There's a great article in Minnesota's Star Tribune about college activists' attempts to focus sexual assault training and education on men.
Instead of teaching women not to walk alone at night or to carry Mace, some colleges are trying something much harder -- changing college men...."The fact of the matter is that prevention comes down to, largely, males. Because males are primarily the ones perpetrating these crimes," said Lauren Pilnick, sexual violence education coordinator at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
The piece also tells the story of Tyler Jones, a senior at the University of Minnesota who went through sexual assault prevention training and found himself using that education in a barroom exchange:
"Hey, see that girl over there?" Jones recalled an acquaintance asking, nodding toward a woman he wanted to take home. "She's almost drunk. Not quite drunk enough. ... What shot should I buy her?"There was a time, Jones says, when he might have laughed off the remark. Not anymore.
"You want to buy her something really strong to like, basically knock her out?" Jones, a University of Minnesota senior, recalled saying. "Man, that's not right. That's rape. That's sexual assault."
The acquaintance looked stunned. "Whatever," he mumbled, and walked away.
I think moments like these are incredibly important: Having men name assault, and calling it what it is to their peers - especially in a culture that so often puts the focus of sexual assault prevention on women.
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I'm so glad that you posted this. It's a major pet-peeve of mine how our culture focuses so much attention on women preventing rape. If you don't wear a short skirt, walk only during the day, and never go to a party, you could *still* be raped because rape is usually committed by someone you know and trust. It makes much more sense to change the attitudes of men than to change our behavior.
This is so true.
To be fair, though, this doesn't address women-initiated rape. I feel a lot of anti-rape programs, just like they don't focus on the men, also don't focus on the fact that women CAN rape both women and men.
Just because it's a minority doesn't mean it should be ignored...samesex rape is a real problem as is the huge underreporting of male rape because it's seen as feminizing and embarrassing.
True. I also think that woman initiated rape is probably influenced by a different psychology and perpetrated with different justifications. It would probably take a different kind of campaign to address it.
More information is needed, and men need more support to talk about their experiences without feeling "emasculated."
Despite the statistical differences, and relatively small numbers of female perpetrators, the "humanization" of the crime of rape could only help both male and female victims in the long run.
This is so true.
To be fair, though, this doesn't address women-initiated rape. I feel a lot of anti-rape programs, just like they don't focus on the men, also don't focus on the fact that women CAN rape both women and men.
Just because it's a minority doesn't mean it should be ignored...samesex rape is a real problem as is the huge underreporting of male rape because it's seen as feminizing and embarrassing.
Absolutely right. Each man has the power and the responsibility to prevent himself from raping.
Women would prevent rape if they could, and they're already doing more than they should. Every woman I know stops herself from doing some things that men take for granted, whether it's leaving a drink unattended at a club or taking an alley shortcut at night or going home alone and tipsy with a first date. All of those things are incremental self-edits of women's basic freedoms that men don't live with.
Women have done all they can to prevent rape. Men have much more power to do that, and it's time we do our fair share. In fact, if each of us did our fair share, there would be no rape.
IMO, what men need to learn (and what fathers need to teach their sons) is that consent is not something to be assumed in the absence of the word "no." Consent is the active state of wanting; one's partner's enthusiastic participation. Sex is a partnership, not whatever one person can get the other to acquiesce to.
(And that would end this "grey rape" nonsense once and for all, too. I know plenty of women who have been prodded, pushed, cajoled, pleaded, threatened, guilted and worn down into sexual activity they didn't want when drunk, and have various ideas about what to label it. I no of no women -- not a single one, ever -- who was enthusiastically in favor of sex while drunk and decided it was rape when sober. That's the difference between the absence of "no" and the presence of "yes.")
Thank you, Thomas, for putting this comment so well. I love that this angle on the issue is receiving some attention! It always seems so bizarre in my mind that the focus is always on women altering their behaviour, clothing and activities in order to prevent rape, and not on men to just stop raping women -- rape is always taken as a constant. But you've said everything I want to say already.
Every woman I know stops herself from doing some things that men take for granted, whether it's leaving a drink unattended at a club or taking an alley shortcut at night or going home alone and tipsy with a first date. All of those things are incremental self-edits of women's basic freedoms that men don't live with.
Jackson Katz has an exercise that he leads mixed groups through where he asks both men and women for things they do to keep themselves from being attacked. He draws a line down the middle of a chalkboard/whiteboard/what-have-you and puts the men's answers on one side and the women's answers on the other. The women's side is filled with the usual "how not to get raped" stuff (don't get into an elevator alone with a man, yadda yadda), and the men's side is generally empty. It sends a powerful message to his audience, well, mostly to the male portion of the audience.
Btw, Katz designed a program called MVP which focuses on men and their role in stopping male violence. Much of it focuses on the bystander role, as in the story Tyler Jones shared. His book is worth reading.
I want to echo thanks for posting this. I think violence against women activism - be it rape, domestic violence or street harassment - has been focused disproportionately on what women can do to prevent it for too long. The fact is some preventative measures will work but they won't all work all of the time. And that attitude leaves women vulnerable to victim blaming and takes the perpetrator out of the equation. He is the one with the problem who is acting inappropriately. She is not. We need to focus on and emphasize educating boys and men to respect women and not hurt or take advantage of them. Men certainly need to hold other men responsible for inappropriate talk and action. It could make a huge difference.
"We need to focus on and emphasize educating boys and men to respect women and not hurt or take advantage of them. Men certainly need to hold other men responsible for inappropriate talk and action."
..This already happens, it just makes things worse. We constantly tell boys in this society that you must respect girls, and that you can't hit them. Have you ever seen a man hit/push/or yell at a women in public? if you have you'd also see tons of guys go over to kick his ass. Now, have you ever seen a women hit a man in public? If you have you'd see people laugh and act as if the guy deserved it. I see it all the time, girls slap guys and kick them in the balls in my school, only to be cheered on and congratulated. The same boys who've had the idea "it's wrong to hit girls" drilled in their minds see this double standard, Is it any wonder why this breeds misogyny and sexism against women in young boys minds?
We need to educate both males and females to respect the opposite gender. We can't keep focusing on one gender, or we'll get no where.
The "don't hit girls" thing is part of a patriarchal idea that women are lesser, that they are property to be protected. The thing to do would be to tell boys "don't rape people," but in practice, it's generally "don't rape women."
I really can't help feeling that no social program is ever going to really address this from the male side. Men who rape women are just the men who grew up without the respect for women that they need, and no random program is going to change that.
Rape is just so depraved, there are always deeper issues involved.
Funneling available resources into teaching women to protect themselves just feels like a better return on investment.
And just to invite endless flames, I'm not excusing male behavior, but some feminists overplaying the idea that getting way too drunk "shouldn't" be something that women have to worry about are just not helping anything. Just having moral outrage isn't going to change reality. The reality is, losing self-awareness is simply more dangerous for women than it is men, and so they shouldn't do it. Flames incoming.
Shiny red hexagonal pattern!? Is the man wearing the pin in the picture wearing some kind of superhero costume? It's about time we had a nonviolent superhero.
Pretty sure it's a backpack or bookbag.
It’s actually his jacket (a fancy winter jacket for use here in Canada). My friend who was wearing it is my partner in coordinating the Feminist Men’s Auxiliary here in Calgary.
He is actually kind of a non-violent superhero in my view :-) (feminist, peace activist, etc.)
No kidding! Was I the only one to think of Matt Lucas' character on Little Britain, the "Only GAY in the Village?" =)
Must be some Snazz-A coat there.
One of my male friends formed a "Men Against Violence" coalition/organization at our graduate university. They presented to classes, organized events, and spoke to fraternities about all forms of violence men perpetrate, but specifically sexual assault.
He's now a professor and it is continuing the coalition at his new university. The group on our former campus continues.
What was the response to it?
I organized a Take Back the Night a couple of years ago on my campus. It was generally good but I was disturbed by the number of hecklers saying things like how we wouldn't care if a man was raped, etc.
change "instead of" to "along with" and I'm with ya all the way.
Education, self defense, creative conflict resolution and sensitivity training, for everyone.
I approve of this message. Mind you, I'm against violence in general, and not just against women. But we really need to start considering rapists in our societal dialogue about rape, and not just those evil, dirty sluts that rape just falls out of the sky and happens to.
The only disturbing this is that this actually needs to be said.
i cant imagine what guy wouldnt want to learn these things. it dosnt matter who you are or what your background is there is probably a woman in your life that is special to you and you want them to be safe.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about rapists is that their all sociopaths much like serial killers. And this attitude allows men not to see themselves as perpetrators of sexual assault as long as they are not jumping out of bushes or assaulting women in dark alleys. I honestly believe that the idea that they are assaulting a woman never even crosses many date-rapists minds, instead they probably believe they've convinced a "hard sell." It's important to educate men that any instance in which there is a question of consent is better left alone. Why the hell would anyone want to have sex with someone who might not want it/be coherent enough to really enjoy it?
The unfortunate part is that the entire structure of our society's approach to sex tends to lend itself to date-rape type acts (not drugging drinks but pushing beyond a 'no'). Men are taught to always pursue while women are supposed to be the gatekeepers of purity. I think this leads a lot of women to believe they have to coyly say 'no' or put up a bit of faux-resistance when they really do want to have sex, lest they be considered 'too easy'! Throw this in with a general societal reluctance to talk frankly about sexuality with our partners and it creates a recipe for disaster. I know this reeks of blaming the victim, but I think it's blind not to acknowledge the dangerous intersection of socialized gender roles and sexuality. When both women and men can give a clear 'yes' or 'no' to sex without judgment and without playing games, I think rapes will be drastically reduced. Of course, by the time society's views of sex and sexuality have changed that much, a lot of things will have to be different.
Now to be fair, there have been quite a few programs like this at different colleges as well as national organizations (though I sadly do not know the names).
But I am always happy to hear of one more. I think there are a lot of otherwise decent guys who need to be woken up. Who may not realize that "taking advantage" of a girl is a PG way to say "rape". I always hate when sitcoms make jokes about getting girls drunk enough to have sex with them. If you're sober and she's drunk, that's sexual assault at the least (however, if you're both drunk that's kind of a hard call). It's great that the program made such an impact that this guy actually called out his friend on it. Such progress!
As a student at my undergraduate university, we tried forming a group of men to do programming about sexual violence and portraying positive male role models on college campuses.
Ultimately, it didn't prove to be viable, for any number of reasons.
What I took away from it is the immense difficulty in reaching out to male college students. It's a tough demographic to crack, and the tools that feminism gives you are poorly constructed to speak effectively to men. Most of feminism's arguments are couched, and understandably so, within the framework of women. This makes sense: women on college campuses are overwhelming and disproportionately the victims of sexual violence than men. Even more so when we're talking about the heteronormative community, because at least in my experience, non-hetero men tend to be much better educated on matters of sexual violence, while hetero men have little to zero.
But there isn't a whole lot of literature, particularly non-academic literature, that speaks to men about sexual violence. The best I've come across is just about anything that comes out of the mouth of Robert Jensen. There are great groups like Men Against Rape too.
The big problem, in my eyes, is that the overwhelming amount of sexual assault literature is not geared towards speaking towards men. My undergraduate institution runs a mandatory workshop during Orientation which all first-year students attend, covering many relationship issues but mostly concerning sexual and relationship violence. This past year, we really began moving away from the traditional models of speaking to men, and began discussing more on how non-raping men can identify, discuss and hopefully prevent violence among their peers. I felt it worked a lot better, but still, there's not a lot of non-academic material to work with from the hetero-male perspective.
I was involved with a similar project when I was at university, and I was pretty vocal about it. I took some grief for it from some of my more assholic classmates, but I do think I did some good by at least raising the issue.
I think this is absolutely the way to go. When I tell other guys I'm a feminist, they almost invariably look stunned, often asking "but you're a man? Men can't be feminists!" or some variation of it. I then proceed to basically deliver the male-feminist pitch "But you do support equal pay for equal work, right? And you think it's wrong when the victims of rape are blamed for it?", etc., and after getting them to admit that they do support those things, I welcome them into the club :) "You might not want to call yourself a feminist, but you are one! Start getting used to it!" I then continue on talking about how these are real issues happening right now (not extremist bullshit, but actual, real issues), and how important they are.
(naturally, this doesn't always work. There are times when I meet people who do think that women are responsible for rape, and that do think that they don't deserve equal pay. But they are relatively few, and I usually end the acquaintance right there. And then there are those who in principle agree, but just don't care all that much. I have turned a few guys, though)
I generally think getting men on board is essential, not only for sexual assault-awareness, but feminism in general. Most guys are basically decent, and they just need a little push, and I think we should do all we can to "normalize" the image of the feminist man, so it doesn't seem like an oxymoron any more.
Programs like these are so brilliant. I get so sick of being told that I need to limit my life because if I don't rape is going to just magically happen to me, without any outside involvement.
I wonder how we can get something like this going at my school...
Men Can Stop Rape helps universities set up groups that focus on men's involvement in anti-rape activism. I have worked with them in the past and they are extremely helpful. Check out their site here: www.mencanstoprape.com
As a man who does anti-sexual violence work, I am really glad whenever any portrayal of non-violent masculinity is shown in the media. I always worry, though, about men's efforts to name rape what it is will overtake women's. I know from experience that I get a lot more credit for being a man doing the work than a woman who does the same work. If given to me, I reject the credit I get for being male by letting people know that women started these efforts and continue to lead the way. Like many others in this thread have said, it's so important to address men's role in rape (and the culture that permeates its acceptance) instead of simply telling women what they can and can not or should and should not do. That doesn't get to the root of the problem. The fact is we commit most of the violence (against women and men, as well) and we need to own that and realize we have a role to play in stopping a culture of violence.
I started and maintain a group called Men Against Sexual Violence at the University of Illinois at Chicago and what I have found is that in our culture their is no clear-cut definition of masculinity (or femininity, for that matter) and that men are simply told to just be anti-feminine. These attitudes ultimately hurt women and any gender or sexual minority. We need to not only talk about what it really means to "be a man", but model, as Tyler Jones did, a positive representation of non-violent masculinity. And not just in party settings, but everywhere. Ask a woman in your life who is important to you how her life would be different if the threat of sexual assault didn't exist and see how ever present the threat really is. Men who have done this are floored by how much privilege they have when it comes to the risk reduction tactics women so often use in their everyday lives when we realize we, generally, do not have to do those things. Once we recognize our own privilege we can begin to reject it when its presented to us, and a large part of eliminating sexual assault is realizing the role we play in its acceptance.
Sorry for rambling.
http://www.wps.colostate.edu/mensproject/index.asp
My campus has something similar. Men need to stop the rape culture that exists within the our societies.
Good comment Stephen, especially the part about the lack of a positive definition of masculinity -- though there's part of that that can't be fixed. In an oppressive system, the group on the privilege side of the equation tends to be defined by not-the-other, and it's tough to define the dominant group without reference to the binary. I look at it this way: I have kids of both sexes. What characteristics would I want my sons to have that I wouldn't want my daughter to have? (Nothing comes to mind.)
Susan Faludi had a partial answer around civic participation that she basically alluded to without defining in Stiffed, a book so good that it's the only one that ever made me miss my subway stop. But I keep coming back to the "what would I want a son to be that I wouldn't want a daughter to be?" question, and even Faludi's excellent book has not provided me with a satisfying answer.
The big answer is that the whole binary is bad. Twisty Faster once wrote that "gender will not survive the revolution." (quoting from memory, possibly in error.) I'm basically in agreement.
In the near term, here's what I can do with what I have where I am: I can fight the belief that sex is a commodity that one can have and get and trade. It's not a trade, where one side gains and the other side loses. I can teach that sex is a partnership; that if all concerned are not enthusiastic participants, it's not going well. I can teach that open communication and positive involvement are the norm, not the exception; that "working out a yes" is coersion and is unacceptable. That sex is a partnership, not an arm's length contract. That sex partners, whether or not they love each other, have to respect each other.
Also, Stephen, I agree that men shouldn't hog the spotlight, which often gets handed to us, in the women's movement -- and that everything we do on rape is a continuation of the foundational work of the Radfems of the Second Wave. But when dealing directly with men on feminist issues, we have to take not only a laboring oar but a spot at the podium. I think it's much more effective, as I think you acknowledged above, for men to hear other men telling them they can be men without coercing women, than it is to hear that from women. After all, if they really listened to women, we wouldn't have to tell them.
Yeah, I was so proud of my hometown newspaper yesterday when I saw this story on the front page.
I'm glad you posted this.
Before I switched to a women-only school (note: for its great class size, not its gender component), I was going to a much larger state school in KY, and they had a fantastic women's center with a lot of guys involved who would get their frat brothers and friends talking about the subject.
Their student-run anti-rape program also visited classes, ran skits, had a tremendous Take Back The Night...I'm sad ours doesn't have quite the impact but we also don't have quite the budget either.
Hear, hear. I've been thinking for a while that feminism is a man's issue. Most of the behavior that needs to change affects women, but is men's behavior (and thought patterns).
You'll know the tide is turning when the headlines describing an assault case more often refer to the man ("accused rapist") than the woman ("pretty white nubile sex victim"). (...sorry. I meant of course "assault victim", which sells far more papers.)
Ugh, my school newspaper ran in article about sexual violence and the phrase 'unwanted sexual intercourse' was used to describe rape. I was furious.
Anyone interested in this topic should read the following book:
"The Macho Paradox" by Jackson Katz. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak in college. He has been working to re-educate men about violence against women for years.
I think that these programs should be on campuses all around the states for college students. As a college student, we go to lots of parties interact wih lots of people and still me and my friends guards are always up because you just never know. And even the guys that are so nice might say something and you just think like thats not cool. I think if programs like this were on campuses and guys had to go to them it would help our enviornment because maybe things that they would do at parties that they thought were fun and cool they would realize are ways that they are abusing women and thats not cool.
The negative comments on the original Star Tribune article are very disturbing. Prop to these kids in Minnesota, but their work is certainly just beginning.
I went to the site and flagged all the "she was asking for it" comments as vulgarity or profanity, and in the additional comments section I wrote "Quit blaming the victim!". You all should do the same :-)
"Instead of teaching women not to walk alone at night or to carry Mace, some colleges are trying something much harder -- changing college men. "
I don't see why it's an either/or. It's a great move to focus on keeping people from becoming criminals, and probably long overdue, but some of them still will so it'd be stupid and irresponsible to STOP trying to keep people from becoming victims.
I think the point is that women have been taught these things (basically: don't go out alone, ever, and if you do make sure to wear a snowsuit and carry bear spray) for decades, and not only do attacks still happen, but often women are blamed for their own attack s(as in "we told you not to go out alone after dark, tisk tisk"). By the time women get to college they've been taught these lessons 8billionx. Campuses are trying prevention from the other end of things for once.
Two wrongs don't make a right jocelyn. Neither do two extremes create a balance... which is what we have here.
We have had one extreme going on for years
(conservative scare tactics, fear mongering of women)
Now we have another extreme
(fear mongering of men, sexual shaming of men as a gender)
Two wrongs don't make a right. Men don't commit rape. Rapists do.
***We used to have:***
Conservative patriarchs scaring girls into submission by teaching them that they are never safe, and if they dress a certain way, its their fault... etc...
***We now have:***
Liberal activists shaming all boys into believing they're potential rapists... and disallowing that girls learn anything that can minimize the risks
Now, I understand the second point. When you've had to deal with ignorant conservative a-holes who don't even understand rape... Its normal to want to weed it out.
The problem is when you become one-dimensional. You put everything into two categories. And anything that doesn't fit your category... you immediatelly assume must be in the opposing category. Because you are incapable of seeing there is a third category.
Well, there are 3 categories:
1) Victim blamers (patriarchs)
2) Rapist preventers (feminism)
3) Victim empowerment
The trouble is that the people in category 2 are so busy fighting off the a-holes in category 1, that they are unable to even notice category 3.
These 2 categories work synergistically. What if we attacked the problem from both angles. The problem is that if you've spent all your life fighting victim-blaming...
Whenever something comes along suggesting fighting from the woman's angle... Your reaction immediately goes to defense. Because the only thing ever to have come from that angle was the victim blaming. And our minds are designed to automate repetitive tasks, by generalizing things, as to defend from the quickly.
What if women could recognize for certain every potential rapist? For women to remove, and reject out of their life any potential harm-doers is a very empowering. What if women knew they could control their destinies, and not have to fear if their next boyfriend was a rapist? What if they actually had that power? Well, they can, if they learn to recognize and defend from psychopaths entering their lives.
What if? What if we fought rape by attacking the rapist problem as much as possible, and the same time empowered women to weed potential rapists from their lives?
Its a synergistic solution. Besides, empowering women is always a good thing in and of itself.
This campaign (as most campaigns like these), would actually have a NEGATIVE effect, instead of a positive one. Here's why.
Here’s something that everyone seems to forget… Virtually a 100% of rapists… have one thing in common. They all have this one thing in common. What is it?
They are psychopaths.
And guess what. Psychopathy (more on the narcissistic disorder side) is a very clearly defined disorder that is easy to recognize.
So the facts are like this:
-Women are raped mostly by boyfriends, acquaintances, family, male friends
-Psychopaths have the most “social success” with women (befriending women, getting dates with women, forming relationships with women )
*Even though psychopaths are a small percentage of the population (maybe 1 in 25) they represent most of female’s friends or short-term partners.
The chances of a non-psychopath committing rape are almost non-existent. Obviously this doesn’t solve family rape (you can't choose whether your uncle is a psychopath etc…), but it automatically gets rid of a huge chunk of the problem.
There is a very huge problem in society… where women have been taught to be unable to recognize and resist psychopaths (ussually charming, cunning, charismatic and socially manipulative, easy to befriend people). Yet, it takes a very short training to be taught to successfully identify psychopaths with no problem.
Why would this campaign we're discussing have a negative effect? Because as ussual, its the nice, good guy who actually cares (isn't a psychopath) who will even listen to the message in the first place. The person who was never likely to rape, or be associated with rapists (psychopaths befriend psychopaths). Experience shows these types of campaigns only make normal men hesitant and anxious about starting relationships with women and "toxic male guilt". Meaning, the man who was never in a billion years going to be a rapist, now feels guilty for it.
Psychopaths laugh off these types of campaigns and rationalize them away. Campaigns appealing to morals have no effect on psychopaths, only punishment does.
There are only two ways to deter rapists:
- Punishment
- Social Outcasting
We've been focusing on just the first one too long!
Mother Nature works the best. It has everything work in the frame of a democracy. Bad components simply get voted out through natural selection.
Why don't we *also* focus on punishing these people socially (weed them out). On the one hand, we keep talking about how we want to make sure they're punished by the law every single time (as conviction rates are very low obviously).
But at the same time we see no problem with the fact that a psychopath (potential rapist) is many times over more likely to befriend or get a date with a woman. (Get in the position to rape).
p.s.
People please... Its incredibly offensive to men to see these unqualified statements over and over and over again. "How about if men just stop raping".
Well MEN DONT rape. Rapists do. How is it fair to the 24 out of 25 men who will never ever ever ever in a billion years come even close to committing such an act? Not even in thought, let alone reality. Men who are pretty much incapable of committing it. Sexism is never ok, not even in fighting problems caused by sexism.
Aleks:
Your numbers are totally wrong, which means you're just trying to make your opinion look more authoritative by making shit up.
Your argument is silly. It's like claiming that trying to reduce the incidence of drunk driving by trying to change the behavior of drinkers is some sort of prejudice against people who drink. 100% of drunk drivers have been drinking, so focusing on the behavior of that population is a good way to address drunkenness.
Similarly, 99% of rapists are men. Pretending otherwise is irresponsible. Some other useful statistics (college age males):
- 1 in 12 male students surveyed had committed acts that met the legal definition of rape or attempted rape.
- 84% said what they did was definitely not rape.
- 56% reported instances of non-assaultive coercion to obtain sex (eg lying, threatening to end a relationship).
Just under 10% of college age men have committed rape -- and did not know it.
Half of them had used coercion.
That is a men's problem. Pretending otherwise is either willfully ignorant or subconsciously compensating.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/rape-prevention/statistics.html
I really agree with this blog post about how we need to focus on men rather than women to stop sexual assault. Instead of just trying to put a band aid on the problem, by working with men it would start to try and fix the source of the problem. Just like the blog said, since for a majority of sexual assault is done by men, show men how to change and positively influence those around them to make sexual assault have a negative connotation. Of course women are against sexual assault because it happens to them and those around them, but because for a majority men are exempt from this fear, they don’t worry nor are concerned about being sexually assaulted. So instead of just trying to get women to be more public about how sexual assault and just the fear of being sexually assaulted affects them, by showing men how negative it is, we can begin to try and change how our world acts.
I really agree with this blog post about how we need to focus on men rather than women to stop sexual assault. Instead of just trying to put a band aid on the problem, by working with men it would start to try and fix the source of the problem. Just like the blog said, since for a majority of sexual assault is done by men, show men how to change and positively influence those around them to make sexual assault have a negative connotation. Of course women are against sexual assault because it happens to them and those around them, but because for a majority men are exempt from this fear, they don’t worry nor are concerned about being sexually assaulted. So instead of just trying to get women to be more public about how sexual assault and just the fear of being sexually assaulted affects them, by showing men how negative it is, we can begin to try and change how our world acts.