Can peer pressure be a catalyst in rape prevention?

Since the school year has just started, many news sites have been atwitter with stories about how to prevent sexual assault on university campuses. One story that stood out was an NPR piece that aired on August 18 that discussed how peer pressure could prevent on-campus rapes. Sound strange? I totally understand. (After all, the last time I was subjected to hardcore peer pressure, my friends were trying to convince me to sneak out of my parents’ house. That was not good. But I digress…)

According to NPR, several studies show that if a male has friends who think violence against women is OK, that male may be more likely to commit sexual assault. So, it would make sense that males who have close friends who don’t support assault would be less likely to support violence against women.

One study, conducted by David Lisak in 2002, surveyed 1,800 men at the University of Massachusetts. The study found that 120 men in Lisak’s sample had raped women they knew, and two-thirds of the men were serial rapists. A number of the males surveyed detailed how they used excessive amounts of alcohol get women drunk and incapacitated. Many of the male students would brag about their conquests to their friends after the assault had occurred. The article reports that the “lack of vocal objection” from male peers allowed these men to think their behaviors were not criminal.

Now, a program has been created that aims to teach young men that having sex with drunken girls isn’t acceptable. The Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program has been implemented in some Sioux City, Iowa high schools. MVP matches incoming freshmen with older students. The groups get together throughout the year and discuss assault and rape. The hope is that the training will give the men the courage to stop a sexual assault before it happens, or to speak out against it if they hear about an assault. While the conversations are tough, they prepare young men for real-life situations in college.

Luckily, this type of “training” and education is popping up everywhere. Many sexual trauma services give men details about how they can help stop violence against women (most of the advice is about ending rape culture and listening to men and women’s views on assault.) A non-profit, Men Can Stop Rape, is dedicated to teaching men how to end violence against women. And some universities are detailing how men can help prevent sexual assault on their campus websites. (Santa Clara University is just one example.)

Related on EcoSalon

Sexual Assault: Victims No More

Are Colleges Trying to Incentivize Sexual Assault? ‘The Daily Show’ Has This Answer [Video]

The Insider’s Guide to Life: Rape As We (Don’t) Know It

Image: Lisa Norwood

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ColumnWhere celebrity goes conscious.

The first time I saw real violence against a woman through film was in a movie theater, but not in the way you might think. It was during a viewing of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country and Kim Cattrall was onscreen as the Vulcan intellectual, Lieutenant Valaris. She was powerful and in control of her snazzy polyester Federation uniform. Striding around the Enterprise, she ordered two underlings to “snap to it” and perform some Star-Trek style action. Maybe they were blowing tribbles out of air locks, I can’t remember. The point is, she was cool.

But what I do remember is a fellow theater-goer getting so bent out of shape by Cattrall’s Star Trek character that he punched his fist into the back of his hand. And yelled out, “Bitch, I’ll give you something to snap to it!” while his buddies laughed. Granted, it was 1991 New Jersey. As much as I hate to admit it, the stereotypes my home state has foisted onto the nation did start from somewhere. Nonetheless, my fledgling-feminist mind whirled at how upset Star Trek Kim Cattrall had made my fellow movie watcher.

Twenty years later, I haven’t forgotten this guy who was so threatened that he had to punch himself, shout out a challenge to the screen, and possibly grandfather the monster that is now Jersey Shore. Could a movie really incite a guy to violent thoughts, or was it just that he was pissed off to see a powerful woman in a movie that featured William Shatner phoning it in? So what happens when we’re dealing with horror films, where women are routinely sadistically sliced and diced for our viewing pleasure? Won’t someone think of the sensitive movie goers exposed to the antics of Leatherface, or Jigsaw, or Michael Myers?

There’s no denying that movies influence us. The Production Code of 1930, otherwise known as the Hays Code, was installed after movies “came to be regarded as a baleful influence on public morality.” This later evolved into the Motion Picture Association of America’s letter rating system of movies, allowing filmmakers to submit their movies for a good old morality grading. Consequently, as movie goers, we were enabled to make more informed decisions about our film choices.

But our argument goes beyond the adult choices we make to entertain ourselves. The point is, does sadistic violence against anyone on film ever have a point? Media shapes our understanding of sexual violence, and there’s a line between art house and torture porn. (For the record, I’m going with the definition of torture porn as “a subgenre of horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence” and is exploitive for its own sake.)  After all, what really is the social value of gratuitous violence? I’m not proposing we start censoring films. But let’s call a spade a machete and be aware that senseless portrayals of violence against women on film are anything but a senseless portrayal of sexist sadisms.

So why exactly do we think violence against women on film is stupid?

Because it perpetuates “male eroticism as wedded to power.” Aren’t we better than that?
There’s a line between inherent decency and entertainment. Do you think seeing a woman get hung up on a meat hook enables any of us to live better lives? As Mark Mackay wrote in his essay, “The Meat Hook Mama, the Nice Girl, and Butch Cassidy in Drag,” “in her classic essay on rape, Susan Griffin points out that ‘in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power’ (Rape: The All American Crime, Ramparts, 10:3, Sept. 1971, p. 3). The superiority that men feel when they see a woman being dominated in some way on the screen is merely an extreme exaggeration of the sex roles that our culture considers normal.” Further, Mackay points out that the violence in these movies “allows male members of the audience to feel more powerful than and, hence, superior to women, makes them feel indispensable, and keeps women in their place.”

Because there’s never a moral message to justify brutally beating a woman to death on film.
In Michael Winterbottom’s film The Killer Inside Me, Jessica Alba plays a prostitute named Joyce who is beaten to death both graphically and savagely. As Natasha Walter writes for The Guardian, “It’s tough watching a woman whimpering “Why?” as her eye is punched out of place and her bones crunch.” Walter further notes that Winterbottom was caught off-guard by the criticism of this violence, at first defending it as par for course in mainstream filmmaking. As Walter writes, “I asked him why it was that his film chose to show such detailed violence, he replied: “It’s more moral to make it unwatchable.” Indeed, one writer told Winterbottom, in Interview magazine: “At my screening, I think I was smiling for most of the time.”

Because it’s just lazy filmmaking.
There’s violence in films depicting certain events, such as those pertaining to horrible tragedy. Like war. Like the Holocaust. Then there’s hanging up a live woman by a meat-hook, courtesy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Does every film have to have fete culture on some artistically positive level? No. But give us a point to it. Or at least not one that impales a female character.

Because if you want to play a rape video game, you seriously need help.
Sure, this technically counts under the broader umbrella of new media. But did you know there are video games that allow players to rape and torture women? As CNN reports:

The game begins with a teenage girl on a subway platform. She notices you are looking at her and asks, “Can I help you with something?” That is when you, the player, can choose your method of assault. With the click of your mouse, you can grope her and lift her skirt. Then you can follow her aboard the train, assaulting her sister and her mother. As you continue to play, “friends” join in and in a series of graphic, interactive scenes, you can corner the women, and rape them again and again.

Because violence against women really happens in the most horrible ways imaginable.

One in four women has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime. Nearly three out of four (74%) Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence.  Four million women and girls are trafficked annually. Every two minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

Ultimately, this is a humanist issue and not just a feminist one. Like their screaming female counterparts, men are likewise brutalized in films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the Hostel movies, and the Saw franchise. Romans cheered on gladiators fighting to the death centuries ago – and it seems we’re still cheering them on.

Image: trugassi

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