F eminism

&
Article
Psychology
Feminism & Psychology
2019, Vol. 29(3) 391–408
Bystanders in ‘‘sketchy’’ ! The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0959353518821150
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‘‘girl,’’ the ‘‘guy,’’ and

themselves
Sharon Lamb
University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

Leah Attwell
Plymouth University, UK

Abstract
In this paper we explore through discourse analysis the written personal narratives
(vignettes) of ‘‘sketchy’’ sexual situations that students found themselves in as bystan-
ders. We asked for these vignettes in a larger study examining the relationships between
moral judgment/reasoning and intervening or not in situations of potential sexual
assault. Through a Foulcauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), we explore in these narra-
tives discursive constructions, positioning of potential victims, potential perpetrators,
and bystanders of sexual assault, as well as the action orientations these discourses
suggest, and the implications for rape prevention programs.

Keywords
bystanders, sexual assault, discourse analysis, narratives, Boston, MA

Sexual assault on college and university campuses is a significant problem. A 2016

US Bureau of Justice survey of nine schools found 3 to 20 per cent of female
undergraduates experienced a completed sexual assault in college on campus,
with only 12.5 per cent of these reported (Krebs et al., 2016). Another recent
study across 27 institutions of higher education found 12 per cent of students
experienced non-consensual penetration or sexual touching by force or

Corresponding author:
Sharon Lamb, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA,
USA.
Email: Sharon.lamb@umb.edu
392 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

incapacitation, with female students and transgender/genderqueer/nonconforming

students reporting the highest rates (Cantor et al., 2015).
Colleges and universities in the US are now required to offer programming to
prevent sexual assault, although students complete these programs on a voluntary
basis and many are one-off experiences, even though the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC, 2014) in the US has also warned that brief one-time interventions
are not effective (DeGue, 2014). Most sexual assault prevention programs are edu-
cational and address potential victims and perpetrators (Dills, Fowler, & Payne,
2016). But many campuses have also started to include bystander-focused training
programs in which students are encouraged and taught to intervene when they see a
potential assault occurring and also to speak up when they see individuals acting on
campus in such a way that gives passive permission for such assaults (Katz &
Moore, 2013; Moynihan & Banyard, 2008). This latter goal is often referred to
as addressing ‘‘rape culture.’’
Rape culture is a concept that developed out of 1970s feminism that implicated
‘‘normal gender relations’’ in the ‘‘maintenance and support of rape,’’ i.e. cultural
scaffolding (Gavey, 2005, p. 30). The idea grew and took hold in mainstream
psychology and sociology, including concepts such as ‘‘rape myth acceptance,’’
which argued that myths about how rapes occur, what constitutes rape, and who
is responsible, perpetuate the public’s passive acceptance of rape and contribute to
the lack of legal remedies (Burt, 1980). In her original definition of rape myths,
Burt used as an example the following belief, which applies to current hookup
culture: ‘‘if a woman gets drunk at a party and has intercourse with a man she’s
just met there, she should be considered ‘fair game’ to other males at the party who
want to have sex with her too whether she wants to or not’’ (p. 223).
Today, support of rape culture also exists in the form of slut shaming where
young women on campus are judged using gendered moralist norms, while also
being seen as fully agentic (Bay-Cheng, 2015). The sexual agency accorded to
young women is undermined by a ‘‘normative space that divides them from one
another, compels self-blame, and predicates their worth on cultural appraisals of
their sexuality’’ (Bay-Cheng, 2015, p. 279). Ringrose and Reynold (2012) also point
out that labeling a young woman a slut is not only a sexist act, given males are still
protected from this shaming, but a deeply classed discourse, wherein young women
from less privileged classes are more vulnerable to being shamed than others, and
the words used (e.g. ‘‘trashy’’) evoke hate language commonly used for lower class
women. Both rape myths and slut shaming serve as excuses for rape.
The recent focus on campus culture may have brought renewed interest in how
rape culture is supported by institutions, whether through ‘‘campus climate,’’
‘‘hookup culture,’’ ‘‘slut shaming,’’ or whether it is combatted by the more
recent political activism around #metoo. Bystander training, because it focuses
outside the protected he said/she said space, may be able to address rape culture
on campuses. When bystanders step in, they make the status quo of gendered social
relations less acceptable or unacceptable.
Even though some sexual assault prevention programs, including some bystan-
der intervention training programs, are effective in producing attitude change
Lamb and Attwell 393

(e.g. Cissner, 2009; Moynihan & Banyard, 2008; Senn et al., 2015), save for one
rape prevention program (Senn et al, 2015), most do not typically result in fewer
sexual assaults (Anderson & Whiston, 2005; Katz & Moore, 2013). A more recent
analysis particular to bystander intervention campaigns suggests that they are
rarely effective in preventing rape on campus although they may change attitudes
(Jouriles, Krauss, Vu, Banyard, & McDonald, 2018). This unfortunate finding
suggests that rape culture is difficult to change via simple educational campaigns,
that patriarchy is hard to change in a semester or two, or that bystanders even
when well-trained can do little to prevent sexual assault.
Yet, it may be that we need to know more about how bystanders think and
construct the situations they find themselves in to improve bystander intervention
training. Changing rape myth acceptance is a start but understanding the gendered
norms that bystanders work with in sketchy sexual situations may lead to different
kinds of trainings. In the current research, we were interested in the way college
students construct the sketchy sexual situation and how these constructions relate
to intervening and also betray attitudes, perceptions, and norms that are gendered
and could maintain the unequal treatment of women and men on campus. We were
open to the idea that constructing the ‘‘sketchy’’ situation in ways that encouraged
intervening might also, unwittingly, still support rape culture.
To this end we used a form of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis as outlined by
Willig (2013) to understand how students construct the ‘‘sketchy’’ situations they
were in when they needed to decide whether to intervene or not. In the following
analysis, we focus primarily on how participants position the subjects in their
narratives as well as themselves as bystanders.

Methods
Sample
The sample was a diverse cohort of students attending an urban, public university in
the US. The university is a commuter campus and so the narratives that students
provided were about situations that occurred off campus. This is an important add-
ition to the literature as many studies have focused on primarily white residential
college campuses and not on this age group of young adults who attend parties and
clubs off campus and who are also at risk. Of the 269 undergraduates who volun-
teered, 233 completed the initial part of the questionnaire that asked for demograph-
ics and the provision of a written narrative of a ‘‘sketchy’’ sexual situation.
Fifty of the vignettes were not used in the analysis because they did not describe
a specific bystander scenario, which left us with a sample of 183 vignettes.
Relevancy was determined by the type of situation described. Narratives that
were excluded were narratives that told the story of the author’s own victimization,
a non-sexual situation, or vague commentary about problem situations in general
without providing information about a specific situation.
Of the 183 final vignettes or written narratives, the vast majority involved at
least one person being under the influence of alcohol, which is consistent with the
394 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

literature on sexual assaults on campus (Cantor et al., 2015). Almost all of the
narratives described situations in which males were potential perpetrators against
females and 59 per cent described a situation in which they intervened by confront-
ing the potential perpetrator, distracting him, forcing her/himself into a conversa-
tion, asking the potential victim if she was okay, or notifying the potential victim’s
friends. Of those who provided usable vignettes, 58 were male, two were trans-
gender, one unidentified, and 122 female. Racially and ethnically the sample iden-
tified themselves as follows: 101 white students; 31 Latino with backgrounds from
Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and other Spanish-speaking coun-
tries and territories; 27 Asian American with backgrounds from Laos, Viet Nam,
Korea, China, Southeast Asia, and other East Asian countries; 16 black or African
American students; one Native American; seven choosing not to reveal their race or
writing ‘‘mixed.’’ Their ages ranged from 18 to 39 with a mean age of (M ¼ 21.82;
SD ¼ 4.2).

Procedures
A large data set was gathered via a survey of students at the university, and quan-
titative results of this survey which examined moral foundations of interveners vs
non-interveners are published elsewhere (Gable, Lamb, Brodt, & Attwell, 2017).
Along with the survey data collected, participants were asked to describe a ‘‘sketchy
sexual situation’’ they were a witness to, describe if they intervened or not, and
provide reasons for why they did or did not intervene. The term ‘‘sketchy’’ was
intentionally used to bypass the issue of a legal definition and because we wanted
participants to write about situations in which students already believed that some-
thing wrong or harmful could potentially be occurring or be about to occur.
The initial question for the online questionnaire was phrased in a way to jog the
memory of the narrative writer, suggesting that at a party or other situation where
drinking might be involved, the participant may have observed someone being
exploited or someone taking advantage of someone else. The participant was
asked to ‘‘Think back and try to remember the situation in detail.’’ After partici-
pants filled in the bubble that permitted them to write as long a narrative as they
wished, they were asked particular questions about the narrative: ‘‘If you inter-
vened in any way before during or after, please describe how?’’; ‘‘What were your
reasons for intervening or not intervening?’’. They were then asked for information
about their relationship to the individuals in the narrative, the gender, and whether
there were substances involved: ‘‘Did you perceive anyone to be influenced by
substances at the time?’’ They then went on to take surveys relating to another
study (Gable et al., 2017).
The initial prompt pinpointed a drinking environment – ‘‘where because of
drinking or other issues’’ – and was purposeful; we wanted to study what we
deemed to be typical scenarios that occur in ‘‘hookup culture’’ (Garcia, Reiber,
Massey, & Merriwether, 2012), where a potential rape was about to occur. Previous
research has indicated that most of these situations occur in an atmosphere where
there is drinking (Bogle, 2008; Cantor et al., 2015; Garcia et al., 2012; Wade, 2017).
Lamb and Attwell 395

The wording was meant to evoke a common situation where these incidents occur
rather than provide an excuse for problem behavior, and that is why the phrase
‘‘other issues’’ was added.
Participants were offered the opportunity to enter their names in a raffle on a
separate website to win one of three gift cards. They then proceeded to answer
survey question for the quantitative study published elsewhere.

Analysis
Willig’s (2013) version of a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis was undertaken to
focus on how the students understood the subjects in those situations, and how
gender played a role in their positioning themselves as bystanders and positioning
the others involved. FDA assumes knowledge is constructed through language and
meaning, and thus analysing language and meaning will allow us to view how
knowledge is constructed, and what functions it serves. It is understood that a
group of texts not only reveals something about the individuals who produce it,
but the culture and repertoire of ideologies available at the time in a culture. Any
data which includes meaning, including short written narratives such as ours, are
suitable for FDA (Willig, 2013). Furthermore, FDA promotes an analysis of what
a certain construct does in terms of positioning individuals, what it enables in terms
of action, and what meaning is made within a certain culture (Magnusson &
Marecek, 2015).
The Foucauldian analysis applied in this research was that described by Willig
(2013) and discussed in Magnusson and Marecek’s (2015) review of qualitative
research methods. We initially identified keywords about the context of these situ-
ations, salient concepts, commonalities and differences throughout the data, rela-
tionships between sections of data, and analysed missing data and transitions.
We then structured our investigation using Willig’s (2013) six stages of discourse
analysis: ‘‘discursive constructions,’’ ‘‘positioning,’’ ‘‘discourses,’’ ‘‘subjectivities,’’
‘‘action orientations,’’ and ‘‘practices.’’ Willig’s discussion of ‘‘discursive objects’’
led us in uncovering how gendered subjects were being created by participants; for
example, the ‘‘classless’’ girl becomes a discursive object used in the narrative to
justify or excuse not intervening. Action orientations suggested by positioning were
also examined. The way actors are positioned in subject positions can yield insight
into the power structures and power relations important to a Foucauldian and
feminist analysis that suggest what action, if any, can be taken. We also looked at
the way discourse allows for certain feelings, thoughts, and experiences. In the ana-
lysis, we do not present each step separately.
Vignettes were read multiple times with different questions based on the sugges-
tions Willig posed at each stage and through the ‘‘sceptical’’ reading attitude
encouraged by Gill (2000). Each vignette was revisited repeatedly and numerous
times throughout the analysis by the two co-authors. Also important to note is that
because a majority of the vignettes involved a male potential perpetrator and a
female potential victim, we use the pronoun ‘‘he’’ when speaking generally about
potential perpetrators and ‘‘she’’ when speaking generally about potential victims.
396 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

We generically refer to men as ‘‘guys’’ and women as ‘‘girls’’ to follow the custom
of almost all of the participants in their narratives, however disrespectful this might
sound to the ears of the feminist reader.
All quote excerpts reproduced in the analysis below appear in their original
form, with misspellings and grammatical problems intact if they were present in
the original.

Results
Constructing the sketchy situation
The Party. Many of the scenarios generated occurred within a party-based atmos-
phere (house party, bar, and club) as suggested in our prompt. Narrators paid
particular attention to the drinking atmosphere of the party: ‘‘Everyone was
drunk,’’ ‘‘I was at a work party once and almost everyone was drunk,’’
‘‘Everyone was drinking and having a good time’’ and ‘‘Maybe ten of us were at
the party, but all of us had been under the influence.’’ These introductory sentences
worked to normalize the drinking in the situation, to position the party as typical.
Even when the drinking of the potential victim was noted, the drinking was not
presented as some sort of underlying cause. This was accomplished by noting that
her or his drinking was similar to others’: ‘‘there was a friend of mine who had been
drinking heavily, along with everyone else.’’ Drinking in general was normalized.
Also normalized were situations where boys were purposely getting girls drunk:
‘‘parties where boys have purposely served alcohol to girls in order to get them
drunk and seduce them’’ or where one, as an underclassman, was part of a group
commissioned, so to speak, to bring younger women to the party to get them
drunk. Those who included in their narratives that they did not drink or do
drugs in college were careful not to use judgmental or accusing language about
peers who do.
The sketchiness of the situation was constructed as a ‘‘weird’’ feeling about some-
thing the bystander observed and not the aforementioned getting girls drunk: ‘‘I
knew it was weird and sketchy that someone not invited was going into someone
else’s room.’’ Participants often used feeling language rather than reasoning: ‘‘it felt
sketchy,’’ for example, or ‘‘he kissed her and lead her into a different room and closed
the door. Her friend walked away but I felt weird about it.’’
Sketchiness was constructed in one particular way that we explore more fully
below in the discussion of ‘‘the guy,’’ but in many of the vignettes, narrators,
particularly intervening narrators, noted persistence or aggression; i.e. the guy
was ‘‘leading her,’’ ‘‘grabbing her,’’ ‘‘forcing her,’’ or ‘‘blocking her.’’ Over and
beyond aggression, what appeared to be most important in defining a guy as a
problem was his persistence. Persistence of a girl saying no was not something
typically noted nor important to defining a situation as sketchy or something
that alerted a narrator to the sketchiness. But a man who persisted was suspect:
‘‘He came back many times.’’ The zeroing in on persistence in effect excuses and
makes normal situations such as those mentioned by several narrators that were
Lamb and Attwell 397

one-time experiences, e.g. when walking through a bar where women had to walk
between men, they would touch them sexually. They also described men’s ‘‘casual’’
refusal to give women enough room when going to the bathroom at a party. These
situations did not involve persistence, and were not seen as worthy of intervention.

Constructing the girl

Girls were constructed within these scenes and assessed in terms of discomfort they
expressed, drunkenness, and whether they were there with friends. Narrators used
these aspects of the scene to position girls in the following ways, as agents, helpless,
confusing to the onlooker, or to blame.
In a bystander’s assessment of the need for intervention, the level of comfort
expressed by the girl was a key indicator of a need for intervention. Even if she was
very drunk, her laughing or ‘‘allowing’’ (as some narrators wrote) harassing kinds
of sexual acts was not discounted by her drunkenness. When a bystander noted
discomfort, when a girl was ‘‘visibly uncomfortable,’’ her discomfort triggered a
worry that she might be being harmed, as in the following narrative:

I was at a party and everyone was drinking, they were playing truth or dare and it
started to get a little intense. There was a girl there who seemed like she didn’t belong
there but maybe she was just trying to be cool by going to parties. Anyways someone
dared her to kiss one of the guys and she clearly felt uncomfortable but she did it
anyways. The guy kept trying to talk to her throughout the night but she seemed like
she didn’t want to be there anymore, he kept trying to kiss her and touch her body but
she would just move away. I felt like I should say something but I didn’t, she even-
tually got tired and realized that she didn’t want to be there anymore so she left with
her friends. The guy tried to go after her but the other guys told him to chill, it was
kind of a sketchy situation but luckily (nothing) more serious happened.

When detailing the intoxication, authors were primarily interested in the drunken-
ness of the girls and not others in the narrative. Narrative authors gave examples to
signify the excessive levels by referring to how the girl was falling over, slurring her
words, or how she ‘‘looked completely out of it.’’ This detailing generally served to
support the author’s assessment of her helplessness, positioning the guy as power-
ful in relation to her vulnerability. Drunkenness was the primary way by which
power over a person was assessed in the situation. Missing from the discourse were
descriptions of a guy or girl’s build, or information with regard to their intelligence,
race, age, or popularity or any other aspect that might also be related to power,
such as race.
Finally, whether a girl had friends with her was an important element of the
narrative in assessing what was happening and what would happen to a drunk girl,
as in the following narrative.

There were a lot of us who noticed how drunk she was. She appeared a little sad and
pathetic because she had no friends around her and was allowing any guys to talk and
398 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

touch her. Everyone just looked and ignored the possible danger that she is getting
herself into. Initially I noticed how intoxicated she was by her inability to stand up
straight and constant stumbling. She was with a guy. I realized later that this guy was
annoyed with how drunk she was, and that it wasn’t even worth it anymore, so he left
her and shifted his focus elsewhere. I realized then, that they weren’t there together.
Another guy approached her and was all over her, which she allowed. She was pos-
sibly being taken advantage of by how close he was to her, but she was too intoxicated
to care. Nor did the people watch (and myself) cared enough to do something about it.

Although this narrator noted ‘‘how intoxicated she was’’ judged by her inability to
stand up straight and stumbling, there was reluctance to position her as helpless
and in need of care. Note the narrator sees her only as ‘‘possibly’’ being taken
advantage of, with her being ‘‘too intoxicated to care.’’ The girl’s intoxication
appears to make her the one responsible for what she will and won’t ‘‘allow’’
and whether or not others should ‘‘watch’’ or ‘‘care’’ about her. Most telling is
that this girl is seen as ‘‘sad and pathetic because she had no friends around her.’’
A drunk girl alone, rather than appearing vulnerable and in need of assistance, is
sad and pathetic. As in other narratives, if she was with friends, the judgment that a
friend was being taken advantage of when drunk was almost always clear, and the
friends were responsible for her care.
The helpless girl. As noted in the above narrative, the girl alone, although com-
pletely drunk, was not positioned as helpless. She was positioned as allowing acts
to be done to her. In some narratives, when drinking was normalized, the helpless
girl was positioned thus to seemingly avoid a slut-shaming discourse. Being drunk
could release a girl from any responsibility: ‘‘she couldn’t pull herself together to
get out’’ or she was ‘‘not in her right mind.’’ Even when responding physically to a
potential assaulter, she is positioned as having no agency because of her drunken-
ness. In this kind of positioning, the narrator was able to express a strong sense of
concern and would seemingly call for intervention by a savior. In other narratives
the helpless girl was positioned as needing to find some source of agency within,
e.g. she ‘‘finally started pushing him away.’’ In the latter instances, the helpless girl
did not need a saviour but needed to pull herself out of her drunken state at least
momentarily to protect herself. In the latter constructions, the need for a bystander
to step in is then closed off as responsibility lies with the girl.
The girl with agency. The girl with agency is depicted from the start as allowing
things to be done to her, as in ‘‘she stayed’’ and ‘‘she allowed.’’ This was not always
a blaming discourse. For some narrators, she was depicted as both not knowing the
‘‘danger she is getting herself into’’ and not knowing how to say no when she
doesn’t do enough to prevent the men’s advances. Thus she was a foolish or inno-
cent agent, but an agent nonetheless. Sometimes references to agency were part of a
narrative in which the situation turned aggressive. In these narratives, when the
‘‘perpetrator’’ became aggressive, the bystander was permitted to intervene in a
situation in spite of the girl’s agency. Even when the girl seemed to be choosing to
‘‘stay’’ or ‘‘allow,’’ aggression called for intervention. Finally, assessing whether a
girl had agency appeared to be more important to male participants than female
Lamb and Attwell 399

participants. In their narratives, guys were loathe to step in after assessing agency
from a girl.
The confusing friend. When the narrator was a friend, the girl was often pos-
itioned as confusing, thus making it unclear to the narrator whether or not she or
he should intervene. Watching a friend involved an assessment of whether the
friend was consenting or not, even if she was drunk: Is she ‘‘just tipsy?’’ Are
there signs of discomfort? Is she the kind of person who does this a lot, called
‘‘promiscuous’’ in one or two vignettes but not judgmentally so. Friends did not
slut shame. The second kind of confusion came when a girl they knew who would
typically want to hook up with new guys at a party chose to go off with a guy. The
confusion came when she was assessed to be very drunk but comfortable and
having a good time. In one dramatic narrative the narrator had been called in to
join her friend having sex with someone she didn’t know well.

Vera started yelling things like: ‘‘no don’t go!!! stay!! please!! It’s so much fun.’’ I left
regardless. I walked back in my room. I lied in my bed: pretty distraught, quite
confused. I started thinking ‘‘that’s not like Vera to want me to join in on her ‘‘adven-
tures.’’ Yes, she did seem to have a lot of sexual partners, but still, something seemed
off. I knocked on the door and walked back in. I whispered in her ear: ‘‘vera are you
okay? are you wanting this?’’ She replied ‘‘YOU can have him!! I’m done here. I’m
going to go downstairs.’’ He wouldn’t have that. He wanted her to stay. He wasn’t
finished, was what he said. It was clear to me Vera was way to (sic) intoxicated to be
able to say no to this man. Already intimidated by this man, I pulled him outside, after
he got a little more decent. I told him, ‘‘Dan, you have to leave. Vera does not want
this right now and she is unable to speak up for herself in this condition.’’ He did not
take that well. He kept saying that it wasn’t my business, that I am ruining his night. I
knew that my next days at work would be so uncomfortable, and yes a senior might
shun me. Oh well. This was her safety. That was important to me. I waited outside the
room with the door open until he had all his clothes on and his things, and I made sure
he left. As he left, Vera came up to me and hugged me excessively. She was so happy
he was gone. And I was just in shock.

In this narrative, the friend understands and has little judgment about the fact that
her friend has a lot of sexual partners. But she was confused by Vera’s exhortation
that ‘‘It’s so much fun,’’ her drunkenness ‘‘way to (sic) intoxicated,’’ and her
begging her to stay. Her returning to the room was based on an intuition that
something wasn’t right and then the guy’s persistence, after her friend’s refusal,
turned this into a situation that needed intervention. But what is to be noted in the
confusing friend scenario is that the friend would like to permit the hookup if
genuinely desired.
The blameworthy girl. Slut shaming did occur, but sometimes regretfully as a
non-intervener expressed regret in assuming a girl was ‘‘just another classless girl’’
of ‘‘promiscuous character’’ when she could have been ‘‘drugged and helpless.’’
The blameworthy girl is set up in opposition to a helpless girl and blameworthiness
was used as a way to justify not intervening: ‘‘she didn’t put up a big fight’’ and
400 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

‘‘allowing any guys to talk and touch her.’’ When the tone was blaming, the
expectation was that a girl was able to take preventative action but chose not to,
or that the intervener would be under attack if he or she stepped in:

There were multiple instances were [sic] I have witnessed this person exploit herself to
multiple people and I have tried to step in and help her while she has been heavily
under the influence of drugs and alcohol not knowing where she was or who she was
with or what she was doing, but somehow I was always the bad guy . . . nothing
mattered, she was the type of person who did not care 100% what anybody thought
about her.

In this case, the narrator justifies his decision not to intervene on the grounds that
the girl was unconcerned about her reputation. How can men exploit a girl who has
chosen to be where she was and whom she was with, in that condition?
While several narratives suggested that ‘‘party girls’’ are not judged, in the nar-
rative below, the narrator refers to a girl as ‘‘class-less’’ and makes the assumption
that others did not help her at the party because she was ‘‘getting what she deserved.’’

Everyone else there may have thought that she was just another class-less girl who is
getting what she deserved, therefore, they just let her be. They could also not think
twice about her actually being a victim because her behavior says that she is a party
girl, who is promiscuous and that is just who she is and what she does.

There was one way a girl could be both blameworthy and not to blame, a chooser
and yet unknowing – if she was young.

Who didn’t want to be invited to the hottest (high school) party with the most popular
crowd, I know I sure did. Well at least that’s what I thought . . . I did note that this one
particular girl who I knew was a sophomore and had no business being there because
she frankly was way too young. I watched her all night throw back the beers, the shots
and the endless puffs of marijuana, and something told me that she felt more pressured
to feel the need to fit in then to say no. Guys thoroughly took advantage of her and
touched her in places that were not appropriate it. I got sick to my stomach said
something to her and then to the boys and stormed out the party. I wasn’t going to
part of such ignorance.

In this narrative the girl is positioned as an agent, throwing back the beers, but the
narrator sees her as feeling pressure to fit in. This understanding of context and
how context shapes consent was rare in the narratives and perhaps present in this
one because the narrator was now an older undergraduate thinking back to a party
that occurred 15 years ago. She saw the girl as both agentic and ‘‘way too young’’
and her intervention was to say something to all of the kids there, as if they were all
blameworthy, and to storm out of the party. She may have held the girl respon-
sible, but she held everyone else responsible too.
Lamb and Attwell 401

Constructing the guy

Guys who were not bystanders were positioned in these narratives as weird, aggres-
sive and/or ‘‘persistent.’’ The aggressive guy is the character in the narratives that
made intervening possible and created heroes of interveners. Those bystanders who
note that a guy was ‘‘leading her,’’ ‘‘grabbing her,’’ ‘‘forcing her’’ or ‘‘blocking her’’
were compelled to act. Bystanders also noted when an action was ‘‘not extremely
forced’’, which appeared to relieve them from responsibility to act. While aggres-
sion was important, what appeared to be most important in defining a guy as a
problem was his persistence. As noted earlier, when a guy was persistent he was
assumed to be taking away a girl’s agency. These guys would corner a girl and were
described as ‘‘relentless,’’ ‘‘extremely pushy’’ and it was often noted ‘‘he would not
stop bothering her.’’
While persistence seemed to construct a guy as a problem and the situation as
one needing intervention, perceiving the guy as a ‘‘stranger’’ added to this con-
struction: ‘‘I wanted to say they don’t know each other because they didn’t come in
together.’’ This discourse of the persistent stranger was used to support the assess-
ment that the guy may have been ‘‘taking advantage’’ of the girl and made his
persistence even more unethical. But this way of talking about problem strangers
raises the question regarding when a bystander or a girl knows the persistent guy. If
a girl knew the guy, it raised more concerns for the bystander about interfering or
invading someone’s privacy if indeed the couple were dating.

Constructing the bystander

Outsiders. While a strange guy was more easily seen as a potential perpetrator,
many bystanders also positioned themselves as outsiders. They did this in various
ways. They may have written that they were strangers to the couple in the inter-
action. They may have emphasized at the beginning of their narrative that they
don’t drink or do drugs or that they are not a partier: ‘‘I’m a cautious person.’’
They may also have positioned themselves as an outsider by their reaction:
‘‘I couldn’t believe my eyes.’’ These ways of positioning themselves outside of
the interaction could serve to support inaction, allowing them a position that
would not incur as much guilt for not intervening. As outsiders they didn’t have
enough information about the individuals involved and could argue they didn’t
want to ‘‘be getting myself involved in other people’s business.’’ They removed
themselves from the situation saying, I was ‘‘more of an observer,’’ excusing
through distancing. This positioning of the self outside of the action, literally
standing by, allowed the narrators to shift responsibility to others who might
know the individuals or situation better, or to the girl who needed to have signalled
lack of consent more clearly.
The ‘‘really good guy.’’ The ‘‘really good’’ guy is positioned in opposition to a
‘‘weird’’ guy or ‘‘persistent’’ guy as a protector. ‘‘Weird’’ in these vignettes stands
for being a stranger to the bystander and potentially to the girl, the guy who hangs
402 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

around for an opportunity to take advantage of her. In one narrative, the bystan-
der wrote:

In my head I was watching the situation happen and hoping the boy was either a really
good guy and good friend of hers that was trying to help her out but there was another
part of me that was wondering where her girl friends were and wishing she had
someone to help her get to her room safely. When i turned back 10 min later they
were both gone and I can only hope he brought her to her room safely and made sure
she was okay but there are weird people out there who would take advantage of a girl
in her position and I really hope he wasnt one of them.

Although the ‘‘really good guy’’ is noted, the narrator (male) is not even sure such a
really good guy exists and he may, in reality, have been a ‘‘weird’’ person. The con-
struction of the potential really good guy in this narrative removes the moral imperative
of the narrator to check out what is going on and intervene. The narrative may want to
position another as a ‘‘really good guy’’ so that the narrator doesn’t have to step in.

The take charge woman. Many women who were bystanders positioned themselves as
what we call a ‘‘take charge woman.’’ These narratives had a sensibility, not of
heroism, but of taking charge and taking swift action. In these narratives the
bystander reads the situation quickly and then becomes very purposeful. She
knows what to do and does it:

I immediately surprised him and shoved him aside while he wasn’t paying attention
and took her away from the situation. Then I told some of my other friends to watch
out for him for the rest of the night.

Sometimes she acts calmly and sometimes she doesn’t, as in I ‘‘freaked out and
grabbed her’’ or ‘‘I slapped that boy right across the face multiple times because
my best friend had a boyfriend and I knew that she would never do this is [sic] she
were sober.’’ In some situations, the take charge woman is very direct and removes
the girl from the presence of the persistent guy. In others she insinuates herself in the
situation in an awkward way, yet still insinuates herself. For example, she may pre-
tend to be drunk or unaware of what is going on and literally plop herself down in
the middle of a one-on-one conversation to save the girl and likely irritate the guy.
For a guy to insinuate himself into the situation in this way or to take charge and
remove the girl, he might be seen as a competitor, and this might lead to a confron-
tation. This may be why this subject position was more open to female bystanders.

The girlfriends. There were also ‘‘the girlfriends’’ who appeared in these narratives to
many to have the primary responsibility to stop sexual assaults. Often the narrator
noted whether a girl’s friends were around, evoking an expectation that friends should
watch out for other friends. Some narrators told stories of friends joining together to
find, rescue, or recover a girl from a sketchy situation: ‘‘A bunch of us pulled her
away,’’ ‘‘We circled her,’’ ‘‘We went looking for her.’’ As noted earlier in the discussion
Lamb and Attwell 403

of the girl who is blameworthy, having friends at a party appears to morally redeem a
girl no matter what situation she is in. There were no judgments on girls who could not
say no or who drank too much when she had friends taking care of her.

Constructing regret
The way the research was designed there was a pull from participants to write about
a time in which they intervened. Thus, the percentage of interveners’ narratives vs
non-interveners’ narratives is of little relevance. But the statements made by non-
interveners reveal subject positions regarding responsibility. Some participants indi-
cated that others had stepped in and so there was no need to, or they wrote that the
persistent aggressor had finally let the girl alone and there was no need for interven-
tion. In one case there was no need because ‘‘the girl solved the problem by herself.’’
While some used the excuse of not knowing the individuals well enough to be able to
assess the situation or to make it one’s ‘‘business,’’ others thought that making it
their business would put them in danger, e.g. ‘‘I did not intervene. The males were
using extremely violent gestures and I did not want to escalate the situation.’’
Bystanders who were not friends of the potential victim struggled with what was
their moral obligation, and when they did not intervene they had regrets. Their
regret focused primarily on the harm that might have befallen the girl. And in one
poignant statement of responsibility, the word ‘‘allow’’ is used to condemn the
bystander him/herself: ‘‘I did not intervene. I just simply watched and allowed
for it to happen.’’ Another wrote, ‘‘Although I know I should’ve, I did not inter-
vene.’’ In one alarming narrative, a person just gives up:

I went to see what was going on, there was a guy who was guarding the door and he
refused to let me see passed [sic] the room. I heard loud noises and then I became
alarmed so I pushed him and got into a confrontation. There was a girl being taken
advantage of in the room, I didn’t know what to do, I told my friend and decided to
leave as things became hostile. To this day I still remember her face. I still feel guilty
for not doing more.

In another a non-intervener wrote with regret, but also blamed the situation:

I didn’t feel good about it because I was worried about the girls more, I feel like they are
drunk, unconscious on what they were doing. I just wanted to tell my friends but that
night was very so crowded and the music was too loud so no one could hear me at all.

What was interesting about these narratives of regret was that very few wrote about
situations in which they did not know what to do.

Outliers
Discourse analysis asks researchers to pay attention to that which fits and doesn’t
fit into discursive constructions. With approximately 200 vignettes to analyse, the
404 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

outliers stand out perhaps more saliently than in smaller samples. One outlier story
was one in which the bystander assessed both guy and girl as ‘‘not in their senses’’
because of drinking, which was striking because in the entire sample, the guy’s
drunkenness was rarely used as an excuse for what he was doing and he was always
positioned as agentic, taking advantage. His drinking was never assessed in the
same way a girl’s drinking was, as able to make him senseless or confused. That
might be, however, because we asked participants to describe a ‘‘sketchy’’ situation
and two drunk people may not mean ‘‘sketchy’’ to most.
Another outlier story was one in which the narrator, a woman, reflecting on a
party she went to in high school, where girlfriends banded together to disrupt a
potential perpetrator’s attack on a girl they did not know well, wrote that she got
the boy to call his parents to pick him up and take him home. This detail positions
the perpetrator as just another kid, with parents, misbehaving at a party. It also
shows the young woman as protecting the party and perhaps him. It was the only
story in which ‘‘adults’’ were involved. In these stories parents, club managers, or
landlords were rarely mentioned.

Discussion
In this discourse analysis of narratives of sketchy sexual situations, we have paid
close attention not only to discursive objects but how they are positioned in the
narrative. We examined the girl and the guy, and asked what subjective positions
were permissible to the bystander/narrator, and what orientations towards action
such positioning of themselves, the girl and the guy afforded them. In understand-
ing which actions and practices are permitted via various discursive positions, it
was hoped that such research might be helpful to those who would be designing
programs to enhance bystander intervention.
After formulating the sketchy situation in a way that normalized the drinking,
narrators documented the ‘‘sketchiness’’ via gut feelings, and noted the persistence
of aggressors. Their constructions of the three discursive objects – the girl, the guy,
and the bystander – and the variations in each of these positions served to encour-
age or discourage blame, and in so doing justify intervening or not intervening.
That drink and drunkenness were normalized is an important observation
because this discursive act could serve many purposes. It could excuse a guy
who was persistent, and yet it was not used in that way. A guy who was aggressive
and persistent was almost always, except for in the one outlier narrative, presented
as agentic, purposeful, and suspect. It was likely that in some of these situations the
guy had been drinking as well, but his level of drunkenness was rarely included in
the narrative. Drinking could, however, excuse a girl who was ‘‘allowing’’ exploit-
ation; this excuse worked in some narratives and but not in others, echoing a vast
literature attesting to the fine line women walk between sexual agent and slut in the
eyes of onlookers (e.g. Armstrong, Hamilton, Armstrong, & Seeley, 2014;
Hackman, Pember, Wilkerson, Burton, & Usdan, 2017). Normalizing drinking
could also have excused the bystander, but only did so in narratives where the
drunkenness of the girl made it confusing to know whether to step in, confusing in
Lamb and Attwell 405

assessing her willingness to engage in whatever acts were occurring. The

heavy focus on a nuanced reading of a girl’s drunkenness may derive from two
underlying perspectives: gender norms and the double standard regarding girls’
sexual behaviour applied to drinking as well (that they are more likely to be
judged for heavy drinking), and an ethical attitude based on autonomy and
choice. In these neoliberal times, where individuals’ choices are set apart from
context and positioned as proof of empowerment, autonomy, and selfhood, inter-
fering with that choice can feel as if it is a judgment on a woman’s right to choose
(Bay-Cheng, 2015).
While consent campaigns and university policies put forth the belief that a
person cannot consent to sex if she has been drinking, our narratives show a
much more nuanced assessment of drinking, and if campaigns and policies are to
succeed, they may want to first make sense of the normalization of heavy drinking
at parties and clubs.
With regard to ‘‘the girl,’’ she was positioned as either helpless, agentic, a con-
fusing friend, or blameworthy (although extreme drunkenness or youthfulness
could negate some of the blaming). The helpless girl positions male bystanders
as heroes, and female bystanders as ‘‘take charge women.’’ Girls who have
agency ‘‘allow’’ things to happen to them. Some are seen as able to take care of
themselves, and some as ‘‘classless,’’ but in both of these cases the bystander is let
off the hook. Agency as well as classlessness or promiscuity become qualities of
being that excuse the bystander from assessing the situation overall. Having
friends, or being someone’s friend, was one of the most protected positions for
the girl. But when the girl was a ‘‘confusing friend’’ bystanders expressed frustra-
tion, some intervening anyway, some staying on watch.
This is a problematic finding from an ethical perspective. Is there any justice to
permitting someone who is not a friend to be exploited? Do only those girls within
one’s friendship circle deserve protection? Campaigns that focus on encouraging
bystander intervention might do well to humanize the girl who is friendless at a
party, depicting the girl who is alone as a girl who needs a friend.
Guys who were alone (friendless) were suspect in the narratives. The ‘‘stranger’’
at the party, the ‘‘weird’’ guy, was positioned as the guy to watch, the one who
exploited and took advantage of drunk women. Guys presumably need friends too,
to pull them off of drunk women, or to tell them when they are being too persistent.
But this rarely happened in any narrative. When guys were featured in the narra-
tives with friends, they were groping women together as they tried to pass them in
crowded spaces, or they were looking on. In very few narratives was a guy the
proverbial ‘‘cockblocker’’ to a friend, prioritizing a girl’s safety over a guy’s
privilege.
This finding may support the need for bystander programs that address toxic
masculinity, such as the Mentors in Violence program or Bringing in the
Bystander. But it seems unlikely that ‘‘bro’’ culture (Banyard, Moynihan, &
Plante, 2007; Katz, 1995) can be changed in one to four sessions (DeGue, 2014).
And recent research shows that much sexual assault prevention falls on deaf ears
for sexually aggressive men (Malamuth, Huppin, & Linz, 2018). Instead, it may be
406 Feminism & Psychology 29(3)

important for universities to use male friendships and male protection of other men
in a way that builds on their connection to make each other better people and make
aggression unacceptable. We are currently developing a bystander intervention
program that frames lessons around ethics and is directed at ‘‘bro’’ culture. As
in the one interesting vignette about the ‘‘really good guy,’’ where one man couldn’t
tell if another man was exploiting or helping a woman, there may be ways to signal
to other guys what it means to be ‘‘really good.’’
Finally, ‘‘bystanders’’ were the narrators, and excused their non-intervening in
various ways that may support rape culture by blaming women or elevating the
girls’ abilities to make choices, even when such choices could end in great harm.
Their attitudes reflected rape culture in another way as well, in their wariness of the
‘‘stranger’’ at the party. (Rape culture asserts that if we think of rape as committed
primarily by strangers, we discount or make invisible the rapes perpetrated by men
we know.)
It is clear from the number of individuals willing to write about sketchy
sexual situations in which they did not intervene that, along with the excuse-
making, there is a good deal of regret. Rather than take this affect at face value,
we can ask what regret does and how it works in these narratives. Regret is a
powerful emotion and, as such, the participants wrote poignantly about how
they found themselves wondering, a long time after the event, if someone they
could have helped got hurt. Regret, when confessed, is a form of absolution. But
it also appeared in these stories as a way to show the researchers that the narrator
had learned an important lesson. This lesson was never discussed in terms of their
own character change or gendered awareness, but instead in terms of the harm to
the victim. That someone could have prevented a harm and did not was the situ-
ation that produced regret.
The findings provide some insights for those who wish to expand the offerings of
bystander intervention training. University warnings and policies about drinking
may fall on deaf ears. And a focus on the stranger or ‘‘weird’’ guy at the party
supports rape culture myths. We need to be addressing the nuances of what is
presumed to be agency, empowerment, and choice, and ask whom does this neo-
liberal view serve? Expanding the notion of friendship, so that every girl at a party
has a friend, and that guys protect other guys from harming others, may be an
effective and persuasive rhetoric for students grappling with these situations. In this
way, ‘‘the really good guy’’ and ‘‘the woman in charge’’ can transform the ‘‘out-
sider’’ into an intervener.

Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the assistance of several individuals in Dr. Lamb’s research
lab: Lindsey White, Madeline Brodt, Julie Koven, Lucia Jarkovska, Inga Schowengerdt.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Lamb and Attwell 407

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Healey Grant at the
University of Massachusetts Boston.

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Author Biographies
Sharon Lamb, Ed.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Counseling Psychology in the
Department of Counseling and School Psychology at UMass Boston. Sharon
has written, edited, and co-authored 10 books and co-authored numerous articles
on girlhood, sexual development, and sexual victimization. She is a co-author of
the American Psychological Association’s Task Force Report on the Sexualization
of Girl. Her curriculum, the SECS-C (Sexual Ethics for a Caring Society
Curriculum), www.sexualethics.org, is used internationally. She also has a new
curriculum on bystander interventions for first year college students, HABIT
(Humane Acts Bystander Intervention Training), based on research on the ethical
reasoning of bystanders who intervene in ‘‘sketchy’’ sexual situations.

Leah Attwell has finished her undergraduate degree in the School of Psychology at
Plymouth University. She spent her ‘‘placement year’’ for her program pursuing
research with Sharon Lamb at UMass Boston and studying qualitative research
and morals, civics, and citizenship education at Harvard University Graduate
School of Education with Helen Haste.