Anti-Rape Campaign Targeted at Men
 

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...50940562_n.jpg

My first thought was how ineffective this is: really? A sign is going to stop rape? But, then I thought used as a tool in programming, it could be something... Still, hanging on a dorm bulletin board? Nuh-uh.

This is a good addition to the anti-rape campaign.

This is one piece of marketing material from an organization. I think you're asking a lot from a poster.

Even so, I saw the poster a few weeks ago and checked out their website (mystrength.org) and found a lot of great programming resources that were particularly relevant for my job and the chapters I advise. Men and their role in rape prevention are sadly underrepresented, and I think this campaign is a very good thing.

My first thought was, "I can't believe this hasn't been widely done already." The messages may seem trite, but it's not like a lengthy dissertation on the role of power imbalances and sociological bases for subjugation of females in acquaintance rape would be feasible.

Propaganda works. I don't see any downside - let's pretend kids laugh or whatever. They were at least exposed to the message - that's more than what was happening before, and at low cost (both dollar and energy/investment) and high contact.

We don't have these, but all the girls' dorms have signs on what to do in case of rape on the inside of the sink cabinets in our rooms, plus freshmen girls get magnets about it. The boys see the signs in their communal bathrooms.

This is good shit.

I really like the one with the 2 men. It is important to remind people that men can be raped, though it would have been better if they found some way to point out that a woman can rape as well.

Women are such a small, small percentage of rapists. Yes, they can rape as well, but really, it's not the bulk of the problem.

And this thinking I think is part of the problem.Yes the majority of people raped are women. However treating the minority victims (men), I think is doing a great disservice to them. Anybody getting rapped is a problem.

Also, so few men report rape because it is often stereotyped as "what man doesn't want sex" etc, there is no way we can know the number. It is probably much larger than we realize. Definitely not as large as sexual abuse against women, but still it should be recognized.

Often it seems that we deal with the symptoms and try to keep the victims out of harm's way instead of dealing with the cause. Hopefully this helps.

I did not say that the majority of victims are women. I said that the majority of rapists are men. Of the men who are raped, they are overwhelmingly raped BY MEN. This is a campaign aimed at men, encouraging them not to rape. It is not somehow flawed because they didn't depict any women as rapists.

Nobody really knows the number of unreported rapes perpetrated against women or men. However, I have never seen evidence showing that men under-report at a greater rate than women. In any case, the point here is a campaign aimed at men; there is no reason to include female perpetrators in a campaign aimed at men.

The most recent survey on sexual violence http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/index.html has information on who (gender) has committed the act, page 24 of the full report has more details. It agrees with you that the majority of those who commit rape are men, over 90% of perps are men when it comes to rape. For male rape victims, 93.3 percent were raped by other men, women victims reported men as their attackers 98.1%. That is for rape only and not for other sexual violence, and the study defined rape for men: "Among rape includes oral or anal penetration by a male using his penis. It also includes anal penetration by a male or female using their fingers or an object."

Men are reporting that they are being raped by men, nine out of ten times, so the campaign featuring a same sex couple is covering the majority of who male victims identify as the perpetrators of rape. Furthermore if one is Gay, reporting a sexual assault by another man means they have to out themselves and could be in an even more dangerous position and there are little to no services for these men. Are men raped by women? Of course, but this campaign is directed at the 90% of those who commit rape, men.

Quoting because it needs to be said again. The couple in the lower left hand corner is same sex, men.