Sexual violence is and has been a problem for society because there has been excessively many loopholes in the laws that allows people to believe that it is okay to sexually harass someone as long as they are not caught or proven guilty by the law. Which promotes for the perpetrators to believe that their actions have no consequence and for the victims to also believe that there is no voice for them despite the laws that are meant to protect them, but has shown to not always be effective or in their favor.

The #Me Too campaign is a movement that begin in 2006 on my space and became widely throughout the world in 2017 thanks to social media such as Twitter and Facebook, were many people are tweeting, and encouraging others to do the same when someone is experiencing an act of sexual violence that is not properly address by the law.     

The #Me Too movement has inspire many people, celebrities, and new activist to stand up by spreading the #Me Too message on social media. This has led awareness on millions of people that has even drag politics, sports, military, churches, and all other related work ethics to put a stop on sexual violence among male and women, and find better laws to enforce better protection for the victims instead of the perpetrator.

 One of the most effective ways that the Me Too movement has use to set awareness to people is the use of social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. In order to have people to be able to see the message, and feel that they can also be part of the campaign movement by simply supporting to put a stop of sexual violence.     

 Another effective way to spread the Me Too movement is how many celebrities are also promoting to spread the movement since they know that many people and fans would listen to them faster. Moreover, many schools like high school, colleges, and providing effective implementations for students to feel safer and not having to undergo traumatic events that involves sexual violence.     

Our group decided that we should spread awareness concerning consent. It is a big issue for both men and women and our society is struggling about it to this day. People are being sexually violated and they never gave their consent. Even if they didn’t say no, body signals are very important because they tell a lot about how a person feels. Wearing a skirt doesn’t mean a girl is giving you consent, or wearing a crop top, any type of clothing either men or women doesn’t mean someone is giving you their consent.

There has been cases in court that the use of underwear that a girl was wearing was provoking and was enough to give consent. This is absurd because consent has absolutely nothing to do with clothing. It doesn’t mean you want to have sex just because of the way you dress. What really frustrated me was that the people in court let the men get away with it and blames the victim. This really hurts me to see stuff like that happening around the world because it proves that wearing what you want, your own personal style, could be provoking enough and that you are looking to sleep with someone. This is insane and situations like these should not be happening.

This is where our group comes in. We want to spread the meaning of consent. We want to promote the real meaning of consent. For example: it has nothing to do with how you dress!!!! Even if the person says yes it doesn’t mean they really want it we have to look at body signs and how they’re acting because the person might be very shy and afraid.

Consent is a big issue and it won’t change until people know the true meaning of it.

http://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hwc/consent

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

What we are all trying to achieve is sucessful persuation. To do so, Robert Cialdini has identified six techniques that are still relevant today.

Reciprocation

We tend to return favors not to feel indepted. That is why free gifts are often given by organizations before asking for donation. In the context of an ad for an online game, giving free rewards or points can be a good way to make people feel indepted.

Commitment and Consistency

People like when their behavior match their attitudes. So, by asking someone to change one simple habit, great changes in attitude are likely to motivate other behaviors as well. Regarding resistance to rape culture, inciting people to change the way they speak of others or asking for a change in the vocabulary used regarding rape can lead to change in attitudes. That is, only if the change is sucessfully engaged.

Social Proof

Our notion of others actions and attitudes about what is correct can change an individuals perception. Just as poeple tend to change their vote if one candidate is ahead in polls,people might change their mind about rape culture if we are able to prove most people are against it. If people’s action match their disapproval, the effect is even greater.

Liking

We usually say yes to people we like. That is why celebrities are in high demand for advertising. Also, face to face interactions can improve positive feedbacks. As well, this is why attractive people are shown in ads, because people automatically associate attractive and good.

Authority

People are taught to respect authority and, even if no punishment is involved, people do what someone in authority asks them to. If we apply this to rape, laws and police officers can be convincing enough if we want to emphasize the legal aspect. In one of the ad on the blog, Barack Obama is present, which represents a high level of authority and perhaps someone that is liked.

Scarcity

People want what is rare and what they can’t have. It is possible to highlight the attractiveness of someone asking for consent, but this also goes against social proof. If we say it is rare to act the right way, people might not feel the social pressure to do so. P

Finally, people are more open to persuation when in a good mood. Therefore, appealing to things people like before making a statement to raise awareness can be a good technique.

-Stephanie Mallick-Pilon

Fantastic Four

When writing this blog I realized that visibility might be the biggest issue. Our generation is always online, why is that I have to do research in order to actually see any sexual violence campaigns. We have to use any means possible to help educate and inform individuals especially our youth. Reason being is that the youth of now will be the leaders of tomorrow. Campaigns like #DearDaddy Target an audience of young children and parents. This video truly captured my attention. The first time I had seen it was during our last class. It made me reflect and think about my father. This campaign sparked an idea in my head, to advertise in a way that appeals to the viewers emotions. I believe this would be the most effective because when you feel something it’s hard not to think about it.

In the following paragraph I briefly wrote about the issues we discussed in class.

The generalized idea that assumes only women can get assualuted. Preconceived notion that men aren’t “victims”. There are stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Types of clothes do not mean consent. We need more than just a verbal consent. Words aren’t always the Key to consent you have to look at the physical and body signals of a person. We should raise our children the same way regardless of gender.

Yes it may be true that heterosexual women are the main targets of sexual violence but they are not the only victims. What I think is also an issue is the representation of LGBTQ+ community. We have to change our attitudes towards sexual violence we need to create more visibility and representation of all to address this issue. With media sometimes it’s hard to find the post again that’s why if using online platforms we have to minimize the domino effect.

MTV a popular tv channel took the lead in 2016 by hijacking ads and switching them into anti rape ads. In the article,”These Bold New Anti-Rape Culture Ads Are Impossible to Ignore” by Kristen Dold, she stated, “Almost all rapists go unpunished, the majority of female victims are too scared to speak up, and heck—doesn’t it feel like we spend a lot more time teaching women how to not get raped, as opposed to teaching guys not to rape at all?”   Here’s the link to the article if you’d like to read more of what Kristen Dold had to say ( highly recommend) : https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a19956309/mtv-fights-rape-culture/

The sad reality of this continues to create injustices ,however MTV took the lead to create advertisements that appeared “invisible” for example making its appearance in normal ads during regular commercials regarding beer , soap etc…

These are some examples :

Are men victims of sexual abuse?

According to
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence , the statistic show that men are also subjects of sexual violence. For the past couple of years more women have been speaking out about their own horrific stories of being sexually violated by men. However, I was curious to find out how many men are victims as well. There is an obvious norm in our society that men are the ones who are the most sexually driven and if them being raped is like a privilege…However, that is not the case and anyone can experience rape or any form of sexual harassment.

Millions of men in the United States have been victims of rape.

As of 1998, 2.78 million men in the U.S. had been victims of attempted or completed rape.⁵

About 3% of American men—or 1 in 33—have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.⁵

1 out of every 10 rape victims are male.^8​

Although it is not spoken about as much as sexual assault against women, I believe a platform needs to be created for men to express themselves and speak to someone they feel comfortable with regarding any instances they’ve experienced with rape or sexual harassment. Many people would disagree with this whole statement because it is clear women are considered the “true” subjects of rape. With the #MeToo movement it has been centered around woman speaking out which I think is very powerful and extremely courageous of them.however,we are all human beings regardless of our “genders.” Sexual abuse, harassment and rape to name a few of these atrocities should clearly not be taken more seriously for either woman or men but for all genders even to those who don’t identify themselves as he or she. I believe we need to allow more men to speak out about rape even though statistics show it is more common amongst women. We need to consider all genders and take them equally serious because sexual violation is a form of trauma regardless how you identify yourself.

Since we are in a very technological era, my group and I think it would be most appropriate to make short videos that have already been done but have a man speak out. Or we can even do what MTV did because it would definitely bring out a statement that men are silenced to sexual abuse but it is still going on. Although we need to come up with something exact we do know we want Men also to be incorporated into these ads because we can all be victims.

-Andrea Massarelli

The issue my team and I want to address in our project is that of faculty abuse of power (sexual violence) in high school, college, and university. The goal of our campaign would be to help victims of this sort of violence come forward, given that it is even harder for them to do so because of the power relations between students and professors.  

One of the ways my team and I would like to raise awareness about the issue and show victims that they are not alone is by creating an online platform where students can voice their concerns about teachers to warn other students. While doing research I found a website with a similar idea, Geocognition Research Laboratory. The website has a specific page called “The Academic Sexual Misconduct and Violations of Relationship Policies Database,” which contains a list of over 700 cases of sexual misconduct by professors. I think that a website such as this is very useful because it compiles all the cases where professors have been found guilty of sexual misconduct and it allows students to be more informed. The only shortcoming of this website in my opinion is that it only includes cases where the defendant was found guilty of a sexual crime. Therefore, the website does not include cases that were dismissed for lack of proof (which often happens when dealing with sexual assault), or incidents that have not been reported to the police or university by the victim out of fear. This is why our team proposes a somewhat more radical type of platform where students would be able to express themselves about interactions with certain teachers without having gone through the formal procedure of reporting such cases. 

Another issue my team and I should perhaps consider is the issue of seemingly consensual relationships between professors and students. In December 2017, An act to prevent and fight sexual violence in higher education institutions, also known as Bill 151, was passed. This bill requires all higher education institutions to adopt policy regarding sexual violence by September 1^st, 2019, which also includes policy on “intimate, amorous or sexual relationships that may develop between students and persons having an influence over their academic progress” (National Assembly, 2017, p. 2). With the approach of the implementation of such policy in every higher education institution, it is important to sensitive students about what they might perceive as consensual relationships with professors. Because of the relationship of power between professors and students – professors assign grades, they write letters of recommendation, and overall, they have a lot of power when it comes to a student’s future – sexual relationships between students and professors are not actually consensual. I think that my team and I might want to consider this issue when designing our campaign in order to sensitize students about these relationships. 

Unfortunately, I was not able to find an awareness campaign that focused solely on the issue of sexual violence perpetrated by faculty members. I think that the lack of awareness about such an important topic is proof that the campaign my team and I want to present is essential. 

Link to the Geocognition Research Laboratory website with cases of sexual misconduct by professors: 
https://geocognitionresearchlaboratory.com/2018/08/20/the-academic-sexual-misconduct-database/  

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, people have slowly begun to grasp how deeply the problems engendered by our deeply patriarchal and misogynistic society reach. More and more people have found the courage to come forward with their own stories of abuse, and we, as a society, have come to realize that these victims and survivors come from all backgrounds and environments. One such environment is that of university campuses, where more and more students are taking up the #MeToo cause and often specifically calling out professors’ abuse of power and sexual misconduct.

Recently, faculties at both McGill and Concordia faced complaints from their students regarding the behaviour of certain professors. Students alleged behaviour ranging from holding office hours at bars, preferential treatment, and sexual advances. Both schools eventually launched investigations, but were hesitant to do so due to a lack of formal complaints being filed.

Filing a formal complaint is often complicated, intimidating, and gruelling, and administrators will often take the opportunity to discourage students from doing so since “nothing will be done anyway”. This then allows schools to continue to do nothing about problematic behaviour, since there are no formal complaints, and the cycle continues. This is why our group decided to focus on the issue of teachers’ abuse of power and sexual misconduct.

The provincial government has already forced school administrations to pay heed to this issue by mandating that they all develop and implement detailed policies on sexual violence, which had to be adopted by the beginning of this year. Our goal is to create a campaign and a tool that allows students to share their stories of inappropriate encounters or advances and work together to denounce these kinds of behaviour. This is in acknowledgement of the vast power imbalance that exists in student-teacher relationships and the sheer administrative might victims often have to go up against if they want to lodge formal complaints.

The first part of a potential campaign would be a series of posters which clearly outline situations where teacher behaviour crosses a line, as outlined in a school’s sexual violence policy. Such posters could then direct viewers to a forum where people can anonymously share their stories of interactions with specific professors, similarly to RateMyTeacher. This would fulfill several functions: first of all, it can give a general warning for students in those classes to either avoid that teacher or just to be more on guard around them; secondly, it can be therapeutic for survivors to share their stories, and other users can form a community of support; and most importantly, a record of complaints lodged by several different users can help people detect patterns of misconduct and identify serious violators of appropriate conduct. In such a case, the thus-far anonymous users can contact each other and speak privately about lodging a formal complaint with the school, and if they go together as a group with an account of all of their experiences, it will be harder for the administration to dissuade them and sweep their issue under the rug.

Many schools, like Concordia, have support groups for survivors of sexual violence, but an anonymous online forum would be much more accessible and attractive to many people. Furthermore, this has the added functions of alerting people who have not been victimized yet, and compiling complaints against harassers to legitimize and strengthen any potential case against them, like a class-action lawsuit. Hopefully such a tool could help more people come forward and report sexual harassment and assault, increase the number of cases that are actually investigated and legally pursued, and in the end convict more offenders.

My group and I decided to create a campaign around the simple fact that males are not always the predators, and they too can be victims of sexual assault and harassment. Though we don’t often here stories of men being sexually assaulted it doesn’t not mean that it is not happening repeatedly.  According to the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AAASA), between ten to twenty percent of men will experience some sort of sexual assault or abuse in their life time.  Though the percentage doesn’t seem all that high, it really translates to thousands of men and boys experiencing this each year. 

More often than not, a man will not tell his story for multiple reasons.  A man is supposed to be seen as strong and invulnerable.  Therefore, showing any signs of weakness makes them feel as though they are not manly and not being manly enough can lead to them getting blamed for their own attack, all because of stereotypes.  The AAASA also revealed a shocking statistic that stated, approximately 50% of all sexual assaults happen in the survivors home or within two kilometres from it.  Many times the predator is also someone they know personally. 

Many campaigns focus on women being the victims and the survivors and there are very few that give men a platform to share their story. Our goal is to show that sexual assault is not only something that happens to women. It is something that men are victims of as well and they do not need to hide their story.  We want them to not feel any weaker or less manly by speaking out because they need to be heard as well. 

Our idea was to put a spin on a campaign that already exists.  The #ThisIsNotConsent movement which accompanied by a picture of woman’s underwear that has been circulating the internet has gotten a lot of attention. Therefore we wanted to change things a little and redraw this campaign but for male victims. 

The picture above is from the No More campaign and it is one of the very few pictures that comments on male sexual assault and I find it to be very powerful.  It shows men that their story should be heard too because they are not alone.  The more people speak out and help to create change, the faster change will happen. 

Jessica Eisenbacher

The issue that my group is focusing on is the issue of consent, but consent and clothing. With our idea, we want to draw more attention to the fact that no matter what a woman is wearing, that it is not consent. It seems to be more prominent when a woman is wearing revealing clothing, but it could even be clothing that isn’t revealing. No matter what someone is wearing, it does not give people a right to think that it is consent. 

Many will argue that by the way women dress, it causes such a powerful sexual arousal in men, beyond self-control. So, because of what she chose to wear, the blame is put on her. It is a woman’s choice regarding who she has sex with, and consent is still important. Although it is easier for men to be aroused by sexual appearance, they still have self-control. A part of your brain, called the orbitofrontal cortex, is to regulate and suppress sexual behaviour. This area can be compromised, but after all, it was all still a choice. Blaming the victims is something that happens that is very common, which avoids dealing with bigger issues and challenging the status quo. Many people who do it just “can’t seem to help themselves”, but that is no excuse for sexual assault. 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/25/how-provocative-clothes-affect-the-brain-and-why-its-no-excuse-for-assault

The “This Doesn’t Mean Yes” campaign is a campaign to show that women aren’t “asking for it” through clothing or behaviour, which is kind of like the “#ThisIsNotConsent” campaign in Ireland. An Amnesty International survey found that more than a quarter of people believe that women are at least a little responsible for their assault if they wear revealing clothing. One in three people believe that women who also flirt are at least a little responsible for the sexual assault. No matter what a woman chooses to wear, she is never “asking for it.” The responsibility is on the attacker, not the victim. No one asks to be assaulted, it was the attacker’s choice to do so. “The choice of clothing isn’t the choice of sex” says an organizer of the campaign. If there isn’t consent, it’s sexual assault. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/this-doesn-t-mean-yes-campaign-tackling-the-insidious-myth-of-women-asking-for-it-through-clothing-10189074.html

The sexual assault trial in Ireland causes people to protest via the internet. During the trial, according to the defense, wearing a lacy thong indicated consent to have sex. Many people still believe what a person is wearing equals consent or not. Many people believe that this girl was “asking for it.” According to the Canadian Criminal Code, sexual consent is “the voluntary agreement of the complainant to engage in the sexual activity in question.” Nobody can assume consent until there is a “yes” or until there is clear indication that one wishes to continue. That could get treaky, so verbal communication is the best. If you talk about it before hand and both people wish for it to happen, it can, but if one says “no”, it’s no. Dressing in revealing clothing or nice underwear, flirting, going home with someone, and especially, saying “no” does not equal consent. 

My group decided to focus on the fact that the victim is not always a women, and the male is not always the perpetrator. Different studies and surveys show the number of men that have been victims of sexual abuse or sexual assault. One major finding which is hard to believe is that about 1 in 6 men have been victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse.

In 2014 there was a national crime victimization survey that were distributed in 40 000 homes. The information collected showed that 38% of men were victims of sexual assault, compared to the previous years that showed the percentages to be between 5 and 14. The numbers are increasing but there are still a lot of men that do not talk about this because of the response they will get. A man is supposed to be strong enough to fight someone off and defend themselves.

Most people think men are only rapped in prisons, but that isn’t true. Men suffer from sexual assault and sexual abuse just as much as women do.

My group will try and push the message that man dont have to hide what happened to them.In most cases it’s always the women that is the victim, but people need to end this old way of thinking. Our final project wil be based on other campaigns that exist. Campaigns that are about women being victims, and we will turn the situation around and make it about men.

These two pictures from the same campaign “No More” was a great campaign of men being victims of sexual assault. This campaign really took things most people would say.. That it doesn’t happen to guys or that it’s just a women’s issue. This campaign recognizes that this issue is changing and increasing in men so we need to speak out.

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