http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/tis-the-season-for-safety-uk-police-launch-anti-rape-campaign-for-the-holidays/This holiday season Father Christmas has a special gift for the women of North East England – a national campaign to raise awareness of rape and promote personal safety over the festive season.
The campaign, "Rape: Short Word Long Sentence," is a project that the Northumbria, Durham, and Cleveland police forces joined together to implement during the holidays. Visiting the website I was pleased to see many positive elements of the campaign.
The two videos (trigger warning) you see on the homepage are powerful and emphasize the fact that sex should always be consensual as do the campaign tag lines: "No consent, No sex" and "I said yes to a drink not to sex." The site also reminds victims on the front page they are not to blame for their attacks – "You did not ask to be raped. The blame is entirely the perpetrators." – a message that is important for victims read.
The site also offers free counseling and support services for victims, includes information on where to find "Sexual Assault Referral Centres," and walks visitors through the process of reporting an assault to the police.
There are even options for visitors to clear their internet history or hide the site if need be and clearly lists the phone numbers for Northumbria, Durham, and Cleveland police departments on the homepage.
This is all great and exciting, but when I read some news coverage of the campaign it seems that the campaign's focus on the victims is misguided. Take, for example, this article from Reuters that says "Ultimately we want to prevent rape from occurring in the first pace, by arming potential victims with key advice on how to keep themselves safe."
It' s great that the campaign aims to help women protect themselves (many anti-rape campaigns focus on this angle), but to me this seems like a backwards approach. Men are the principle perpetrators of rape so why not have a campaign directed at them which aims to arms them with the tools to change their attitudes toward sex and power. If men stopped raping women, women wouldn't need advice on keeping themselves safe.
I am a firm believer that rape is a "men's issue" as much as it is a "woman's issue." In the end it is men's responsibility to stop participating in and perpetrating rape and violence against women. Woman can take advice on keeping themselves safe but nothing would be safer than men un-learning how to rape.
In my ideal world we would have a campaign that aims to "Ultimately prevent rape from occurring in the first place by arming potential rapists with the knowledge that men and women are equal and that raping a woman does not make you strong or powerful. It makes you a coward and a criminal."
This combined with the rest of the elements the "Rape: Small Word, Long Sentence" campaign offers women would be a highly successful endeavor.
Topic: 'Tis the Season for Safety: UK Police Launch Anti-Rape Campaign for the Holidays (Read 2124 times)