I have been thinking a lot recently about rape, in all it’s forms. From rape within the context of a relationship to the stranger on the street. My experience at the Vagina Monologues drew me deeper into this line of thought.
Here’s the statistic that’s struck me the most: 1 out of every 3 women in the US military is raped by another member of the US armed forces. 1 out of every 3. Raped. Another member of the US armed forces.
That’s shocking.
So much of education around rape is aimed at women – how to avoid situations that might lead to rape (no drugs, no alcohol, never walk alone after dark, etc.), how to be clear about sexual intentions (“Stop. I do not want to do that.”), how to get help after a rape (crisis hotlines, women’s resource centers, etc.). This education is critical. It lets women know that a rape is not their fault, and that they are not alone.
But focusing on the women’s half of a rape experience is not anywhere near enough. Preventing rape is what we need to be focusing on.
But not very much attention is put on educating men on how not to rape, why not to rape. So I’ve been wondering how (or whether) parents and sex educators can effectively introduce the topic of rape into conversations with preteen and teenage boys.
I like the way the Unitarian Universalist sex ed curriculum Our Whole Lives deals with the issue. There is a story told of a date between two college students. The story is told first from the woman’s perspective, and then from the man’s perspective. It’s clear from the woman’s story that she was raped, and clear from the man’s story that he had no idea he was raping her.
But I don’t feel like it’s enough. And I’m not sure how to provide an outline for a conversation where the young man doesn’t feel like he is being assumed to be a potential rapists – because he will shut down to the conversation if he feels that way. However, the majority of sex ed curricula that present rape do so under the (apparent) belief that none of the boys in the room will ever rape a woman. And that’s clearly just not the case, or women wouldn’t be raped as often as they are.
So how can we adults educate the following generations of boys so that they will not rape?
I know there are a lot of smart people with a lot to say about sex and sex education who read this blog. Some of you get it by e-mail (I know because I have your e-mail addresses! ) and some of you get it by RSS. Please speak up today. Come to the site and leave a comment. Let me and other readers know what you think about how to educate boys about rape. Forward this link or this post on to others and ask that they leave their ideas too. I see this as a critical topic that’s not getting enough discussion. So let’s get it started here!
I’m a big fan of Our Whole Lives and the story of the two students is always a great “teaching moment.” About a month ago a date rape happened in our town, where “she” felt she was raped and “he” thought it was consensual. That was the basis for a discussion I had with my 16 yr old and her boyfriend. We talked about respect and empathy for the partner. Whether one person doesn’t want sex that night, or if it’s just one person doesn’t want to go somewhere or do something, it’s important that the other partner understand. It’s learning to be respectful of the other person’s desires and being empathetic. Good communication between partners (or even just aquaintances) goes along way in dealing with these kind of issues. Sorry I rambled. Barb
This is a critical conversation. And difficult for us Americans, who tend to see things as black/white, good/evil, etc.
I think the truth is we all have a rapist inside of us. We are all capable of the most heinous crimes. Thich Nhat Hanh describes the seeds which are in our being, and we must be concerned with “which seeds are we watering today”?
His poem, Call Me By My True Names, offers this perspective in a most compelling way:
Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Perhaps that’s the approach: that everyone has it in them to do harm. Certainly, women abuse men emotionally and physically. It’s harder for a woman to rape a man; so I don’t think a classroom discussion can go there. I think we DO need to assume that any boys we’re teaching would NOT rape; and that’s the perspective we must use. Assuming the opposite, as Karen said, would shut them down. For date rape, it’s probably essential to focus on “No means no.” Especially if a couple has had sex together before, the boy might feel he has some right to have sex again. Culture has so much to do with it as well. We learned that during the Tailhook scandal in 1991, which involved Navy pilots sexually abusing female officers. The military must still be condoning rape in some way. For sex education, it might make sense for male teachers to speak to boys separate from girls to provide a franker, more specific message: that rape is totally unacceptable, anywhere, anytime and under any circumstances.
I think men need to take the lead on this one. There are so many communication problems inherent in this topic; men need to teach boys.
I’m in the midst of an international move, so it is hard to sit down and right a well thought out response, but I do feel the need to chime in on several points here.
Taking them in the order presented (not in the order of importance!): 1. the statistic cited here is questionable. I’ve worked for the military in Behavioral Health for over 5 years now. I find it hard to believe that 1 in 3 women in the military are raped by other military members. I DO believe, in fact know to be true, that way too many women are raped by other military members, but where does that number come from? Just because someone says it, doesn’t make it so.
2. We had a training video at one of my bases for young, new military members that was very similar to the described video from OWL and I think it had good impact on all who saw it. It is so important for males to recognize that if the female is incapacitated (i.e. inebriated), she is NOT capable of consent for first time sex and you better know her pretty well before you continue a sexual relationship under those circumstances.
3. As someone who has worked with many, many women who have been sexually molested by family members, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I’m working and socializing with child molesters all the time – I just don’t know it. Of course some of the boys and men who receive education on this topic are rapists. There is no way around it. The way to work with rapists (and child molesters as well), is to work with them respectfully, but clearly and firmly. No ALWAYS means no. Children (not adolescents!) are ALWAYS off limits sexually. Family members (some blurry lines here but in general) are ALWAYS off limits sexually.
4. The last point I want to make is actually what I think is the most important point and I think Dr Rayne expresses this very well and Barb does earlier also. Respectful interaction, beginning at birth and continuing throughout life, is the single most important interaction to reduce rape. Almost all people who have been treated respectfully the majority of their lives have grave difficulty treating another human being with sufficient disrespect to allow rape to occur. Children and adolescents in our culture are so accustomed to being treated disrespectfully, they look forward to reaching the age where they can do the same. And so the distress continues. I don’t post to this blog very often because I’m in such agreement so often with Dr Rayne that there doesn’t seem a need for me to chime in and say “yeah, what she said”, but I do want parents to take this blog seriously – your life and the life of your children will be greatly enriched!
As a former peer educator for sexual assault, I use to think about that question a million times a week. How can we prevent rape? It may sound odd, but the only thing I could think of is to really explain rape. So often when you think of rape, you think she was attacked or drugged and forced to do this. And there are some men that believe as long as they did not physically hurt her (like hit her, punch her, etc.) or drug her that it was not rape. They don’t understand the verbal communication involved or that being drunk doesn’t mean consent. I think that prevention has to start with redefining rape- it isn’t just forced penetration. It’s so much more psychologically damaging to both the women and the men it happens to that we can’t just limit it.
Where does that one in three statistic come from? I would appreciate a source.
The statistic came through Rev. Dorothy Mackey, M.P.A. from the organization Survivors Take Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel (STAAAMP). Their website is currently defunct, but I have contacted them, looking for more information on the origin on the statistic.
As I have really looked into this statistic of 1-in-3, what I have mostly found is a lot of statistics which disagree with each other.
I found this journal article to include well-designed, well-executed, and well-analyzed research:
Sadler, A.G., Booth, B.M, Cook, B.L. and Doebbeling, B.N. “Factors associated with women’s risk of rape in the military environment,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 43 (3), 262-273, March, 2003
This article provides compelling data behind 29 – 30% of military women being raped during their military careers. But the data could be considered old (they spoke, of course, with veterans, in order to get a picture of rape across entire military careers). This is particularly true because the military environment continues to develop and has recently begun to work specifically to reduce rape within.
The other research which I found relevant and well executed is the Armed Forces 2002 Sexual Harassment Survey (clicking the link will download the PDF report to your computer):
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2004/d20040227shs1.pdf
This survey asks specifically about the experience of the military women interviewed over the last 12 months. The results say that over the 12 months prior to the survey, 8% of women experienced sexual coercion and 3% experienced sexual assault. Draw the conclusions you want, but these numbers mean that over a twelve month period, more than 1 in 10 women are having sexual relations they don’t want to engage in.
So this break-down of the data isn’t as clean or as high-impact as the 1-in-3 data given above. I am continuing to look into this more, and may have additional information to bring in the future.
[…] and how to deal with it if it happens. What kind of response might we get if we focused as much attehttp://karenrayne.com/2008/03/18/preventing-rape-through-sex-education/Raped By Teachers in China: Nightmares for Young Girls ? Status of …Org : Nightmares for young […]
I think the best way to educate boys would be to make it interactive. It wouldn’t be so hard, all you would have to do is ask the class, so what is rape? Just ask questions to see what their knowledge points to in the beginning. Also you mentioned the example from OWL where there were two anecdotes about a date, in the eyes of the man vs. the woman. That I would say would be a good way to open the discussion. Or even how about this, just read aloud the story of the male. Then ask questions. I have always LOVED the way a debate/conversational class would go. I always learned way more that way and I payed attention because it involved me. That’s why I think it would be the best if it was taught in that manner. Think of the impact of talking about the story for a good amount of time then reading the woman’s point of view? Wouldn’t it open their eyes? Especially if they could openly discuss what the differences were. I would also teach about basic communication with people, so you know if someone is just plain uncomfortable. Seriously, I think that communication should be a REQUIRED class in High School. I took it in College and it was awesome. We had such a huge diversity of students(only 9 total) and we ALL got along. We even had dinner together with our professor after our finals. How weird! But doesn’t that tell you the power of simply understanding how to fully communicate with another human? I believe that if everyone knew how to communicate exactly what they thought and felt AND people could listen and be able to properly interpret what the other is trying to point out, don’t you think there wouldn’t be any rape? Therefore a person could talk about their frustration about sex and someone could actually help them understand the problem and figure out a way to fix it? (E.G.: A guy going to a meeting of people that are sexually frustrated, teach them about courtship and basics, then setting them up with one of those speed-dating dealies.)
Okay, I’m going off-tangent here.
But I believe that if you teach them all this in a discussion abled way and teach them basics of human communication at the same time, you would most definitely have less men in the future that “accidentally” rape a woman, because of naivety or just because they are unable to communicate well enough.
As for the violently natured version of rape, they just need to be taught how to communicate their problems, and have readily available help. Help should be for everyone, not just victims. I’m sure that someone that made someone else a victim, at some point were a victim of some sort in their lifetime. So to stop the chain of violence must be through open-mindness of the hurt person and someone there to help them figure out the core of their problem and just to have someone there to listen.
can you plz tell me how can sex education prevent or reduce rape cases???? i m totally confused. i see no relation between two…
[…] maybe means…? Last March I wrote a post about preventing rape through sex education. It just got a new comment, so I went back and read my way through it […]
I think we need to bring rape home for the kids in sex ed courses and I think this means that we need courageous survivors close to their age group to come and speak at schools, preferably to individual classes, and tell their stories. They need to focus on the emotional, physical and spiritual damage. I think that’s brushed under the rug because hearing about it is painful. As a society, we would rather hear “I was raped and went on to be a best-selling author and an actress” than “I was raped five years ago and I still have nightmares every night”. I don’t deny that many, many people who were raped go on to do amazing things, I just think that we need to show the space between the rape and them doing those things more clearly, otherwise it promotes the idea that rape isn’t a big deal because people go on to be actresses, authors and so forth.
I think rape is very much a distant thing to students who haven’t experienced it themselves. It’s a TV show reality or a lifetime movie topic. They look at their fellow students and they assume that none of them have been raped. I was always on the other side of the fence, looking at my fellow students and wondering who had been raped. We talked about rape during one sex ed class and I really felt that the curriculum failed miserably. Rape was farther distanced from the students that day, despite the teacher doing her best to avoid that.
We didn’t talk about the things that go into a non-stranger rape, from assumed consent to coercion. The class dissolved into nervous giggles and then into jokes and comments. I wanted to stand up and tell my story to say, “I’m someone you’ve known since we were in kindergarten. I’m your age. I’m one of you and this happened to me and I’m sure I’m not the only one.” Someone needs to do that because, on one hand, it gives people who have been raped a measure of relief to know that their entire class has an idea of what they’re going through and on the other hand, it gives the potential rapists something to think about.
I believe some people will rape anyway, for one reason or another, and this won’t help them. Nothing really will. However, the rest thinking of their date/partner/spouse/friend/friend with benefits/whatever being hurt as badly and as enduringly as the speaker was will make them pause before raping or “maybe” raping someone (in the UU sex ed course way). Combined with communication lessons and stressing enthusiastic consent, this could work.
As a father of young girls and a self defense instructor, I’m all for teaching young men not to rape, as well as teaching women how to avoid and defend against sexual assault. I would like to see statistics showing how well anti-rape education targeted at boys works. does it actually decrease incidences of rape.
Are there other violent crimes for which educating the criminal works? Does teaching people not to steal, not to murder etc. have a record of working.