Performing Identities: Critical Analysis of the Use of Theatre to Address Social

Justice Problems
Friday, June 29, 2007 1:30-2:45 p.m.

Performing Activism to Prevent Rape: Feminist Pedagogy in Rape Prevention

Education Programs for High School Aged Girls
(12 minutes- 3 pages each)

Short intro. We are: Chris and Cierra, each slide will stay up for 30
seconds to give you plenty of time to look at the images. Essentially,
based on the premise that concept retention rates increase by
exposing students to a concept repetitively in different ways (James,
1967), in January 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. We
primarily mentored young women between the ages of 15-19,
however we had several mixed gender discussions. Project
H.O.W. is alive and well today. It will be expanding outlying
areas in Chris’s community.

Before transitioning into college where incidents of date rape skyrocket, young

women trained in feminist violence intervention techniques are better prepared for the

challenges of college life and may be more likely to engage in civic activities on campus.

Many college aged young women are confronted with a new and independent

environment for the first time and may not have the skills to recognize or confront sexual

harassment or sexual assault, or even sexism, which is why colleges offer necessary and

helpful programming for their students, like theatre based improvisational programs

designed to raise awareness about sexual harassment or sexual assault [at EOU it was

called sex signals]. These programs may be the first point of contact with representations

of “appropriate” or somewhat responsible sexual conduct.

There is a necessity for mentoring and educating younger women about rape and

sexual assault before they reach the “traditional” college age; statistics that indicate up to

58% of middle school students are sexually active (Brown et al. 2006, p. 1429).

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However, 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). Sexual misconduct is articulated as a matter of choice

in the “abstinence only” environment, therefore, silencing the high occurrence of gender

specific sexual violence in high schools. There is a real urgency for feminist rape

intervention education, which uses feminist pedagogy to mentor young women to

actively interrupt the (pre)scripted role of women as sex objects or victims, and gives

them tools to help their peers do the same.

Consciousness raising about human liberation, or rather feminist agitation, is not

part of the current high school curriculum; therefore, feminist driven rape intervention

programs, like Project HOW, which was developed through the Shelter from the Storm,

the local battered women’s shelter, young women learn to raise awareness about rape in a

community of their peers, thus, prospectively preventing, or rather, intervening in future

rapes and becoming active agents against sexism in the culture at large.

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 class to class curriculum.

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Teen sexuality refers to sexual activities including intercourse and other intimate relations
between partners.

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 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 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.

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 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).