Action Toolkit Table of Contents

BreakthroughU: Action Toolkit Table of ConTenTs Introduction ......................................................................................................................3 Glossary ............................................................................................................................4 Characters ........................................................................................................................6 Sites of Culture The Home ...................................................................................................................8 The Locker Room ..................................................................................................... 11 The Hallway ..............................................................................................................14 The Bathroom ..........................................................................................................17 The Counseling Center ............................................................................................20 Concept Briefs Intersectionality .......................................................................................................23 Gender Norms and Violence ...................................................................................25 Culture Change ........................................................................................................28 Puppets, Media, & Culture (or, why puppets?)............................................................32 Resources .......................................................................................................................34 2 InTroduCTIon What is BreakthroughU? BreakthroughU follows four college students, Sam, Norma, Norm, and Oscar, as they navigate their lives, identities, relationships, and activities on campus. A three-part narrative video series, BreakthroughU uses puppets to explore intersectionality, gender norms, and culture change. These concepts are central to Breakthrough’s mission and theory of change. By unpacking these broad, theoretical concepts using relatable themes, the series empowers its audience to take action to change the culture of violence in their communities. In addition to bringing the concepts of intersectionality, gender norms, and culture change to life within the specifc campus environment at BreakthroughU, the videos explore instances of gender based discrimination and violence as they commonly occur in college life. By playing out these scenarios involving Norm, Norma, Sam, and Oscar, the videos address a range of issues, including intimate partner violence (in heterosexual and LGBTQ couples); non-consensual image sharing; sexual harassment; discrimination against gender nonconforming and transgender people; hypermasculinity; and gender policing. These videos connect the dots between the culture we learn, practice, and create; gender norms; and the individual and collective power we all have to challenge and transform culture and create change in our communities. Why a toolkit? We created this toolkit for YOU. It’s a guide for students, facilitators, organizations, and partners with ways you can use the BreakthroughU video series to navigate complex conversations around gender norms, intersectionality, and culture change. This toolkit supplements the narrative and characters from the videos by offering discussion questions, interactive activities with simple instructions for facilitators of all levels, and a menu of actions to create change in your communities. The toolkit is organized into sections that correspond to common locations on college campuses in order to encourage students and facilitators to break down the silos separating issue areas, and instead look holistically at the way our culture supports and enables all forms of gender- based violence. You’ll also fnd a glossary of terms and a list of resources Breakthrough offers to support you in your next steps. These include an action hotline to support your activism, a digital storytelling platform (THE G WORD), and a curated action center on our website. For those looking for an in-depth analysis of Breakthrough’s perspective on intersectionality, gender norms, and culture change, this toolkit also includes comprehensive essays on these subjects. Please do let us know how you’re using this toolkit to enact change and spark powerful conversations in your community by emailing us at [email protected] or contacting us on Twitter at @BreakthroughUS. What is Breakthrough? Breakthrough is a global human rights organization that uses media, art, and technology along with community mobilization and leadership development to make gender-based violence unacceptable. We invest in young people’s capacity to create iconic, disruptive change to the cultures, language, attitudes, and everyday actions that perpetuate gender-based violence in college life. We view students as experts, and work with them to identify and design challenges to the norms and practices considered most harmful in a given campus culture. Breakthrough’s methodology works by shifting individual hearts and minds, and emboldening people to transform norms and practices in their homes, communities, and the institutions to which they belong. Breakthrough uses culture to change culture in order to end gender-based discrimination and violence. 3 Glossary In this toolkit, we use quite a few terms related to gender that we would like to go over now, so we can all be oriented from the same understanding. This is not an exhaustive list of terms, so feel free to add to them as you lead your own workshops or discussions. Biological Sex Think the “sex of the person” assigned at birth. A medical term designating a certain combination of gonads, chromosomes, external gender organs, secondary sex characteristics and hormonal balances. Common terms are “male,” “female” and “intersex.” [Source] Culture Culture is the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of a society. It’s lifestyles, value systems, beliefs, and practices. It’s the narrative we’re immersed in every day. It’s how we make sense of the world. It’s our stories, our humor, our collective experiences, and understanding of our world. And none of us inhabits just one culture: you might swim in a tasty soup of your religious culture, your urban/suburban/rural culture, your school or workplace culture, your country’s culture, and the culture(s) of your hobbies and interests: cooking, cricket, Comic Con. But culture is not static. We don’t just passively consume it. We create it. So we also have the power to change it. Culture drives the way we treat each other: what’s “normal,” what’s acceptable. And sometimes we need to change that. And when we do, we can build homes, families, communities, and institutions where dignity, equality, and justice—the core values of human rights—carry the day. We can begin in our own spheres. That’s why, and how, human rights start with you. [Source] You can learn more about how we all can change culture in our essay on page 28. Gender Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Behavior that is compatible with cultural expectations is referred to as gender-normative; behaviors that are viewed as incompatible with these expectations constitute gender non- conformity. [Source] Genderfuid Genderfuid is an umbrella term for transsexuals, cross-dressers (transvestites), transgenderists, genderqueers, and people who identify as neither female nor male and/or as neither a man or as a woman. Genderqueer Genderqueer refers to a person whose gender identity is neither man nor woman, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders. This identity is usually related to or in reaction to the social construction of gender, gender stereotypes and the gender binary system. Some genderqueer people identify under the transgender umbrella while others do not. [Source] Gender Expression Simply put, gender expression is the way in which a person expresses their gender identity through clothing, behavior, posture, mannerisms, speech patterns, activities and more. This can 4 change over time – day by day and even hour by hour. These gender expressions sometimes have descriptive names like “femme” or “masculine” or “soft butch” to correspond with how they are perceived and distinguished socially and culturally. Gender Identity An individual’s internal sense of gender, which may or may not be the same as one’s gender assigned at birth. Some gender identities are “woman,” “transman,” and “agender,” but there are many more. Since gender identity is internal, it isn’t necessarily visible to others. Additionally, gender identity is often confated with sex, but they are separate concepts. [Source] Gender Norms Gender Norms refer to social attitudes about what behaviors, preferences, products, professions, or knowledge are appropriate for women and men. Gender norms draw upon and reinforce gender stereotypes, which are widely held, idealized beliefs about women and men, femininities and masculinities. Gender norms and behaviors are produced through social institutions (such as families, schools, workplaces, laboratories, universities, or boardrooms) and wider cultural products (such as textbooks, literature, flm, and video games). [Source] To learn more about gender norms and how they affect our culture, check out our essay on page 25. Intersectionality

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