For this project, our group: KROML decided to discuss the issue of sexual assault. More precisely, sexual assaulted that happens in Vanier school campus. We believed it was important to address this topic since a lot of college victims are staying quiet about their assault or they do not know where to look for help. In fact, teenagers spend most of their time at school and it also seen as a safe place for them, and by making more resources accessible for them and to advertise them. However, our campaign sends a message to everyone, starting from teachers to librarian to students as sexual assault may happen to anyone, at any time, and any age.

Even if people are more open nowadays, sexual assault is still a taboo subject and victims are still uncomfortable to open up and tell their story. This is why our group felt that we should give more attention to this issue. Moreover, we wanted to provide help for victims but

When it comes to the research we did, we found a lot of campaigns about sexual assault which got our attention, since why are they so many campaigns and why are not aware of them? The answer is simple, social media is to wide, there is too many information online and unless someone takes the time to look it up, it will not magically appear and even if it did, it will be at the end of the page by one scroll down. Therefore, with the amount of time people spend on social media, many of them do not even see one post about sexual assault, and if they do it is a trend at the moment. As the saying goes: ‘’out of sight, out of mind’’.

Our project was inspired by the Brandon University campaign: ‘’IBelieveYou campaign for sexual assault awareness, which we found during research and enjoyed since it focuses o9n sexual awareness on campus too.

This is exactly why we decided to make posters that will be put all around the school in specific places to attract the eyes of students and everyone who comes in Vanier. For example, we decided to put some in the bathrooms, the staircases, class doors, lockers, and even some on the floors as one of the Concordia University facilitator advised.

We made two posters and they both had important messages. Both posters were made to raise awareness with strong messages such as:

’’Hey you! Chances are you sat next to a woman that has been sexually assaulted & stayed silent.’’ Furthermore, our posters included important statistics such as: ‘’one in five women experience sexual assault in a post-secondary institution. We found important numbers from the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario. Then, we had another poster that says to look up when you are walking since everyone walks with their head down and eyes on their phone.

The goal of these posters being put up in strategic areas is to make people think about sexual assault at least once a day and will hopefully start conversation among people. One student cannot make a difference but if everyone talks about it at least 5 minutes to a friend the issue will go around school in an important speed. This will prevent future sexual assault and even help current victims who need to speak out. In fact, nothing is more powerful than spreading information through mouth-to-mouth which will lead to a successful project since our goal would be attained.

In overall, I really enjoyed doing this project especially in a group where all of the members would bring creative ideas to the table and it would build up to amazing final ideas. Also, we had all the tools we needed from the teacher and the facilitators to have an effective brainstorming period. Furthermore, we did not have many conflicts during the project since we added on our ideas and listened to what everyone had to say. Finally, I had the chance to work on such an amazing project that made me realize that sexual assault is a subject that we need to talk about more. Also, it was an honor to work with the facilitators from Concordia, they were more than helpfull and their support was noticed.

Click to access Factsheet-SexualAssault.pdf

Click to access I-Believe-You-Poster-1.pdf

The goal that we had for this project was to raise awareness on sexual assault, specifically on postsecondary campuses. As on our research, we discovered that most victims of sexual assault are between the age of 16 and 35 years old and so by putting our message on the campus we would reach the audience that is most affected by it. We decided to use posters and place them in strategic places around school, like doors, staircases, lockers, cafeteria, places that are often used by students. What we chose to write on the poster was a catching phrase that would grab people’s attention and then state some important and shocking statistics as well as resources that they use if they need it at the bottom of the poster. It needs to be short and impacting because most people will read the poster while they are walking by and not everyone has the time to stop and read a long text. This message is not only intended to the students, but also teachers and other members of the staff, basically everyone that is present on campus.

By raising awareness, we hope to encourage everyone to be aware of the presence of sexual assault in campus and be encouraged to report if they have been victims or if they have been witnesses of a sexual assault. We want to make people realize that it does really happen everywhere and that it needs to stop, and it only does by reporting it. Most cases of sexual assault are not reported and even less are prosecuted and so the abuser most of the time the victim does not receive the justice that she/he deserves. This generation is really focused on social media and their phones and that is why one of our posters specifically encourage people to take their attention off their phones and look around because someone around them may be needing their help.

Doing this group project was interesting because we had the chance to work together on ideas and each one of us shared their opinion and own ideas that brought and gave us a good final result.

Tuba Munawar

For the group project, our group decided to reflect and pay an extra hard attention on the relationships between the school facility and the students. The reason we decidedly to make our advertisement on this specific subject, it is because in our opinion and also with some research, we came to the conclusion that this subject is not very talked about. We usually hear about sexual assault on the streets, in our day to day lives, in relationships, in families but never in the education system. For this very reason we decided that it would be a good idea if we focused on a project that was not well know and pour more light upon it. Our creative process to make these posters were quite fun. In the beginning it took a little bit of effort to come up with how exactly we wanted to portray our message and what media tools to use but once we all came to a consensus, it was an extremely smooth process.

We decided to create a website that will give students a anonymous place to place their concerns without having to go to through any meetings or papers and some posters that we could place around schools to raise awareness.

In my opinion, it is very possible for our piece to actually become successful just because it is a new, more broad and sensitive subject that needs more attention towards. To be very honest, I do think that some ideas need a more specific and more understood way to reach it, for example, it is clear that the website could create problems for some innocent teachers who have students who do not like them, they can write false information about them.

Before this project was introduced to me, I always knew how serious sexual assault was. The one thing that this project really opened my eyes to was how often it occurs, and how even though it is an important topic for me, some people really belittle it. When my group and I were first introduced to this project we were concentration on two campaigns. One that was called #IBELIEVEYOU, and the other one was #METOO, both of these were well run campaigns, that helped influence our own campaign. The #METOO campaign was all over social media where women, and even males showed support to the females who were sexaully assaulted. While #IBELIEVEYOU focused more on the people surrounding the victim, it was a campaign also online, but as well it was launched in Brandon’s University.

Both of these campaigns were a great way to spread awareness, but the only issue with online campaigning is that it is only relevant for a certain amount of time, unless you personally research it. For instance, I never knew how common sexual assault was, I was aware that it does occur, but not as often as it actually does. This is when my group, and I decided to base our campaign off of getting people more aware. Then, we decided that the best way to spread our campaign would be in Vanier college itself. I feel as if students who do not experience in sexual assault, or hear about it, act as if it doesn’t happen. That’s why we decided to focus on vanier students, so many females, and some males as well, have experienced sexual assault, but us as a school, are not aware of how common these acts occur. We are to busy with our cell phones to even stop, and look around, and see what’s going on around us.

The two posters that we decided to create was one that was explaining maybe if we weren’t on our cellphones all the time, and we looked up, we would be more aware of what really happens around us. A lot of people may not understand how looking up has anything to do with being aware, but it does. The reason for this is that sexual assault happens everywhere, and anywhere. It happens in the school hallways, or in front of a bar, or club, but people are not aware of this is because they are so invested in their cellular devices. So this is why we are telling them to look up for once, and pay attention to what’s around you, you may see things that always have been there, but that you never aware of.

While our second poster concentrates on making people more aware of how often this act is committed. We decided to use a personal approach that states how often females get sexual assaulted, and then we try to correlate it to a girl you sit next to in class everyday, could be a victim, but you have no idea. This is why it’s important to be aware of these things, so that it creates a supportive society were individuals who have experienced sexual assault, can talk about their feelings, and experience, without having to worry about not being believed, or for being shamed upon. Our main goal is just to get people more aware of the seriousness of it, that’s why we chose posters, and not the internet, because if the poster in hung in front of your locker, one day, or another you’ll acknowledge it. While online, as I mentioned before, people get to chose what’s relevant to them, sexual assault shouldn’t be important sometimes when celebrities decide to be open about their story. It should be always talked about, and people should always be showing their support for these victims.

I feel as if these posters would be successful because we made them personal, as if whoever is reading them at the time, feels as if we are only talking to them. The only thing is that our posters would cause ethical issues. A lot of the South Asian culture suffer from sexual assault from their own family, but they are never open about it because it is shameful for their family. Therefore, if they see a poster like this they might ignore it, or have issues with accepting it. The reason for this is because these posters are promoting people to be more aware of sexual assault, while these individuals are taught that they should just forget about their experience, and move on with their lives.

References:

https://www.brandonu.ca/news/2018/09/06/brandon-university-to-launch-ibelieveyou-campaign-for-sexual-assault-awareness/

Group Project Reflection

My group and I wanted to create more awareness in regards to the topic of sexual violence. Yes it may be true that there are plenty of services offered (RCEW), however you have to search these platforms to access them. Many people are not aware simply because they don’t research the topic (RCEW).

What our group came up with, was the integration of information in a video game platform. The target audience would be video game players, ( which is a gender neutral audience however studies prove there are more male gamers). The objective would be that by consenting to view a video that is approximately 30 seconds or less, and then the player would gain points and certain rewards.

We chose to use animals to target prejudices. In one of our examples there was a sheep and a wolf, in most instances you could correctly assume the perpetrator is the wolf. In our sceanario the wolf is the”victim’’ and the sheep the instigator ,this puts an emphasis on the saying “a wolf in sheeps clothing”.

What inspired our idea was accessibility. What I am implying by this is that we wanted to create a media platform that could be accessed through entertainment. At first when brainstorming , we thought of putting our work as advertisements in games. This however may have cause negative or little impact, due to the fact ,the player would be in a negative mindset since we have just inturpted their game time without offering any potential benefits.

I believe that our idea will be successful because we are giving people a choice. In reality and virtual reality everyone just wants to be successful. By offering rewards for viewing our advertisement this will increase the likelihood of agreeing participants.

We live in a technological world,most of my generation is addicted to cellphones. (Jantsch) Creativity seems to have gotten down because with constant stimulantaton from our screens which doesn’t allow our brains a break (Rainn). Why do you think that often,peoples best ideas are thought of in the shower? Simple, there’s no screens in the shower.

When advertising any idea, you have to think of which ways will get the most people on board with your idea (Jantsch).Although it’s probably a good idea to try to get people to play less video games, instead of potentially increasing their screen time with our advertissments, we have to look at the greater of the two evils. Its much harder to convince people to stop playing video games then it simply is to teach people about consent.

Bibliography

5 Reasons Why You Must Advertise. (J.Jantsh.). https://www.google.ca/amp/s/ducttapemarketing.com/5-reasons-why-you-must-advertise/amp/About sexual violence. (n.d.). https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/myths-vs-realities/Are we addicted to technology? (n.d.).

http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/magazine/science-technology/are-we-addicted-technologyNational Resources for Sexual Assault Survivors and their Loved Ones. Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW.). https://www.rainn.org/national-resources-sexual-assault-survivors-and-their-loved-ones ( Rainn)

-Stephanie Mallick -Pilon

Our team , the Fantastic 4, worked on the issue of consent, in order to initiate adolescent to the concept of consent. I had very little research to do to know how important it is to teach consent as soon as possible to youth. Even if I consider my personal experience as something else than rape ( I somehow gave verbal consent), I did not realise how important it was to know saying ”no” is always okay and at any moment. For this reason, I was very glad to participate in this project that made a lot of sense.

In my Social Psychology class, I retained a lot of information about persuation and my research was mostly oriented toward understanding how the six tools of persuation that we learned in class could apply to our project. Hopefully, we were able to integrate some of the principles in our project as I will explain later in this text.

First, we wanted to make memes because they are simple, but our subject did not fit that well with memes, so we naturally agreed on making a video. As a group, we liked the gender neutral aspect of the fruit campain about consent and the simplicity of the cup of tea. Because our audience was not mature, we wanted to make consent as simple as posible rather than going into details like #DearDaddy. In my opinion, it was easy for us to understand the dolescent perspective,because this is how we viewed the idea of consent only a few years ago.

I think the creative process was the hardest part of the project, because we missed one member of the team and thinking of clear scenarios was difficult. We wanted scenarios to be relevant; for example, a wolf going to the mall rather than a party because our target audience might not do parties (exepct birthday parties). Even if it was difficult to think of good scenarios, collaborationin the team made it easier. Every present member had ideas that could be completed by someone else’s. The hardest part was to link consent to watch a video to consent in real life situation like kissing a familly member, watching a horror movie or going to the mall instead of staying confortably at home. After tremendous efforts, we came up with “You were able to consent to watch this video, YOU CAN SAY NO IN ANY SITUATON”.

Finally, I think our project can be successful because the approach that we use include some of Caldini’s persuation techniques. First, reciprocation is used because we want our ad to offer a reward in the game that will be chosen. Given a reward, people are usually more enticed to give back the favour and be open to our message. Also, we “force” people from the beggining to give consent before encouraging them to consider taking away consent if needed. This way, we encourage commitment. Because you have already done it once, you are more likely to repeat the same action or change your attitude toward that action. That is, because you have given consent, you are likely to feel it is important to do so after and know when to give consent. As well, the presence of animals could potentially increase people’s liking of the video and, therefore ipromote its success.

If people are likely to responf positively to our message, I think it might not be clear enough, just like the cup of tea might not relate to people directly. We tried to make our scenarios as related to consent as possible, but there is still a chance that some people understand the situation without being abble to apply it to a larger variety of everyday situations.

https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/

Our group reflection was on male being victims getting sexually assault because we think men are not getting enough recognition for also being rape victims the same way as women are getting on the media. According to studies, about 10 to 20 percent of Canadians males would experience a form of sexual assault, which means that these incidents can be translate into thousands of boys having gone through traumatic experiences that involves having to be rape.

The reason why are group chose this topic is because we believed that among the feminist who strongly wants to fight against our society rape culture, men’s in general tends to be regarded too much as the perpetrator when they can also be victims of sexual assault. Studies also indicates that the majority of male victims in sexual abuse tends to mostly involve young adolescents, and many of these boys are heterosexual who also knows very well who their perpetrator are, but are twice as less likely to report abuse than females do because of the many myths that involves around masculinity.

Our group made a posters called the #These aren’t 4 consent as an inspiration of the #This is not consent as a way to convey a message to anyone that are victims are not only women’s but also men’s and that they also deserve a voice to be heard. I do think that we can start setting awareness on sexual abuse victims more openly and not just on men as I was stating, but women also does deserve a voice to the public to accept that it is not okay for sexual abuse of any kind of form to be easily accepted in our society for granted.

This experience, in this group project has led me to understand more on males and females sexual assault cases. In addition, to how it is different for both genders to overcome their trauma. Due to many many myths and stigmas that enforces both male and female to hide their victimhood from public because they are told or believe that it is not okay or embarrassing to say that you’ve been raped.

Reference Http://aasas.ca/support-and-information/men-and-sexual-assault/

When we were given the task of creating a campaign to raise awareness about a specific issue relating to sexual violence, my team and I, Covfefe Memes, decided to focus on sexual misconduct perpetrated by professors against students. We decided to focus on this specific issue because we noticed that there is a serious lack of awareness and research on this type of sexual violence. In fact, while doing my research, I could not find a single awareness campaign that focused on this type of abuse. Moreover, I was unable to find statistics or large-scale studies that investigated the occurrence of professors’ sexual misconduct towards students as it seems to be an area of sexual violence that is often neglected. Therefore, because of the general lack of awareness about this issue, my team and I knew that a campaign about it is heavily needed.

In terms of research, since we unfortunately could not find statistics, we focused on individual accounts of sexual violence by professors. For instance, I found out that recently there have been five professors at McGill’s Faculty of Arts who have been accused of sexual misconduct by students, yet the university is not doing anything to address these complaints (Rukavina, 2018, para. 2). Some of the professors’ inappropriate behaviours included: “holding office hours in bars, […] routinely sleeping with students who are in their classes, [and] being in abusive relationships with students they’re supervising” (para. 3). The most shocking and infuriating part of this story is that even though the administrators know about the accusations, they do not act on them by sanctioning and disciplining the professors in question, and they even discourage victims from filing complaints (paras. 5, 9). Because of accounts such as this one, our group wanted to help victims come forward and join other victims in order to facilitate action against such abusive professors.

While researching my group’s topic, I found a very interesting website called Geocognition Research Laboratory, which had a page called “The Academic Sexual Misconduct and Violations of Relationship Policies Database” (Geocognition Research Laboratory, 2018). This page, which was written as a WordPress blog post, included a spreadsheet database of over 700 cases of sexual misconduct by professors. The database was very detailed; it included information such as the name of the faculty member, the year that the sexual misconduct occurred, the official position of the faculty member, and the final outcome of the complaint. I found that this database was very much in line with my group’s idea of increasing awareness faculty abuse of power by creating a specific website dedicated to that goal.

My team’s campaign consisted of posters that illustrated examples of sexual misconduct by professors, such as holding office hours in bars and making suggestive comments about a student’s appearance, which were inspired by the examples of inappropriate behaviours we found while doing research. We decided to make the scenarios in our posters cartoonish and non-gendered in order to both attract students’ attention and be as inclusive as possible. The posters, which would be displayed all around university campuses, would include a link at the bottom, which would lead students to the Rate My Creeper forum we invented, which is a platform where students can anonymously voice their concerns about certain professors who act or have acted inappropriately. Similar to the existing database that I found, the platform we created would be dedicated to the issue of faculty members’ sexual misconduct, yet it would differ by being more forum-based. The goal of our platform was to both warn other students of potentially abusive professors as well as to allow students who have had similar experiences with a given professor to come together and file a collective complaint which would potentially have more impact. My team and I chose posters as a campaign strategy because we believed that students, who have to walk all over campus, would inevitably see at least one of our eye-catching posters and decide to look at it. Moreover, since we wanted to promote as much concrete action as we could, we decided to create the platform which would not only increase awareness but also, hopefully, lead to positive change in professor-student relationships.

Working on developing this awareness campaign was a very rewarding experience for me. In fact, I liked how the members of my group and I kept building on each other’s ideas. For instance, at the beginning, after discussing the issue of sexual assault on campus, we came up with the idea of addressing specifically the abuse perpetrated by professors. This eventually led to the idea of not only increasing awareness about it since it is a neglected issue, but also creating a tool that would allow concrete change, which resulted in the Rate My Creeper website. I found our brainstorming sessions very fruitful because they led to a media campaign we were all very proud of. Although my group and I ultimately created a campaign we were very satisfied with, we started the project with some creative disagreements. We had difficulty agreeing on the issue we would address, the audience of the campaign and even the media strategy we would use. However, through persistent brainstorming, exchanges of ideas and compromises, we were able to agree on all these aspects and develop our campaign. Looking back on this experience, I think that the fact that we had disagreements was a good thing: it allowed the members of my group and I to come up with even more ideas in order to satisfy everyone and it reminded me of the importance of compromises. In addition, I think that our disagreements are a testament to our passion to create the most impactful and original campaign we could.

Overall, I am very happy with Covfefe Memes’ campaign. I think that it would be very successful at combating instances of sexual misconduct perpetrated by professors. In fact, because our campaign includes two media – both posters and the online platform – I think that the chances of it getting noticed are very high. By placing the posters all over universities, I believe that students will inevitably see them. Moreover, I think that the posters will also threaten abusive professors and hopefully prevent them from acting inappropriately. With respect to the platform, I believe that its originality (as a forum dedicated to reporting cases of sexual misconduct) yet familiarity (since it is based on the design of the very popular Rate My Professor website) will encourage students who want to disclose their experience to use it. By concentrating all the discussions on this platform and making them visible, I believe that students will be able to organize collectively to file complaints and prevent faculty abuses of power from continuing, which is the ultimate goal.

References

Geocognition Research Laboratory. (2018). The Academic Sexual Misconduct and Violations of Relationship Policies Database [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://geocognitionresearchlaboratory.com/2018/08/20/the-academic-sexual-misconduct-database/

Rukavina, S. (2018, April 4). After Concordia, McGill faces its own #metoo moment. CBC. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca

My group and I decided to focus our campaign on sexual assault around male victims.  We thought this to be a good idea because upon doing research, there were not many campaigns that revolved around men. The one and only campaign that really stood out to us was the “No More” campaign and we believed that this was not sufficient.  We feel as though it was necessary to make the message clear that men are also victims of sexual assault and they should not be ashamed to tell their story.  While doing an adequate amount of research we found a statistic that stated one in every six men will experience some type of sexual abuse or assault in their life time.  This statistic only made it more clear that things need to change and more awareness needs to be spread about male victims. 

After lots of brainstorming, we decided that posters would be a perfect was to spread awareness. Why not make it loud and clear that men are victims too? It is not something that needs to be hidden  Instead with the facts that we found, we believe that everyone should be made aware of it. Being a victims of sexual assault doesn’t make you any less of a man.  Instead I believe that being able to be open and talk about it makes you a stronger person. 

The first poster that was created was a spinoff of the #ThisIsNotConsent movement that went viral. Our poster consisted of a picture of a woman’s thong and a male’s boxer shorts.  Above these two drawings were the words #TheseAreNotConsent.  There was hesitation around the male boxer for the poster but I do believe that nowadays anything can be sexualized and therefore putting the picture of a male’s boxer will send the message loud and clear. 

Our second poster consisted of multiple facts. Facts that the majority of people do not know, yet should know. Stats that could make a difference when it comes to the next victim who wants to share their story. Sharing the known facts about sexual assault will want to make people speak out more because they know that they are not alone. They know that it has happened to other people and therefore they have support. This second poster, though it contains a lot of words and no images sends a very powerful and clear message. 

Our two posters both very different would only be a start.  We are aware that are campaign will not be accepted by everyone but it is a step in the right direction to spreading awareness about a side of sexual assault that people did not know was as common. If men aren’t willing to tell their stories and make it clear that it happens to them too then things will not change and our campaign will work. By starting small and hanging posters even just around the school you are one step closer to creating a movement, supporting male victims and letting them know that they are not alone.  We know that men aren’t the type to broadcast their emotions but when it comes to serious situations they need to know that if they want to talk, that there are people there who are willing to listen. 

This entire experience was amazing and it was fantastic to have the chance to create something that can make a difference.  It truly made me realize how little one can know about this subject even though it is constantly in the media.  It was nice to be a part of this project and be able to create a campaign revolving around such a serious issue.  Just by passing on some of the knowledge that I gained throughout this workshop, I feel as though a positive impact can be made. 

References:

Campaigns. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://nomore.org/campaigns/

Rosin, H., & Rosin, H. (2014, April 29). Men Are Raped Almost as Often as Women in America. We Need to Talk About This. .Retrieved from https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/04/male-rape-in-america-a-new-study-reveals-that-men-are-sexually-assaulted-almost-as-often-as-women.html

The 1 in 6 Statistic – Sexual Abuse and Assault of Boys and Men. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://1in6.org/get-information/the-1-in-6-statistic/

Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

My group and I; Ritz, have brainstormed for the past couple of classes what we think a successful campaign would be towards the topic of sexual violence.  Sexual violence, consent, assault to name a phew are targeted towards everyone regardless of gender. However, it has been more common for woman to speak out and that’s because we give them a platform of comfort , no shame and a lot of support. What if men would receive the same… would they speak out more? Sexual violence exists for men as well so why aren’t there as many campaigns being done to spread awareness and hopefully get more men to speak out and feel less shame.

Our main goal was as briefly mentioned, to very lightly bring out the idea that …, YES men are harassed too… we included Canadian and American statistics and they were shocking to see, however we do believe the numbers would be higher if men felt less shame and less emasculated when discussing their traumas. We created two posters that we think would catch the eye of many because one of the images included the famous #ThisIsNotConsent with a hand holding a Thong.  We decided to take this image but also show men undergarments as a sexual aspect and to show that that isn’t consent either. Although it was brought up in class if the male “boxer” would be the best way to represent this issue, and YES. It is a bold statement and nowadays anything can be sexualized so if we put a picture of a males 6 pack abdomen or anything someone would find attractive, it would send the same message. Regardless, we tried to show that an intimate attire does now represent consent or should not represent sexualization of men or women. Also, posters aren’t expensive and with an already familiar picture and concept of “ThisIsNotConsent with the thong it may already be eye catching and would have people look at the whole picture including the boxer and statistic and that itself is a statement already.

Although we are not claiming our campaign is the best way to spread awareness on the matter. Since it is a very hidden topic for men, we do agree that it is a start to something that can be further discussed thus we are trying to create the beginning of another movement and platform for men. Another thing we agreed on as a group was that our Ad may not be taken well especially in a  time where the #MeToo movement is very strong and people are very focused on the woman victims. People may think, it’s an inappropriate time or way to discuss the matter because many more women are known to be victims. I understand this potential argument and in my opinion my answer would be simply that we are all human and anyone can suffer by these harms. This is simply to get men to talk about or even acknowledge that if they have been harassed, its normal they did not enjoy it just because that’s what the norm is; Men = desire for sex, It does not make them less “masculine”.

We all know the consequences of keeping emotions in, and men especially don’t casually speak out and express their emotions like woman do, therefore they turn to more violent ways physical and mental which creates a whole other problem that can be avoided. Therefore, we need more of these campaigns including men in them because their feelings and experiences aren’t less important than that of a woman.

It has honestly been an honor to take part in such a project because issues like these ones spoken about need to be addressed. I thank all the wonderful individuals who came to speak to all of us for a couple of classes and who supported us in this project.

-Andrea Massarelli

Group references:

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

https://1in6.org/get-information/the-1-in-6-statistic/

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/04/male-rape-in-america-a-new-study-reveals-that-men-are-sexually-assaulted-almost-as-often-as-women.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/14/europe/ireland-underwear-rape-acquittal-scli-intl/index.html