangers helped nine times out of ten. The takeaway is that people are willing to self-police to protect others and their communities, debunking the widely-held belief in the bystander effect.
Does Culture Matter?
Because Chanel Miller’s heroes are often referred to as “the Swedes,” I wondered if their cultural background had something to do with their instinct to help. If two graduate students from anywhere in the U.S., had witnessed a man writhing on top of a motionless woman, would they have intervened or looked the other way?
We know that Sweden is considered one of the most egalitarian cultures in the world. They are renowned for their gender equality programs and recently strengthened legislation to support rape survivors. Our American culture greatly lags behind in this arena.
Whether or not culture played a role in changing the outcome of Miller’s assault, emulating the Swedish sense of justice is crucial if we are to move beyond victim-blaming. #BeASwede is a good reminder for all of us to say and DO something to help others in need.
Although written with tragic irony, the famous line spoken by Blanche DuBois, the fictional character in A Streetcar Named Desire, sums up my faith in and hope for my fellow travelers: