Iowa Western Community College

The Hook-Up engages audiences in a facilitated discussion about hooking-up, sexual assault and bystander intervention. It begins with a discussion on how gender stereotypes contribute to rape culture and harm survivors. Next, the program unpacks the practice of hooking-up, and identifies the differences between a healthy hook-up, a regretted hook-up and a sexual assault. The program explores the research of Dr. David Lasik and examines how perpetrators’ modus operandi is often masked by the norms of contemporary hook-up culture. This discussion is critical because it provides the opportunity to break through the myth that rape is really just a regretted sexual experience. When we can discuss what healthy, consensual sex looks like in contrast to the methods perpetrators use, there is no confusion between healthy sex and rape. Finally, the program closes using the information we have learned about perpetrators’ motives and behaviors in order to devise successful bystander intervention strategies, and decrease out community’s tolerance for sexual predation.