RAPE PREVENTION EDUCATION: ONE SIZE DOES not FIT ALL

Where Women, Media, Rape and Feminism Collide

Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams

G602 – Dr. Brenda Weber
Due: December 14, 2006
The deliberate consciousness of America so fair and smooth-spoken, and the under
consciousness so devilish. Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love
and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only
the Love-and-produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath. Until such
time as it will have to hear.
-D.H. Lawrence (1923/2003) in Studies in Classic American Literature

INTRODUCTION

Rape prevention education in the United States is not a priority subject in

the development and implementation of high school curricula, despite national

studies which indicate that more than two million adolescents have been

victimized by sexual violence (statistics from Sauders et al, 2003). Rather than

focusing on adolescent sexuality1 and the prevention of violence in high schools,

the federal government in 2006 gave more than $176 million toward the

promotion of abstinence education in high school curricula (U.S. House of

Representatives, 2004). Many high schools avoid “sex education2” altogether—

where issues of rape and violence prevention might fit into curricula. Instead,

abstinence only programs teach children to “avoid sexual activities” altogether

(U.S. House of Representatives, 2004).

Abstinence only education avoids the issue of teenage sexuality, in direct

opposition to statistics that indicate up to 58% of middle school students are

sexually active (Brown et al. 2006, p. 1429). In fact, there may be some

correlation between early teen sexual activity and the media saturated United

States culture. Jane Brown (2006), a professor of Journalism and Mass

Communication at U. North Carolina, found that every young American spends

about six to seven hours with some form of media per day, and although two

1
Teen sexuality refers to sexual activities including intercourse and other intimate relations
between partners.
2
Sex education refers to programs that address issues of sexual reproduction.

Thomas-Williams 2
thirds of television shows contain sexual content media does not teach

“responsible behavior” (p. 34, 35, 36). Brown (2004) concluded there is reason

to believe that high rates of media exposure correlate to “increased callousness

toward women and trivializes rape as a criminal offense” (p. 40). In light of

Brown’s 2006 study, abstinence only education seems irresponsible; however, a

report from the U.S. House of Representatives (2004) indicates that more than

“$90 million in federal funding” has been allocated since 2001 to sixty-nine

grantees (electronic resource)—this averages to more than one million dollars

per grantee for abstinence only high school “sex education.”

Rape prevention education, on the other hand, is available outside the

school environment within the programming of non profit organizations, like

domestic violence shelters, with federal funding from the Center for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC). The current rape prevention campaign from the

CDC, which has been adapted by many domestic violence shelters nation wide,

is called "Choose Respect. Give it. Get it” (Chooserespect.org, 2006). This rape

prevention campaign is a heteronormative model implying on its surface that

respecting boundaries leads to personal safety: rape, then, is a result of making

the wrong interpersonal decisions.

Rape as perceived through the lens of the CDC reduces sexual violence

to a product of partner or dating abuse ignoring structural problems altogether.

Andrea Dworkin (2000) in Just Sex posits that rape is conflated with domestic

partner abuse because under old rape laws “the perception that rape is real

depends on injuries that may accompany but are not rape” (in Gold, p. xv).

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Furthermore, current attention to rape prevention through the CDC Choose

Respect prevention model masks that 86% of rape is perpetrated on women by

men (Tjaden et al., p.iii). Rather than examining the roots of sexual oppression

as a structural problem and making rape a gender-based violence issue, it is

“treated” after the fact as a result of “disrespectful” interpersonal relationships.

Catherine MacKinnon (1994) writes “All women live in sexual

objectification the way fish live in water” and at all times are “under the shadow of

the threat of sexual abuse” (p. 274). Current rape statistics indicating that one in

four American women is raped in their lifetime (ChooseRespect.org) support

MacKinnon’s observations about women. Therefore, rape prevention curricula

that do not examine the ways in which women are structurally oppressed and

subject to sexual violence cannot be truly effective in changing the social

behavior underling rape.

Andrea Dworkin (2000) writes that feminist rape prevention techniques

eliminate “the kinds of rape now taken for granted as normal, natural, inevitable,

[making] ‘But did he hurt you?’. . . an ignorant, unspeakable insult (p. xvi).

Feminist rape prevention techniques include attention to structural forces at work

in the culture at large which underscore the oppression of women, like gendered

language, media, and advertising. “New activist strategies,” argues Dworkin

(2000) have “a brilliant sense of possibility, and an equality-based ethic of right

and wrong” (p. xvi). Feminist rape prevention education techniques highlight

rape as a gender-based violence issue, rather than merely an issue of respect or

even an artifact of dating violence. This special attention to cultural structures

Thomas-Williams 4
allows for a broader characterization of prevention education that addresses a

larger audience who may not necessarily be involved in monogamous

heterosexual relationships.

This paper compares two models of rape prevention education. The CDC

“Choose Respect” national model is discussed and evaluated in comparison to a

feminist rape prevention project called “Project H.O.W.—Healthy Outlooks for

Women.” Information about the CDC Choose Respect prevention model is

widely available on the internet and used in domestic violence shelters

nationwide. The CDC Choose Respect information presented in the paper is

gathered from resources available through federal organizations and domestic

violence shelters’ websites and federally published documents.

The information on feminist rape prevention derives from personal

involvement in the design, development, and implementation of Project H.O.W.—

Healthy Outlooks for Women. This paper includes media coverage of Project

H.O.W.’s feminist activist projects, photographs from class session, and personal

interviews with the young women who participated in the Project (Indiana

University Bloomington Study # 06-11476). Both rape and violence prevention

educational models presented in the paper were developed out of the increasing

need for preventative education in America.

The National CDC Choose Respect Model

In response to a 2003 study that indicated high incidents of dating

violence among America’s high school teen population, the CDC in partnership

with the Department of Health and Human Services launched a national

Thomas-Williams 5
campaign called “Choose Respect” designed as a violence prevention

educational model; in 2004, an unknown amount of federal funding was allocated

toward this effort (CDC MMWR, May 2006, p. 532, 534). Slogans in the media

(television, radio, magazines) promoting the CDC’s violence prevention programs

range from “Choose Respect” (the media ad campaign) to “Demand Respect”

(the curriculum), and “Expect Respect” (an amalgamation).

In 2004 rape prevention became a focus of the Choose Respect

campaign. The CDC published a guide outlining numerous ways in which

prevention education can be configured and suggests organizations design Rape

Prevention Education (RPE) grants to access the federally allocated funding

(CDC Prevention Guide, p. 1). Ultimately, the Prevention Guide supports grant

models that combine “a framework for understanding the complex interplay of

individual, relationship, social, political, cultural, and environmental factors that

influence sexual violence” (Dahlberg and Krug 2002 in CDC Prevention Guide, p.

1). Fortunately, this framework allows for multiple adaptations of rape and

violence prevention education.

Through this overarching framework for RPE models, funding is available

to a wide range of organizations but has been utilized mainly by domestic

violence shelters as outreach efforts. According to the CDC website, currently 27

national domestic and sexual violence organizations and 93 state organizations

have funding for the Choose Respect model of prevention education

(ChooseRespect.org, 2006). Once organizations have funding they can utilize

the resources created by the CDC or they can generate their own programs that

Thomas-Williams 6
follow their distinct RPE grants. Many shelters use the Choose Respect

materials to deploy their RPE grants, which is evident through viewing

organizational websites that are linked to ChooseRespect.org.

The CDC resources available are designed and marketed toward

heterosexual youth in monogamous relationships. Although the media (available

at ChooseRespect.org) is “colorful”—people are multicolored caricatures

indicating a special avoidance of racial issues—educational materials for

teachers, posters, videos, cinema slides, radio ads, and television commercials

all depict young women and men in prospectively violent always “disrespectful”

situations. These CDC materials do not depict youth on the “fringes” of strict

gender (male and female social behavior) and heterosexual norms, rather

intimate relationships are all between “normative” young men and women. This

model is a façade to protect normative cultural boundaries; many American youth

do not fit into a dual gendered, monogamous, heterosexual model of prevention

education.

One example from the CDC media materials includes a sex (male/female)

segregated pocket quiz designed to teach children the doctrine of “Demand

Respect. Get it. Give it.” There are four choices teens have when presented with

a potentially disrespectful or violent situation, they can “speak up, step in, talk it

out later, talk to an adult,” or (not usually included in television or on posters) they

can go for help if the situation calls for it (ChooseRespect.org). The “girl” version

of the CDC quiz includes questions like:

“You see your friend flirting with another boy just to make her
boyfriend jealous. You choose to:”

Thomas-Williams 7
 “Your boyfriend is staring at another girl and it is making you
jealous. You choose to:”

These quiz questions all lead to the point:

“You’ve got a choice. Choose to treat people the way you

want to be treated and see how that choice makes you feel.”
[CDC radio ad, ChooseRespect.org]

These widely used media devices only allow for a narrow selection of choices

geared toward a normative teen audience.

This is just one example of the “Expect Respect” campaign currently promoted by “The Body
Shop” (available online at www.dvirc.org.au). While the text may imply that every type of person
deserves respect, the pictures throughout the eleven page booklet all depict heterosexual
gender-normative youth.

No solid statistics are available to indicate how large the American

population of “non-normative” youth is, but it is estimated that more than 90% of

trans-gendered youth and also lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are subject to

discrimination at school because they are “different” (Cianciotto, 2006, p. 5).

Thomas-Williams 8
Federal violence prevention education upholds stringent normative boundaries

based upon an idealized version of America in which young men only date young

women making no room for gender or sexual variation. The sole focus on dating

violence in all CDC media resources makes invisible the high incidence of rape in

high school—although statistic are referred to on the ChooseRespect.org website

(2006).

The Choose Respect model of youth education is largely geared toward

prevention of violence despite the nuance of rape in RPE funding and on the

ChooseRespect.org website (2006). Sexism is not apparent in CDC media;

rather, issues of domestic or partner violence prevention are centralized thus

portraying “respect” as a solution for heteronormative violence, ultimately

disguising structural and systemic problems resultant from sexism. Children in

the Choose Respect campaign all have choices. According to this national

doctrine they have exactly four choices that lead to respect; they can “speak up,

step in, talk it out later, or talk to an adult” (CDC, ChooseRespect.org, 2006),

indicating that these American youth are autonomous and have the agency to

speak for themselves and effect change.

Respect as an issue of choice is laughable, though, when ninety percent

of “non-normative” youth are subject to daily discrimination due to pervasive

homophobia (Cianciotto, 2006, p. 5), nor is choice apparent in the fact that one in

four young high school aged women are raped (CDC, ChooseRespect.org,

2006). These two statistical references indicate that masses of American youth

indeed have no choice in the manner in which they are treated. Centralizing

Thomas-Williams 9
respect a matter of choice is dangerously close to victim blame and structural

forces at work that influence children’s choices are invisible. To generalize,

according to the CDC, dating violence is a matter of choice, not a matter of

gender based social oppression.

The “F” Word

Catherine MacKinnon (1994) argues that conflating violence with choice is

“always denigrating and bizarre and reductive,” because this paradigm insinuates

that sexism does not exist (p. 277). Rape prevention education through the lens

of feminism elucidates the structural connections between rape and oppression.

Sexism is an effect of the overall “social and relational” hierarchy that is both

“constructing and constructed of power” derived from “male dominance [that] is

sexual” (MacKinnon, 1994, p. 258, 264, 276). The oppression of women as an

issue of male dominance, however, is not widely embraced. For example,

MacKinnon is famous (infamous?) for her feminism; in the the popular

imagination3 she has been dubbed a radical anti-sex feminist and has often been

“lampooned” by the media (Baumgardner, 2000, p. 35). The degradation of

MacKinnon is understood in terms of her association with feminism and its

negative meaning as “the other ‘F’ word” (Baumgardner et al, 2000, p. 50).

Although feminism is a political movement for social justice, “gender equity,

and human liberation” it is laden with negative connotations (Baumgardner, 2000,

3
Popular is defined herein in terms of Webster’s (1996) lexical meaning “widely liked” (p. 531)
and used through its expression in current media that is easily available to vast amounts of
people, easily interpreted (rather than theory which can be arduous to read), and produced in the
twenty-first century. The term imagination in this project is derived from mythology theorist Sven-
Erik Klinkmann (2002) and refers to the larger social patterns that emerge from a reading of
certain media as they are fabricated by positioning “different subjects in relation to the chains of
signification that society creates" (p. 56).

Thomas-Williams 10
p. 50), perhaps because women’s liberation tends to signify power. Women with

power are “unfeminine” and “aggressive,” and as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy

Richards (2000) argue, this myth implies all feminists desire “social upheaval”

and “female superiority” (p. 52). Respectable media sources, such as the Wall

Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune, participate in denigrating feminism

especially in reference to rape prevention.

Neil Gilbert, a professor of social welfare at UC Berkeley, wrote an article

in the Wall Street Journal to counter “The Violence Against Women Act of 1993,”

which would have made rape a civil rights issue, that would have delegated

eighty-five million federal dollars to rape prevention education and domestic

violence shelters (WSJ, 1993, p. A18). Gilbert claimed in his article that rape

statistics are unsound; he wrote (1993) they highly overstate the existence of

rape in the U.S. and only serve to justify the “exaggerated claims of victimization”

by radical feminists (Gilbert, 1993, p. A18).

The Chicago Tribune in another 1993 article argues that feminism is to

blame for overstating the “rape” issue (Page, 1993, p. 21). In response to

Antioch College in Ohio, which amended its sexual offense policy to include the

requirement of consent at every stage of an intimate act, Page (1993) wrote a

piece designed to warn (young male) college students of the inevitable storm of

“crying rape” (Section 1, p. 21). Citing that laws and rules are now written in

accordance with “what women want,” Page (1993) blames the “end of fun” and

an “increase in judicial overreactions” and nefarious rape accusations on

women’s liberation (Section 1, p. 21). Veering dangerously close to victim

Thomas-Williams 11
blame, Page writes that “date rape is an ambiguous and misleading term”: what

women need to do is say “no” and mean it (Page, 1993, Section 1, p. 21). The

appearance of this article in a widely respected and distributed newspaper like

the Chicago Tribune indicates the backlash that feminism spurns in its move

toward gender equity. The backlash from more than ten years ago is still evident

in more recent papers.

Editor of Wall Street Journal Schaefer-Riley in a May 2006 issue accuses

feminists of failing to teach women “what to do to reduce the likelihood of rape,”

and instead solely teaches women that they are “in control of their own bodies”

(p. W11). Schaefer-Riley (2006) argues feminism has duped women into a false

sense of safety and as a result women are getting drunk in bars in their

newfound rivalry with men and are being “take advantage of” (p. W11). Blaming

radical feminists like Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin for warning

women that “men are evil and dangerous” when they are “really harmless,”

Schaefer-Riley (2006) writes women “throw caution to the wind” in demanding

equal treatment—especially in the bars (p. W11). Each of these articles

valorizes men as the victims of feminism and places the blame for rape back on

rape victims.

Articles such as these indicate that feminism is a discredited framework

for social justice movements. According to the popular imagination women have

too much freedom and as Schaefer-Riley’s, Page’s, and Gilbert’s articles indicate

everyone is paying the price for it. Susan Faludi (1991) reports that the U.S.

Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography “proposed that women’s

Thomas-Williams 12
professional advancement might be responsible for rising rape rates . . .

[because] more women have more opportunities to be raped” (p. xii). Feminism

is carried on by “crazed man-hating women” and, therefore, feminist educational

tactics like violence and rape prevention are denigrated as misleading and are

seen as a pollutant to Americans.

Backlash against women’s social advancement may be one reason why

national rape prevention programs avoid addressing rape as a gender equity

issue altogether. Despite its denigrated reputation, feminism and feminist theory

may provide framework for an effective and successful “cure” for the social

“disease” of rape; rather than just treating rape as a “symptom” of violence and

ignoring the “disease” of oppression all together, rape prevention through a

feminist lens highlights rape as an institution of gender oppression. The following

case study highlights one alternative rape prevention education program funded

by a CDC RPE grant that uses the framework of feminist theory to teach young

women about the social oppression that leads to violence against women.

Project H.O.W.—Healthy Outlooks for Women

Based on the premise that retention rates increase by exposing students to

a concept repetitively in different ways (James, 1967), Sexual Assault Response

Team Advocate Christina Martin and I created a feminist rape prevention

curriculum to be articulated through the lens of feminist activism. Feminist

activism goes beyond what Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner (2005) call

“The Generic Three” activisms: “call your politician, donate money, and

volunteer” (p. 13). While each of these actions is helpful they are “minimally

Thomas-Williams 13
effective” and lack passion (Baumgardner, 2005, p. 13). Feminist activism is a

continual process—rather than a one time “good deed”—that has roots in the

political system making it a prospectively more effective preventative method for

rape education than the current national CDC model. Further, because feminist

activism is passion based, rather than volunteering out of a sense of

responsibility, it may go further and last longer than a one time project would

(Baumgardner, 2005, p. 17; Holt in Gold, 2000, p. 17).

As victims of repeated rape and attempted rape on our own college

campuses, Martin and I had an intimate connection to our project that was fueled

by passion to change systemic violence against women. We developed a

curriculum in partnership with a local battered women’s advocacy organization.

Project H.O.W.—Healthy Outlooks for Women was conceived of the need to

expose the silent oppression of women and the epidemic of sexual assault in the

United States; therefore, it was designed as a dynamic educational approach to

rape prevention that addressed the representation of women in media (including

music, movies, television, and the Internet); it also focused on interpersonal

relationships and boundaries, body image, language, and history. The

curriculum was based on feminist principles of social justice and gender equity

and integrated these concepts with practice though feminist activism.

Initially the pitch for the program went well and was going to be included in

the area’s high school and middle school curricula; however, once administrators

understood the focus on feminist activism Project H.O.W. was dropped before it

launched. Martin took a proactive approach to recruiting students for Project

Thomas-Williams 14
H.O.W. by passing out flyers in an area adjacent to the high school. The flyer

was designed to intrigue students to attend an informational session, and

featured pop star Gwen Stephanie’s and the famous lyric “I’m just a girl” with a

giant question mark (along with the supplemental time, date, and location). This

recruitment technique alone managed to draw eighteen teenaged girls ages

ranging from twelve to nineteen4.

During the initial class in January 2006, Project H.O.W. students were

provided with definitions of healthy mutual, respectful, consensual relationships

versus unhealthy relationships based on power and control. Each of the young

women in attendance self identified as feminists during group introductions. The

young women determined the pace of the class and developed project goals as a

group rather than being presented with a pre-determined curriculum. Thereafter

Project H.O.W. met one time per week until the final class in July 2006. While

H.O.W. began with eighteen students the number of attendees quickly grew to

more than 30 during the height of Project H.O.W.

The initial five or six meetings were held in a classroom as discussion

groups and focused on actively teaching about basic feminist theory through the

framework of popular culture. For example, one class focused specifically on

iconization and advertising. Using Britney Spears as a starting point our students

spent twenty to thirty minutes in a computer lab looking for different ways that

Spears was constructed as a social icon. These media focused activities

4
The rural agricultural location is largely conservative and Anglo dominated, therefore, the
majority of our students were Caucasian girls.

Thomas-Williams 15
inspired two Project H.O.W. sophomores to write an expose’ article for their

school newspaper entitled “Is This Equality?”

During the month of March 2006 Project H.O.W. moved out of the

classroom and into the community. H.O.W. students were invited to the local

university to organize a “talk back” panel presentation after the opening

production of Eve Ensler’s play The Good Body. Project H.O.W students

developed partnerships with the university Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,

Transgendered and Questioning Alliance and the Women’s Research and

Resource Center and invited representatives from each organization to join them

on the panel.

The feminist methodology of human liberation, as articulated by

Baumgardner and Richards (2000, p. 5), was the inspiration to include other

marginalized groups in the “talk back” forum. One H.O.W. student said “I think

that the Body Project was a very useful activity because it gave everyone a

chance to talk and compare different issues and opinions” (Indiana University

Bloomington Study # 06-11476). Initially projects were organized for H.O.W.

students as teaching models, but eventually the students took on the

organizational roles themselves and as the students became more involved in

the community, Project H.O.W. received media coverage.i

Project H.O.W. students organized numerous feminist activities including:

making "safe space" t-shirts which helped the girls identify each other in school

and the community; a “Breaking the Silence Survivor Art Show,” which featured

art created by survivors of sexual assault that was displayed at the local

Thomas-Williams 16
university (see news article in endnote ii); The Clothesline Project, which involved

many of the students at the local high school and was displayed on the high

school campus for weeksii; The Guyz Project, a mixed gender talk back forum

regarding media and cultural considerations of male centered violence which

brought forty two teen men and women together to watch and discuss Jackson

Katz’s film Tough Guise; Voices of Men, a multimedia presentation focusing on

sexual assault issues that was held at the local high school and drew more than

one hundred teensiii; and a “Take Back the Night” rallyiv.

Over the course of the five months that this feminist activist group was in

session, six of the young women identified as survivors of sexual assault: one

third of the women in Project H.O.W. were survivors of rape. During the

emotional final session, one young woman confessed that she had been

victimized and that Project H.O.W. made her realize that she is a “survivor, and

[that she] no longer had to feel like a victim”; she said Project H.O.W. taught “me

how to control my energy and independence and the skill to open my eyes, and

to actually be able to voice my opinion about what I want as a woman, and as a

citizen of our system” (Indiana University Bloomington Study #06-11476).

Baumgardner and Richards write (2005) that feminist activism “requires

faith, because you are imagining something that doesn’t exist and you have to

believe not only that it should exist but that it could exist” (original emphasis, p.

22). Project H.O.W. was developed from the desire to apply alternative (to the

heteronormative national CDC Choose Respect model) rape and violence

Thomas-Williams 17
prevention techniques in hopes that the feminist ideals, activism, and rape

prevention education would continue after the initial H.O.W. classes were over.

When asked in interviews about their experiences, the Project H.O.W.

students reported:

“I am a better person because of this experience. I feel stronger and

more confident. I also learned that I am not alone as a rape victim, and
as a struggling survivor.” [Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-
11476]

“By participating in that activism we were more aware of the fact that
rape happens in our communities and [to] people in our lives. It brought
our awareness to a different degree and made us not afraid to share our
voices about rape.” [Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-11476]

“HOW gave all of us so much more confidence and we really started to

think that, hey, just because we are woman doesn’t mean that we
deserve to be treated like objects.” [Indiana University Bloomington
Study # 06-11476]

“I know now that I will never let someone call me a ‘bitch’ or a ‘slut’ or a
‘cunt’ or any of these words ever again and laugh them off nervously just
because its their idea of a funny joke. I also know the difference now
between good and bad relationships AND I gained a lot of confidence in
myself!” [Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-11476]

“I know that if I am uncomfortable in a situation it’s ok to say ‘NO!’ or just

leave the situation. I also know that I will never tolerate sexist jokes or
names, even if they are just meant to be funny. I also know that when I
am dating a person to be really careful and watch for signs of someone
who could potentially assault me sexually.” [Indiana University
Bloomington Study # 06-11476]

Many of the young women have also continued activism in their own ways:

I did some other activism inspired by H.O.W., like weekly peace rallies
and we cleaned up Riverside Park [SOLV ‘Down by the Riverside’
Clean Up]. I think we did a good job getting our point across in that tiny
town and it worked.” [Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-
11476]

I wrote an article about the feminist view of "Girls in the Media." It was
circulated throughout my college campus. [Indiana University
Bloomington Study # 06-11476]

“[I want to] start a feminist group. I'm planning a peaceful protest
against the army recruit people who are coming to our school! I am
excited. I will use what you have taught me and some of your
techniques to help me.” [Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-
11476]

Thomas-Williams 18
 The Project H.O.W.—Healthy Outlooks for Women curriculum was

intended to satisfy CDC’s RPE grant guidelines for rural rape prevention

education programming and to provide an alternative to current federal rape

prevention efforts that tend to mask rape as an issue of gender-based violence.

Project H.O.W. is unique in that it is a working example of a curriculum that has

met federal funding requirements while placing an emphasis on analyzing the

world through a feminist lens; the emphasis on violence and other contemporary

cultural issues, such as women’s oppression in the media and in language,

appealed to young women by providing empowering outlets for personal and

interpersonal creativity in their lives. Project H.O.W. is a successful example of a

CDC RPE curriculum that young women can embrace but that also has a

practical application to their lives as American women subject to oppression in a

myriad of ways.

Luna et al. (1998) in School-Based Prevention Programs: Lessons for

Child Victimization Prevention indicate that effective prevention programs have

the following characteristics: they are based on a coherent theoretical basis (like

feminism); they must include active skills training (like activist organizing, article

and letter writing, and Internet navigation); they integrate multiple teaching and

learning components (like discussion forums in the classroom, research in

computer labs, or protests and rallies in the community); they promote interactive

instruction methods (for example, designing personal activist projects); they must

also provide individualized instruction, and more than twenty hours of exposure

(in Berson, 2006, p. 45). Project H.O.W.—Healthy Outlooks for Women clearly

Thomas-Williams 19
followed these recommendations and developed an effective and long lasting

preventative model that addressed systemic gender-based violence. One

student indicated that she thinks “that this program [Project H.O.W.] should be

offered in schools as a required course” (Indiana University Bloomington study

#06-11476). Unfortunately, Project H.O.W.’s focus on feminism will likely prevent

that from happening.

Conclusion

D.H. Lawrence so eloquently wrote in 1923 that “the deliberate

consciousness of America [is] so fair and smooth-spoken and the under

consciousness so devilish,” because it fails to “listen” to its own destructive

undertones (electronic resource). Rape prevention education that does not

address the hegemonic underpinnings of violence against women amounts to

listening to the “cackles of the upper consciousness,” rather than its destructive

undertones which cry “Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!,” ignoring a wide range of

gender equity issues—including homophobia (Lawrence, 1923, electronic

resource).

The CDC Choose Respect model of prevention education relies on

methods that reproduce heteronormative behaviors that send the message to

teens to “Love and Produce!” but is complicated by the fact that federal funding

largely supports abstinence only education in high schools (Lawrence, 1923,

electronic resource; U.S. House of Representatives, 2004). Feminist rape

prevention techniques focus on the “hum of destruction underneath” the

American consciousness and using feminist activism, it forces others to address

Thomas-Williams 20
issues that are “so devilish” and insists that now is the time the American

consciousness “will have to hear” (Lawrence, 1923, electronic resource) that

rape is an artifact of women’s oppression not women’s liberation.

Appendix:
Documents from Indiana University Bloomington Study # 06-11476
1. Recruitment Script;
2. Informed Consent Statement Adult;
3. Informed Consent Statement Minor;
4. Interview Questions;
5. and local media coverage (in endnotes).

Bibliography:
Baumgardner, Jennifer and Richards, Amy (2000). Manifesta: Young Women,
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i
Here are two newspaper articles covering Project H.O.W. activist projects or community activist projects that
H.O.W. student participated in (citations omitted to protect the identity of minors):

“A Stand Against Sexual Violence” on the front page of the local newspaper, features Project H.O.W. student
holding the sign: “You Got A Voice, Use it to End Violence.” She participated in this project after joining Project
H.O.W., while we cannot say for sure that she would not have participated in this project without the influence of
her feminist rape prevention education, she admits that she applied the skills she learned in the classroom.

“Art Display Stirs Controversy” from the front page of the university newspaper features the artwork of sexual
assault survivors who are members of Project H.O.W.

ii
Photos from the planning session of The Clothesline Project, more information is available about how to
organize one at http://www.clotheslineproject.org/.
iii
Photos from the Voice of Men production, more information about the program is available at
www.voicesofmen.org. More than twenty young men (in front of hundred of peers) took an oath never to
participate in violence against women.

iv
Photos from “Take Back the Night” rally, featured band performances by Project H.O.W. members.

Project H.O.W. students listened to speeches at the “Take Back the Night” event, and four were inspired to tell
their own stories.