What? 3 pages and no Blazing Saddles reference? 
Programs like Shifting Boundaries and Safe Dates which both are inclusive are effective, but we live in a comparatively conservative and religious country that impedes implementation.
If they could be implemented in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grade they would provide more value. But the programs conflict with political groups that push for abstinence only programs.
I should at that the best predictors of sexual aggression are self-reported abuse during adolescence and rape myth acceptance.
Here is the questions for the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale if you want to take it yourself.
Warning PDF:
People who have lower scores on this test are more likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence as they can be used for justification. These myths are very difficult to change with a few hours in a class after they are well established.
Eliminate PE.
Could you cite this, please? That is, the studies showing reduced incidence of attempted and/or completed rape for those who complete the programs. TIA.
Regards,
Shodan
What makes you think that any one is being told rape is the only thing that makes alcohol abuse dangerous?
And I am not sure what you mean by “a natural consequence” - getting drunk increases your risk of being raped. That’s a true statement. Therefore, for that reason and several others, women should be careful about how much they drink, and in whose company.
Men should also be careful, but since it does not raise their risk of being sexually assaulted very much, that particular reason is much less of a concern.
Regards,
Shodan
Our Prevention Ed programs run from kindergarten through college and we’ve shifted to a multi-session model which means relationships are being developed and sustained over time. Since our PE staff are so awesome, the kids look forward to them returning every year, and in some cases have taken up the decision collectively to spearhead their own efforts at the school-wide level.
Our Prevention Ed programs focus on gender dynamics and gender stereotyping, deconstructing the justifications for rape, and explaining how it happens in the broader social context. It’s not about lecturing or judgment and much more about sustained engagement in an honest conversation, as most kids in the classroom have encountered some sketchy shit before without knowing how to deal with it. They also deal with what consent is, how it’s a continuous process, and teach bystander intervention which means the community takes on a collective responsibility for the treatment of its members.
While the program has been very successful to the tune of 14,000 kids educated a year, it’s hard to get funding because of abstinence-only education. You can’t talk about consent without admitting teens have sex. The horror.
It apparently raises their risk of committing sexual assault, so why is that not also a concern?
The study in the OP had somewhat hard figures on actual reductions in the incidence of rape, and I cited earlier the relative lack of hard data on reductions from male education. Do you have hard figures for your PE program?
It is, I mentioned it previously.
Regards,
Shodan
I know it’s modeled after evidence-based interventions, unfortunately, our director just announced he’s leaving (which sucks, I like him so much I nominated him for an award – and he won.) It’s going to be difficult to get my hands on such data in the midst of the current turmoil within that department, plus this entire day is going to be active shooter training, but I can commit to asking around.
I am all for following the data, of course, but I am concerned about the broader social implications of placing the onus of responsibility on women, for what should be obvious reasons.
Here you go, but you will need to read, re-read and cross reference. The subject can’t really be reduced to post levels.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178914000536
And here is a cite that will cover some of the evidence surrounding rape positive attitudes.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1889186116300312
We should be concerned, as there is evidence that rape supportive attitudes do seem to have a correlation with sexual aggression. Focusing efforts on women will result in validating these myths and strengthen the ability of perpetrators to self-justify their actions.
That’s a little hard to plow thru. I did notice that the Shifting Boundaries is mentioned twice - the building-level, which was considered effective, and the classroom-level, which was not. Also that the pre-requisite courses for Shifting Boundaries were listed as “Potentially Harmful”. Still, thanks for the cite.
Regards,
Shodan
Yep, but that doesn’t change the fact that the more comprehensive program has demonstrated some effectiveness.
But if you dig into the two programs that were mentioned, you will see that the one was similar to the college-age men’s program you referenced before.
It is a complex subject, with lots of factors, and unfortunately the solutions won’t be simple either.
Note on the “Potentially Harmful” reference, the writers on that cite were trying very hard to avoid bias, but it is most likely that that program lead to increase reporting rates and not much data that it actually increased true rates of violence.
This is long, sorry, but hopefully thought-provoking.
Unfortunately, two more people walked out on the job today (leaving a total of four management positions lost this week) and my workplace is in shock and chaos and a lot of people cried, so I didn’t gain much traction with getting my hands on data related to our specific Prevention Education program. (For those not aware, I work for a comprehensive domestic violence and sexual assault organization which covers everything from shelter to advocacy to prevention education, so this is one of many services offered where I work. I am reasonably well versed in how each of these programs operate because my job is to write grants asking for money to fund them.) I’m definitely interested in exploring the research and the implications of said research but I seem to be cognitively deteriorating more every day this week (working theory says it’s cuz I’m eating less sugar but god, really? This bad?) so it’s not happening today, is what I’m saying.
What I will say is that we attended an active shooter training today which put a different spin on this thread from my perspective… essentially - and I’ve known this forever - the default response to an assault of any kind is to freeze up, in the case of rape victims it’s the number one most common response, in the case of mass shootings people are inclined to hide under tables and cower. The intent of the speaker today, who represented our local police force, was to give us some recognition of the variation of options we have in an active shooting scenario and to underscore that the worst possible response is to do nothing. We went through a room-by-room breakdown of responses during the Virgina Tech shooting and how different strategies impacted casualty rates. (The ones with the highest survival rate barricaded the doors.) He discussed two major sociologically principles that impact response in a crisis - normalcy (trying unsuccessfully to make the event fit a paradigm of something we understand) and social cues (responding based on how others are responding.)
He talked a lot about the training that conditions one to respond helpfully in a crisis, as well as what a mentally prepared person looks and sounds like vs. one that doesn’t… one quote in particular stood out to me, which he attributed to that pilot who heroically crash landed a downed plane on the Hudson river (and who was totally not panicked when he did it):
Naturally, I can’t help but look at this from a sexual assault prevention perspective. Most women have, as deposits in their bank of experience, all of this damaging rape mythology as well as social imperatives like you shouldn’t cause a scene, be impolite or draw attention to yourself. All of those regular demoralizing disempowering deposits over the years contribute to that freeze-up moment during a sexual assault, the moment that says, ‘‘this is probably not really happening and I really shouldn’t trust my gut instinct and it’s probably my fault anyway.’’
So if you look at it from that perspective, of course women need to unlearn those damaging beliefs to even have a chance in hell of avoiding victimization. We’ve got to start making some deposits of some other kind into that bank. It’s not merely about risk-reduction but about women learning to trust our own judgment in a world that by default doesn’t believe us - generally empowering across the board. And I had a huge problem with that in the case of my own abuse, I was just functionally unable to believe my own experience. The cacophony of social voices that shamed and scolded and minimized and discounted shaped my inability to name what was happening as abuse until it was over and I was out of that situation.
I will never forget when I told my aunt about it (the only person in my family who repsonded appropriately), I was 17, and just dreading the next time I saw him again, because I assumed it was going to keep happening forever, and she made a remark like, ''You realize you don’t have to put up with that shit, right? If he ever touches you again you have every right to slap him." And I honestly did not realize that at all. It was this huge moment, of ''Really? I’m allowed to say no to that?" And unfortunately when you go through it as a kid you feel that way for the rest of your life. I’ve had further situations as an adult where someone had to sit me down and say, ‘‘You don’t owe this random ass creeper anything, you don’t have to let them into your house or be polite or put up with their shit.’’ Once you’ve internalized that sense of helplessness it is really hard to unlearn.
Now what actually happens when women physically resist rape is another matter entirely. Oftentimes they are further injured and smart enough to know that. But there are probably situations, such as in a social setting, where face-slapping is an option. And if we’re keeping in line with the active shooter thing, preparedness is about knowing the different options you have in any given moment. I’ve often wondered personally what difference it would make if women were trained to say, particularly in dating or social situations, ‘‘What you are about to do is rape.’’ Given the mentality that many men seem to be in when they commit sexual assault, that might be enough to knock them out of this ‘‘she totally wants it’’ entitled bullshit they get into and in the very least make them realize the kind of allegations they may be facing if they continue. Most rapists do not see what they do as rape, so their likely reaction to such a statement would be, ‘‘you crazy fucking bitch, I’m not a rapist,’’ but they’d probably high tail it out of there, too, in order to avoid trouble. Just a theory/idea of my own.
So I think there is a role for women particularly from an angle of fighting back against patriarchal paradigms that might really help. I can’t claim I want sexual assault to end and then be closed off to evidence-supported avenues just because I find them politically uncomfortable. The question is how we reconcile that sort of empowerment education with the fact that women are consistently, repeatedly, viciously blamed for their own sexual assault in our current society. People don’t have dumb-ass myths about the kind of people who get killed in a mass shooting. Mass shooting is not anywhere near as victim-blaming oriented as rape is at the moment. So it can’t be a perfect comparison and we can’t ignore the comparative complexities of sexual assault when we develop approaches to ‘‘reducing the casualties,’’ so to speak. But it got me thinking.
Another thing I want to add, because it seems to be glossed over here - men are victims of sexual assault too. Men are at higher risk of sexual assault when they drink. They are sexually victimized less often than women, but not as less often as you would think. Part of the issue with preventing the sexual assault of men is that men appear much less likely to report an already hugely underreported crime, so we don’t know a lot about male sexual assault, how it happens, under what circumstances, or how it impacts the victim. But it absolutely happens. If you are concerned enough about your daughter to lecture her as to how to avoid sexual assault, you should be concerned about your son.
If you believe self-report surveys (and I do, with the caveat that people tend to underreport bad things happening to them on self-report surveys), one major study by the CDC found the lifetime rate of completed rape among women was between 10-20% depending on the state they lived in, and the lifetime rate of sexual assault was as high as 60% in some states (that’s for my state, the state of Michigan.) IIRC the age at which the vast majority of sexual assaults took place was between the age of 16 and 22, IOW, college-aged. It is fucking insane, yes. It fits anecdotally in line with the women I’ve known also - eventually experiencing sexual assault is pretty much a widely accepted reality of being female. My last sexual assault was at the age of 17 but it bears mentioning I’m an extreme introvert who doesn’t participate in social events very often. College-age women who attend parties are probably at the statistically highest risk in their lifetime.
Well, I figured its mostly assholes who don’t give a shit about other people. The sort of people who don’t really have come to Jesus moments from being forced to attend an anti rape seminar. Sure, most guys will be in there nodding their heads but those are the guys that would never rape anyone to begin with. Just a guess.
This is based on my experiences in teaching women’s self-defense, so FWIW.
[ul][li]Resisting rape reduces the chance that you will be raped. It typically does not reduce the chance that you will be beaten up or injured. If the rapist is a sexual sadist (the rarest form of rapist) he is going to hurt you no matter what you do. If he is one of the more common types, he is going to use whatever force he thinks is necessary to rape you, and resisting delays his purpose and makes it likely that he will give up and move on to a easier target.[/ul][/li][ul][li]Face-slapping is only appropriate in a situation where other people are physically present, and will support you. It is a social gesture, not a self-defense gesture.[/ul][/li][ul][li]Violence in this kind of situation has two settings - Off, and On. There is no Sort Of, or Just Try to Get Him to Stop, or anything like that. You say No, loud and clear. If he stops, well and good. If he doesn’t, you go straight to eye-gouging, groin strikes, cupped-palm strikes to the ears, head butts, and screaming. No intermediate steps.[/li]
Either he respects your boundaries, or he needs to be blinded/castrated/crippled/at least distracted so you can escape. [/ul]Women are smaller and weaker than men. They cannot afford to get into a fight - the longer a fight lasts, the greater their disadvantage. They need to escalate suddenly and escape
Regards,
Shodan
I think this is key. A lot of males grow up with the whole ‘boys will be boys’ mentality and are never challenged on it. There has to be education early on, not just in college, but before then about what constitutes appropriate sexual behavior. I know people are worried that even having the conversation encourages sexual conduct but I don’t necessarily buy that it does. People get their messages from other sources even if not explicitly frm their elders. It’s actually a good thing that Hollywood is having more and more of these explosive scandals - not that it happened obviously but that women are empowered to come forward - because it will hopefully make powerful men aware that they can’t just do this and bury it forever.
Or, they need to accept the fact that they are about to be raped, get raped, and avoid escalating the violence and getting beat up - perhaps very severely - as well. That was the decision I made, its the decision a lot of women make. As you said, escalating the violence means I’m likely to loose - I was 103 lbs of 22 year old woman. I was not in a place with a good exit, so kneeing him in the groin, putting a heal in his instep and an elbow in his throat and running was not going to get me anywhere. Escalating violence to blind/castrate/cripple him might have gotten me killed.
Rape is really bad, I’ve lived with being a survivor for a long time. But I’ve lived with being a survivor - with no physical scars.
Don’t blame women who don’t fight back. They have to make the decision in the moment that has the best chance of them coming out the other end in one piece.