Feminist Activism in Girls and Young Women:

Students Teaching, Students Learning

Session: Fri., June 29, 2007, 4:30-5:45 p.m.

RAPE PREVENTION EDUCATION: ONE SIZE DOES not FIT ALL

Where Women, Media, Rape and Feminism Collide

(about 15 minutes – 3 pages each)

Short intro. We are: Chris and Cierra
Essentially, based on the premise that concept retention rates increase by exposing
students to a concept repetitively in different ways (James, 1967), in 2006 Sexual Assault
Response Team Advocate Chris Martin and I developed and implemented a feminist rape
intervention curriculum to be articulated through the lens of feminist activism. I am
going to tell you about the broad social context for our program and Chris will focus on
specifics.

My paper:

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 human relationships,

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 education” altogether—what I mean by this is basic biological

discussions about the sexual reproductive process—instead, abstinence only programs

teach children to “avoid sexual activities” altogether (U.S. House of Representatives,

2004). Children are taught to make the choice to remain abstinent until marriage, and the

heteronormative nuclear family is “preserved” under this rubric.

1
Teen sexuality refers to sexual activities including intercourse and other intimate relations
between partners.
 In addition to avoiding sticky issues such as sexual transmitted diseases and

bastard pregnancies, 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). Kids are sexually active, but they are not

learning about sexual activity in school. They are learning about it from somewhere else.

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 claims there may be a correlation between early teen sexual

activity and the media saturated United States culture; [big gasp!<---sarcasm] while two

thirds of television shows contain sexual content, these media sources do not usually

promote nor teach “responsible behavior” (p. 34, 35, 36). Imagery is highly sexual and

often violent. 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).

So, children are functioning in a sex-rich culture, which often sexualizes violence

against women, teens and pre-teens are having sexual experiences, and yet are not taught

basic knowledge about sexual and social responsibility. In light of Brown’s 2006 study,

abstinence only education seems irresponsible considering the statistics indicating that

children are increasingly victimized by sexual violence and that one in four women and

young girls are raped. 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.”

 So, sexuality is avoided in high schools, but monogamy is expected. Kids are

supposed to make the choice to remain abstinent and avoid social situations, like

pregnancy….problem solved. This is the power of the rhetoric of free choice. So, when

a young woman gets pregnant, she is stigmatized by a paradigm that frowns upon

promiscuity, but she not allowed the freedom to “make the choice” to terminate the

pregnancy. She is merely irresponsible: we taught her to make good choices in school.

This rhetoric of choice seems avoids gendered power dynamics altogether, as the blame

is focused on girls and women for their poor choices. There is that sticky matter of the

prevalence of sexual violence…. [transition/connection???]

Violence prevention education 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 violence 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, or rather a penalty for poor choices, much like

pregnancy. Rape as perceived through the lens of the CDC reduces sexual violence to a

product of partner or dating abuse ignoring structural problems, like gendered violence,

altogether.

Abstinence only education—make the choice to remain sexually pure until

marriage—paired with federally funded mass media “violence prevention” propaganda

such as the CDC’s “Expect Respect” Campaign reinforces the rhetoric of “choice.”
“Prevention” insinuates that violence against women is preventable. This is the blame

the victim paradigm. Girls and young women under the rubric are the responsible parties

for a myriad of social malaise.

What is unique about a feminist approach to the “problem” with violence is that it

takes the focus off of the individual—the woman, the potential victim—and places it

back on to structural issues. We teach girls and young women that they do not make the

choice to be raped, no one does, but that one out of every four of them will likely be

raped. The curriculum is based on feminist principles of social justice and gender equity

and we focus on the integration these concepts with practice though feminist activism.

Through consciousness raising, a basic feminist principle, (ie, participation in activism)

the girls learned to recognize the factors that contribute to the stigmatization of women

and victimization in general and to interrupt that cycle by holding young men, politics,

media, the social structure accountable. Project H.O.W. women turn the rhetoric of

choice on its head and demand accountability for violence against women. Project

H.O.W. is not a violence prevention program. It is a violence intervention program.

(chris)