Apparently, it's not only jocks and frat boys who contribute to America's rape culture - geeks and nerds do, too. This sad article is from Jezebel.

One addendum to this story, and others like it, needs to be made clear - we need to start asking college men about their unwanted sexual experiences. While most guys would be too ashamed to call it rape (stereotypes still dominate), a LOT of young men have sex against their will, either through intoxication of coercion. In one study (conducted at a University in Chile), 1 in 5 young men reported unwanted sexual experiences (USE) since the age of 14, another 9.4% reported USE prior to age 14 (Lehrer, Lehrer, and Koss, 2013).

In another study:

In a sample drawn from 12 U.S. colleges, 22.2 % of male participants reported some form of USE over their lifetime, with 8.3 % reporting severe USE (involving threats and/or force) (Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2001).

The 1 in 5 number seems to be accurate across nationalities. It's time we begin looking at this more closely in the U.S. media - the numbers of male victims are too similar to those of females to keep on ignoring this problem.

MIT and CalArts are the Latest Colleges to Expose the Rape Crisis

Anna Merlan
10/28/14 4:15pm


The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has released a new survey about sexual assault at the university, and it makes us feel all sorts of things: the now-familiar depression and rage, of course, but also, somewhere deep down, a tiny, unfamiliar tendril of tentative optimism.

The depressing and rage-inducing part is that about 17 percent of women and 5 percent of men said they had been sexually assaulted during their time at MIT. (The full survey can be found here. The school polled nearly 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The survey was sent to nearly 11,000, but only about 35 percent responded). And, like the other studies, this one also found that most of them didn't report those incidents to an authority figure. The study's authors write, "Close to two-thirds (63%) of respondents who indicated they had an unwanted sexual experience at MIT told someone else about the incident(s), but fewer than 5% reported the experience(s) to someone in an official capacity."

These numbers correspond pretty closely with a similar survey released by the University of Oregon earlier this month, as well as a Department of Justice study released in 2007. Despite how fervently rape apologists like George Will stick their fingers in their ears and try to yell it away, all the available evidence suggests that about one in five women are raped or sexually assaulted during their college years, and few of them want to report it. A full 72 percent of the people at MIT reporting they'd been sexually assaulted said they didn't report because they "did not think the incident(s) was serious enough."

The survey also pointed out some pretty encouraging campus attitudes about rape. A solid 83 percent of students understood that an incident can be rape or sexual assault even if the victim didn't verbally say "no." The majority also understood that rape doesn't happen "because people put themselves in bad situations," and nine out of 10 students agreed "most MIT students would respect someone who did something to prevent a sexual assault." Things seem to be progressing nicely in terms of generational awareness of how rape works: recall, if you will, that Bill Frezza is an MIT alum. He wrote that obnoxious, quickly-deleted Forbes piece stating that "drunk female guests" and their bewildering rape allegations could destroy the fraternity system. But there's still some confusion about consent: more than half of the respondents agreed with the statement, "Rape and sexual assault can happen unintentionally, especially if alcohol is involved."

"Sure, the data tells us things that we maybe didn't want to hear," Cynthia Barnhart, MIT's chancellor, told the New York Times. One of the most disturbing, she added, is that "there is confusion among some of our students about what constitutes sexual assault."

The MIT survey indicates how seriously the school is taking the problem, and the fact that they're willing to publicize the results says a lot about their commitment to transparency.

But it's also becoming increasingly clear that when schools won't address their sexual assault problem, students will do it for them: last week, around 150 students at CalArts, a small liberal arts school near Los Angeles, staged a mass-walkout to protest how the school had handled a rape allegation last year. According to Al Jazeera, who first reported the story, the student, a freshman, was raped in a bathroom by someone she'd briefly dated. The school, she alleges, asked a number of bizarre and insulting questions during a two-month investigation of the incident. From Al Jazeera:

[S]he said school administrators asked her questions about her drinking habits, how often she partied, the length of her dress, how oral rape was even possible, whether she climaxed and whether climaxing was an issue when she'd been with her alleged rapist before.

The perpetrator was ultimately suspended from school for one year. The victim has filed a federal title IX complaint against the school with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, alleging they mishandled her complaint.

Anna Knecht Schawrzer, a CalArts student who helped organize the walkout, says the student protesters are pushing for a new campus policy, one she hopes could become a model for other schools nationwide.

"I want CalArts to be known for a culture that promotes sexual respect," she says. "To make this possible, we as a community need to construct an architecture that facilitates accountability and health." They're recommending, among other things, a better and clearer campus sexual assault policy, a staff member solely devoted to addressing these issues, and better training for all staff and faculty on how to handle sexual assault reports.

MIT, meanwhile, has a lot of data, but seemingly hasn't quite figured out what to do with it. For now, they've set up an email account to take suggestions. The survey's authors write, at the very end of their report: "If you have ideas now about how MIT can reduce the incidence of unwanted sexual behavior on campus and improve the support the Institute offers when it does occur, please contact stop-assault@mit.edu."

MIT's Simmons Hall; Image via Graysky/Flickr

This article is from Playboy SFW - an interesting place to find an article on how "slut shaming" is backfiring on "bros."

Slut shaming defined: "the act of making a person, especially a woman, feel guilty or inferior for certain sexual behaviors or desires that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations, or that which may be considered to be contrary to natural or religious law."

This whole thing of rape culture and slut shaming is what we get for not teaching our boys about respect and kindness toward women. Additionally, there is a systematic failure in these guys to grasp and tolerate that different people have different values, and that women have the same rights as men.

Bros, This Is How Your Slut-Shaming Is Backfiring. A Sex Researcher Explains

Zhana Vrangalova | 4/16/14



When a Duke frat boy recognized a classmate in the porn clip he was watching, the gossip was just too good. He spread the news among some other bros on campus, and the rumor soon traveled from Duke's campus to the blogosphere (including Playboy SFW). Belle Knox, as the student revealed her porn identity to be, was promptly called a slut and brutally harassed online. Many people encouraged her to drop out of Duke—"a huge fucking whore" like her didn't belong among smart, educated elites.

Somehow, however, the frat boy's decision to violate Knox's privacy by outing her went mostly unquestioned. (There wasn't much coverage of him beyond this Gawker post.) The takeaway message was loud and clear: It's okay for men to enjoy porn, but the women who make it are nothing but sluts.

Unfortunately, that reaction isn't surprising. It's simply a more extreme version of a common double standard that echoes throughout the misogynistic corners of college campuses (and their corresponding blogs). "Women are sluts if they sleep around, but men are not," the bro-site Return of Kings decrees. "This fact is due to the biological differences between men and women."

Of course, the pseudo-scientific myth that all women are naturally predisposed toward sexual restraint and all men toward promiscuity isn't only inaccurate but dangerous, leading directly to the notion that women who differ from that norm are unacceptable, need to be corrected or deserve to be mistreated. What's more, it creates a culture in which men who seek out many partners aren't just celebrated, but given permission to devalue women with a similar sexual appetite.

Ironically, it's this negative attitude toward women who have casual sex that makes many women less likely to seek it out, which means less casual sex for the men who want it most. Based on what psychologists know, I'd argue that if we can work toward a culture where the stigma surrounding women's casual sex is diminished, the result could be more guilt-free hookups for all those who want them.

* * * * *

At first glance, some of my field's work on casual sex might appear to prove the bros right. In 1989, when undergraduates at the University of Hawaii were spontaneously asked by researchers of the opposite sex if they would join them in bed that evening, 75 percent of men—but not a single woman—agreed. Similar studies across Europe have confirmed that compared to men, women really are less likely to agree to casual sex and disapprove of it more. In fact, such a difference in desire for casual sex is one of the largest gender differences in sexuality—behind only differences in masturbation and pornography use—as two review studies from 1993 and 2010 showed.

This is where a lot of the analyses end, jumping to the conclusion that men are from Mars, women from Venus. But two important conditions make the findings less black-and-white. First, differences in the affinity for casual sex aren't absolute; they're averages. The desire for casual sex in both sexes is distributed in similar bell-shaped curves that overlap by about 50 percent. That means about one-third of women like hookups more than the average guy and about one-third of men want to hookup less than the average woman does. So even if all of the gender difference in the desire for casual sex was due to some immutable biology (as The Return of Kings and other bro sites would have you believe), a substantial minority of women would still be biologically inclined toward promiscuity and a substantial minority of men would still be biologically inclined toward monogamy.

What's more, these gender differences aren't only biological. Few scientists would deny that nature—namely, the challenges of reproduction (women's high cost of creating offspring versus men's low cost)—has played a role in gender differences toward casual sex over humankind's long evolutionary history. But nurture—namely, socializing women to be chaste and the widespread stigma against those who violate that norm—cannot be ruled out either.

Consider the results from a 2013 study of more than 24,000 students from 22 different American colleges. When asked if they'd lose respect for a man or a woman who "hooked up a lot," 28 percent of men said "yes" for a woman but "no" for a man. (Only 4 percent of women said the same thing.) Another 2013 study of almost 8,000 students at a Midwestern university arrived at a similar conclusion: Both men and women disapproved more of a woman who had casual sex (defined as sex with someone whom they've known for less than one month) than of a man.

Even more interestingly, these studies reveal that guys who seek out casual sex are the ones who are more likely to disrespect females with the same interest. For example, in one study referenced, each additional hookup reported was associated with a 4 percent increase in the odds of men holding the double standard (while the opposite was true of women). To put it another way, "sluttier" men are more likely to slut-shame women—or at least, hold negative views toward women whose promiscuity approximates their own.

This not only exposes a serious hypocrisy, but it seems counterproductive: Disrespecting women on whom your casual sex depends can only lower your chances of finding willing partners in the future, right? So why would slutty guys feel this way?

* * * * *
Perhaps the most obvious explanation is nurture. When misogynist environments teach men that their sexuality is fundamentally different from women (that casual sex is something for them to pursue and for women to avoid) they tend to buy in. Such views are part of a more general traditional gender ideology, explaining why studies have found that men with more traditional gender role attitudes also tend to want more casual sex. Or why in the study of students from 22 colleges mentioned above, fraternity affiliation or varsity athletic participation resulted in a 31 percent and 46 percent increase, respectively, in the odds of holding the traditional double standard. Indeed, while the desire for casual sex might be partly due to nature, genetic analyses of twins show that the tendency to support gender inequality is almost entirely due to nurture. In other words, if your environment promotes sexism, it's likely you'll hold sexist views.

That said, some men might be naturally more predisposed to end up in sexist environments. Over the years, studies consistently found that men who are more into casual sex are also more dominant, aggressive, narcissistic, arrogant, manipulative and lacking empathy. (The evidence is less clear about whether this is true for women who are more into casual sex.) Scholars have argued that these personality traits and a high interest in casual sex often cluster together as part of an exploitative short-term mating strategy where men attempt to seduce many different women—using deception (what bros would call "game") or coercion (what law enforcement would call "rape") if necessary—without feeling remorse. While such an approach might be hostile to their female partners, it allows the men to spread their seed far and wide. As such, these traits have survived (and often times, thrived) throughout our evolutionary history.

Given that these traits are largely heritable, it isn't a coincidence that many narcissistic, manipulative and coercive men find themselves in misogynistic environments: They actively seek out communities that reinforce the sexist attitudes that fit their personality. And so, a vicious cycle is created, resulting in disregard for women, particularly those they deem unworthy of respect. "It's often hard to seduce scores of women if you genuinely respect them," explains Andrew Irwin-Smiler, a psychologist whose book Challenging Casanova examines teenage masculinity and sexuality. "Respect would prevent any kind of meaningful deception—like taking advantage of drunk women. But if you think most women are 'bitches' or 'sluts,' then you can treat them like crap in order to sleep with them."

These men might also feel like the women they consider sluts not only deserve to be treated badly, but they want to be treated badly. After all, part of the repertoire of sexist attitudes is rape-myth acceptance—the belief that women "really wanted it" even when they say no, or that they "asked for it" simply by wearing provocative clothing.

Yet another explanation for the slutty-men-shaming-slutty-women phenomenon lies in the fear of unbridled female sexuality. Since an inherent part of the traditional masculinity ideology is the belief that men are the sexual initiators and predators, the existence of a highly promiscuous woman who unapologetically goes after what she wants threatens men's sense of self. As one nonsexist male blogger, My Dissolute Life, explains when writing about women who like gangbangs (perhaps the sluttiest of slutty acts), "I want, I need, to believe that I'm at the absolute center of a woman's sexual universe. ... A gangbang presents the possibility of a woman whose desire swamps that of the men, who cannot be overwhelmed by the desires of one measly guy."

And that is "more than a little terrifying." That poses a direct affront to men with fragile or "precarious masculinities," a term coined by Joseph Vandello to describe men who perceive manhood as an impermanent state that's easily lost if they fail to conform to gender norms. We know that some men respond with violence when their manhood is threatened. Slut-shaming could be just another aggressive response to this deeply felt threat to their identities.

None of this is to say that all men who are into casual sex are sexist and exploitative. (Nor that all men who aren't into casual sex are respectful and sweet.) It's certainly possible to be a highly sexual man who goes about acquiring sexual partners in an ethical way. The swinger lifestyle, for example, elaborately described in Terry Gould's The Lifestyle, is replete with examples of men who actively pursue casual sex while fully respecting the women (their own wives included) who do the same. It's just that, statistically speaking, there are more "jerks" among fans of casual sex.

* * * * *
Luckily, such "jerks" are a minority in the Western world. The online sexist manosphere has a vocal anti-sexist counterpart, from ManBoobz to the Good Men Project. Better yet, as sophomoric teenagers mature into young men and get exposed to the world outside of their fraternity bubbles, their double standards lessen. Even Tucker Max, the one-time king of the bros, recently gave up his "game". And since Belle Knox came out publicly about her porn career, she has been flooded with support and encouragement that has negated the insults.

More good news is that women's lesser interest in casual sex isn't immutable. For millennia, women have lived in environments that have made them dependent on men for survival and taught them to be sexually conservative. But when social and economic circumstances change to allow for greater female independence and freedom of sexual expression, gender differences in the desire for casual sex become less pronounced.

For instance, this gender difference is smaller among today's youth than it was among their parents. It's smaller in countries where political and economic power is distributed more evenly between men and women (e.g., Sweden, USA, and Saudi Arabia). It's smaller when the stigma that women anticipate for accepting a casual sex offer is statistically controlled for in analyses—i.e., take that stigma away and a lot more women would consent to casual sex. And it can disappear altogether when women believe that the man offering them casual sex is a competent lover who's going to provide sexual pleasure or when that lover is famous and attractive —or famous and unattractive .

In short, put women in the right environment with the right partners, and it's likely they will desire casual sex much more than they do today, perhaps even as much as men do. Overall, the science seems to indicate that the more we talk about the tremendous individual variability in the desire for casual sex, the more the misogynistic minority will get further pushed to the fringe. Which, of course, has an added benefit: When the slut-shaming stops, everyone is likely to get laid more.

*****

Zhana Vrangalova, PhD, is a NYC-based sex researcher who studies casual sex and nonmonogamy, teaches Human Sexuality at New York University, blogs about the science of hookups for Psychology Today, tweets daily about new sex research, and runs the Casual Sex Project, a place for people to share their true hookup stories.

Photo courtesy of MBI/Alamy

Reducing Rape Requires Re-Wiring How Men Define Masculinity

This article comes from The Mint, a joint-production of the Hindu Times and the Wall Street Journal. Because it comes from India, the jumping off point for the editorial is the one-year anniversary of the gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi. There were marches and demonstrations to remember the woman who died, but there were also echoes of the original responses by some men that rape become a capital offense (death penalty).

The author argues that many young men have bought into the feminist ideals of empowering women and punishing men who perpetrate. But this is misguided - if we want to change the culture of rape then we must re-wire how men define their own masculinity. The author quotes Havovi Wadia, head of research and development at Magic Bus, a children’s non-profit organization, and an activist who has worked in the area of gender-based violence:

“Notions of masculinity need to be challenged perhaps more urgently than notions of femininity. After all, it is the hetero-normative masculine discourse (which holds male heterosexuality as normal and all other expressions of male sexuality/gender as “not masculine” or abnormal) that situates the woman’s body as a site of conquest. Sadly, even feminism has continued to occupy a space within this discourse, resisting masculinities by positing equally problematic versions of the female.”

Gender scholar Ravi Verma, regional director, Asia regional office, International Centre for Research on Women, New Delhi, agrees with this premise and adds:

“We should expand the gender discourse beyond women’s empowerment,” Verma said in a telephone interview. “We have always presented equality from the perspective of giving agency to women, without bothering to normalize the man’s responsibility in achieving gender equality. Where do you see sensitive portrayals of men who are trying to transform themselves but might find their masculinity challenged, or feel frustrated in the process?”

According to Verma, rape falls at one end—the extreme end—of a broad spectrum of more subtle but firmly patriarchal expressions of masculinity that men absorb and exhibit from their childhood onwards. “You cannot stop rape overnight by legislation alone—that’s impossible,” he asserts. “In fact, limiting ourselves to legislative intervention might even have the opposite effect.”

The essential element, it seems to me, is that we need to transform masculinity in young men so that it becomes an object of awareness and not merely an uninterrogated lived experience. It must be a topic of discussion and education beginning very early in boys lives so that there is consciousness of how men are trained as boys to see women's bodies as objects to which they have an inherent right.

Boys must be taught to see girls, and later women, as equal and autonomous human beings who have the same rights to not be violated physically, emotionally, or sexually that men assume for themselves.  

This is how we change rape culture.

Okay, back to the article. The author and those interviewed offer a slightly different argument than I do, focusing instead on reducing the equation of masculinity with “proving behaviors,” including behaviors such as who can drink more, who can drive faster, who is more physically intimidating, and of course, who can “take” this or that girl. All of these are part of the traditional masculine ideal, a remnant of our evolutionary biology that has long ago ceased to be acceptable. 

Being ‘man enough’: Rape and our ideas of masculinity

Any strategy for action against rape must include an engagement with men’s ideas of masculinity

G. Sampath
First Published: Thu, Dec 19 2013


Some of the most chilling images from the anti-rape morchas of last year were those of ultra-aggressive male protesters making shrill demands of capital punishment for rape. Photo: Hindustan Times
It is now one year since the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi. While it is great that we honoured her memory this week by taking out marches and lighting candles, these are the easier things to do. Far more difficult is to challenge our own comforting assumptions—about the feminisms we subscribe to, the notions of gender we live by.

For instance, some of the most chilling images from the anti-rape morchas of last year were those of ultra-aggressive male protesters making shrill demands of capital punishment for rape. Where did their aggression come from? Did these men—ostensibly out on the streets to support women’s rights and fight patriarchy—ever interrogate their lived sense of masculinity, or that of their male peers? Or were they the kind who, after marching against rape, would go back and rape somebody, as one of them allegedly did?

A number of gender scholars and activists have come to believe that the conventional feminist critique, which holds patriarchal male privilege responsible for fuelling sexual offences by men, does not wash with all men—definitely not with the vast majority for whom their masculinity is wedded to those selfsame patriarchal privileges, which includes a deep sense of entitlement to the bodies of women. Therefore, any strategy for action against rape, they argue, must include an engagement with men’s ideas of masculinity.

Havovi Wadia, head of research and development at Magic Bus, a children’s non-profit organization, and an activist who has worked in the area of gender-based violence says, “Notions of masculinity need to be challenged perhaps more urgently than notions of femininity. After all, it is the hetero-normative masculine discourse (which holds male heterosexuality as normal and all other expressions of male sexuality/gender as “not masculine” or abnormal) that situates the woman’s body as a site of conquest. Sadly, even feminism has continued to occupy a space within this discourse, resisting masculinities by positing equally problematic versions of the female.”

Wadia’s view is echoed by another gender scholar, Ravi Verma, regional director, Asia regional office, International Centre for Research on Women, New Delhi. Verma spent several years studying the processes by which children, teenagers and young adults imbibe normative ideas of gender. He believes that to be able to really address sexual violence against women, it is necessary “to go beyond post-facto responses, such as stringent law enforcement, and get into primary prevention work”.

But what does he mean by primary prevention work? “We should expand the gender discourse beyond women’s empowerment,” Verma said in a telephone interview. “We have always presented equality from the perspective of giving agency to women, without bothering to normalize the man’s responsibility in achieving gender equality. Where do you see sensitive portrayals of men who are trying to transform themselves but might find their masculinity challenged, or feel frustrated in the process?”

According to Verma, rape falls at one end—the extreme end—of a broad spectrum of more subtle but firmly patriarchal expressions of masculinity that men absorb and exhibit from their childhood onwards. “You cannot stop rape overnight by legislation alone—that’s impossible,” he asserts. “In fact, limiting ourselves to legislative intervention might even have the opposite effect.”

The counter-productive impact of punitive intervention is also underscored by another research scholar, Romit Chowdhury of the Kolkata-based Centre for Studies in Social Sciences. In a recent essay in Economic and Political Weekly , he notes, “The existence of laws which criminalize men’s sexual assault on women have not deterred male violence because it has become merely another ground on which men can prove their masculinity.” And how does that come about? He explains: “The possibility of getting caught provides an avenue for proving masculinity, showing that you can take big risks without being daunted by the prospect of danger.”

The centrality of “proving behaviour” to patriarchal definitions of masculinity, wherein a man feels compelled to “prove himself” in order to bond with his peers is well-documented in masculinity studies. While the domain of proof could be male friendship, or a skill of some kind, it typically derives from a patriarchal idea of masculinity. It has no space where one can ask: why does masculinity have to be proved at all? Common instances of such “proving behaviour” include who could drink more, who could drive faster, who is a truer friend, and of course, who could “take” this or that girl, says Verma.

Being undaunted by danger, and being able to get away with risk-taking and violence are widely reinforced as central facets of masculinity in popular culture. Almost every mainstream commercial film unfolds narratives that associate masculinity with violence. And whether you interpret that as reflecting societal norms or shaping them, given its ubiquity and glamorous potency, can we hope to stem the tide of male sexual violence without first systematically challenging these definitions of masculinity, and mainstreaming alternative expressions of male sexuality?

Indeed, one simple step that we as a society could have taken to counter the kind of aggressive masculinity that leans in the direction of rape was to decriminalize homosexuality, and thereby create a congenial climate for the normalizing of alternative, anti-patriarchal masculinities. Instead, with the Supreme Court’s 11 December ruling, we have done the exact opposite.

Both Wadia and Verma agree that an effective strategy against gender-based violence must involve systematic intervention at the institutional level, ideally at a stage when an individual’s gendered identities are yet to solidify. Wadia advocates engaging with children in the playground as a powerful way to challenge patriarchal definitions of masculinity. “The best part about this process—and this is what my organization does—is that it brings girls out of their homes into public spaces. In this case, it is one that, in India, is almost universally occupied by males—the public playground.”

Verma, who has been involved with gender-focused research studies in schools across Maharashtra and Jharkhand, also believes that intervention at the school level is critical. “You walk into any school and you will find that boys and girls are already receiving subtle messages that reinforce patriarchal definitions of gender. Go to the playground, and you will find boys, when they are 12 or 13, forming their ideas of selfhood based on aggression, violence, bullying. Women, too, fall into the same trap of patriarchy. Unless we address regressive notions of masculinity, especially with regard to notions of power and entitlement, we cannot make much progress in tackling regressive notions of femininity held by men as well as women.”

In the aftermath of the “Nirbhaya” case, by and large, the institutional responses to combat rape have coalesced around the twin ideas of punishment and deterrence. The punitive focus has been necessary because for far too long crimes against women have gone unpunished. But it is also vital to extend the battle beyond it—for legislations can always be reversed, as the bitter saga of Article 377 has showed us. Enforcing equality is one thing. Securing it is another thing altogether.

ESPN's Jameis Winston Coverage - College Athletes and Sexual Assault

It's refreshing to read that ESPN actually dealt with the Jameis Winston situation in terms of sexual assault (he was not charged with any crimes in the alleged sexual assault case, which is not say that he did not do it, only that the prosecutor did not have enough evidence to bring charges, let alone get a conviction).

The panel handled it as an actual news story, not as a sports story - and they did not get caught up in the "star worship" that so often flavors their coverage of athletes.

We will never know what happened that night, but we do know that college athletes sometimes have a sense of entitlement that, when fueled by alcohol, can result in the rapist's creed, "no means yes." Witness the following list: Morehouse State (2013), U of Michigan (2013), Fresno City College (2006), U of Montana (2012), UConn (2011/2013), Vanderbilt (2013), McGill University (2013), Santa Ana College (2009), Temple University (2012), Notre Dame (2010), Arizona State (2013), and West Virginia (2013), to name just a few.

All of the situations linked to above involved football players. In fact, while male student athletes account for only 3% of the college population, athletes are responsible for 1 in 3 sexual assaults.

Here are a few more stats to boil your blood (National Coalition Against Violent Athletes):

• A 3 year study shows that while male student-athletes comprise 3.3% of the population, they represent 19% of sexual assault perpetrators and 35% of domestic violence perpetrators. (Benedict/Crosset Study)
• One in three college sexual assaults are committed by athletes. (Benedict/Crosset Study)
• In the three years before 1998, an average of 1000 charges were brought against athletes each year. (Benedict/Crosset Study)
• In 1995, while only 8.5% of the general population was charged with assault, 36.8% of athletes were charged with assault. (Benedict/Crosset Study)
• The general population has a conviction rate of 80%. The conviction rate of an athlete is 38%. (Benedict/Crosset Study)
• A new incident of athlete crime emerges once every two days - that does NOT include crimes that were unreported in the media. (NCAVA)
• 84% of the public believes colleges should revoke the scholarship of a player convicted of a crime. (ESPN SportsZone Poll)
• 20% of college football recruits in the Top 25 Division I teams have criminal records.
• A college rapist will have raped seven times before being caught.

On college campuses, this is the reality of rape culture - it is perpetrated by and protective of athletes. In light of all this, it was nice to see ESPN handle the situation with the appropriate gravity.

For more background on this issue, see When sex meets NCAA athletics (Al Jazeera, Oct 2013), 5 Ways Sexual Assault Is Really About Entitlement (Salon, Oct 2013), 40 Years of College Football's Sexual-Assault Problem (Mother Jones, Dec 2013), and Shocking: College Rapists Almost Always Get Off the Hook (Alternet, Oct 2010).

ESPN Delivers Powerful Segment On Sexual Assault During Jameis Winston Coverage

By Travis Waldron on December 6, 2013

Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston - CREDIT: AP

Amid wall-to-wall coverage of the fact that the Florida state attorney’s office decided Thursday not to file sexual assault charges against Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, ESPN found time to deliver a powerful panel discussion that dove into the other side of the case: the difficulties women face in coming forward after rapes and sexual assaults and the ways in which such cases are handled by investigators and other law enforcement officials.

The panel, anchored by ESPN’s David Lloyd, featured ESPN columnist and TV personality Jemele Hill and ESPN radio hosts Colin Cowherd and Paul Finebaum. Lloyd began the segment by reciting statistics about the rarity of false rape claims — between 2 and 10 percent of rape claims are false, he said, citing the National Sexual Violence Resource Center — and after a brief talk about Winston’s Heisman Trophy candidacy, the panel shifted entirely toward the topic of sexual assault. Hill, who wrote last week about the Winston case and a family friend who tried to sexually assault her when she was a child, talked openly about her case and the difficult, intrusive process that faces women when they report rapes and sexual assaults to authorities.

“That is sort of my concern here, that because you have a high-profile athlete, because of the way this case was handled and appears to be mishandled, that people will get a very inaccurate portrayal about what happens during this reporting process,” Hill said, adding that she faced “very intrusive questions” when she reported her case. Women, she said, “are almost re-victimized all over again” in these investigations, and this process “did a real disservice to the woman who was accusing Jameis Winston and certainly a disservice to Jameis Winston as well. I hope this will shed some light that this is still, despite all the awareness that has been made about sexual assault, is still a very difficult process for anyone coming forward with these types of very serious allegations.”

Lloyd then mentioned the Steubenville rape case, which was badly mishandled by authorities. Cowherd slammed the Florida state attorney for not appearing to understand the gravity of the case as he laughed through his afternoon press conference. Finebaum criticized the prosecutor for “grandstanding” and slammed Winston attorney Tim Jansen, whose own press conference was filled with plenty of veiled attacks on the accuser, for making “a mockery of the whole system, particularly with women.” Finebaum also blasted the Tallahassee Police Department’s mishandling of the case. All in all, it was a solid panel that dove into a side of the subject much of the media, including ESPN, has ignored in the weeks since news of the Winston investigation broke. Watch it here:



ESPN has faced deserved criticism for moving its hard-hitting news show Outside The Lines to ESPN2, where it commands a much smaller audience than it used to on ESPN, and the fact that it waited until SportsCenter had shifted to ESPN News to broadcast the Hill-Cowherd-Finebaum panel discussion is a little disappointing because it would have garnered a significantly larger audience on one of the two main networks. The mere presence of the panel, though, was a smart move from ESPN, which had covered every other aspect of the case down to the minute details, and Hill, a sharp sports commentator who also regularly weighs in on the bigger impact sports can have, was a perfect choice given her past writing and experience with the subject. Cowherd and Finebaum were strong too (and I had previously criticized Finebaum and ESPN for switching to Heisman talk even before the charges were officially announced).

While ESPN’s coverage mostly followed a basic formula: it featured two reporters on the ground in Tallahassee, analysis from legal expert Roger Cossack, and reactions from Winston’s camp, Florida State, and the accuser’s attorney. It spent significant time on the football implications too, which while seemingly trivial in light of a sexual assault case is to be expected given that ESPN has an interest in Jameis Winston the football player. ESPN will broadcast both the Heisman Trophy ceremony and the BCS National Championship game, both of which should include Winston. ABC, ESPN’s sister company under the Disney umbrella, will broadcast the ACC title game Saturday. And frankly, football coverage, not talk about sexual assault, is what people want when they turn on ESPN.

But as a news organization, ESPN also has a responsibility to provide not just what people want to hear but what is important to hear too. And I thought, given the dynamics of a breaking news day and the fact that it clearly wanted to focus its coverage on the specific details of the case, the ESPN News panel was a solid way of doing that. It could have been longer, it could have avoided the same trappings of Heisman talk, and it could have been in a more prominent broadcast position. But it was a strong segment, and I hope it leads to more coverage of an issue that remains a serious concern in college football and other sports on ESPN’s other news shows (like the aforementioned Outside The Lines) in the not-so-distant future.

Charlie Glickman - The Experiment That Taught Me What Rape Culture Is

From Role/Reboot, this is an excellent article by Charlie Glickman on how he became acquainted with how women are treated by men in public - the foundation of rape culture.

The Experiment That Taught Me What Rape Culture Is By Charlie Glickman

November 18, 2013

This originally appeared on CharlieGlickman.com. Republished here with permission.

I remember exactly when I first understood what rape culture meant.

I was 19 and a sophomore in college. I was talking with a woman I knew about gender and sexual politics, and I just wasn’t getting it. She was describing what it was like for her to move through the world as a woman, to be constantly under sexual surveillance, to always be worried about whether some guy would harass or attack her, to never know if she could walk down the street without getting cat called. This was pretty foreign to me, because I’d never seen any of this happening.

Partly, that was because I’d never really fit in with most other boys and I didn’t understand how the performance of masculinity encourages boys and men to compete with each other to demonstrate their manhood. I simply didn’t play those games. But more than that, it was because men don’t do the same things when they see a woman with a man. I had no idea that women’s experiences walking down the street were so different when I wasn’t there.

So my friend gave me a challenge that changed my life. She offered to walk down the street on a weekend night and allow me to walk behind her so I could see what happened. I took her up on it and the next Friday night, out we went. She was dressed in pretty standard “going out” clothes and we headed out to the strip of stores, bars, and restaurants that most college campuses seem to have within walking distance. I stayed about 20 feet behind her—close enough to observe without seeming like we were together. And I was shocked at what I saw.

Individual guys whispered or made comments about her as she passed them. They’d ask her where she was going or simply turn and stare at her ass. Groups of guys were worse, though. I could see them checking her out and talking to each other about her body and appearance. A few times, one guy in a group would say something and the rest of them would laugh while staring at her. And twice, one guy said something, followed by another guy escalating either the volume or the message, with another dude chiming in. I could see them all competing with each other to be the most macho, not caring that their games were at the cost of my friend’s feelings of safety.

It was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first glimpse I got at the crap that women have to put up with, simply for moving through the world. I started paying attention to it more and thought about how I would feel if I couldn’t go anywhere in public without having to think about getting harassed, how I would feel if I couldn’t feel safe walking down the street. If a picture is worth a thousand words, getting to see this for myself was worth so much more.

Over time, I came to see that I needed to do more about this than simply not participate in it myself. In my workshops on sexuality, masculinity, and gender, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and backgrounds about these topics. And one pattern that consistently shows up is that there are a lot of cisgender men who act like this without realizing the impact it has. Many of them are so surrounded by the Act Like a Man Box that they see it as totally normal. Some of them would like to break out of it, but they don’t know how and don’t have the support to do it. And a lot of them are scared to change because other people will attack and shame them back into the box. It’s not just men who reinforce this prison.

I also started to understand the connections between street harassment and sexual assault. One of the common threads is the belief that one person’s desires for sex, sexual attention, or validation as a man outweighs another person’s autonomy, safety, and consent. Another is that very few folks are actually teaching boys and young men about respect. Most of the conversations that I’ve seen center on shaming them without giving them the skills they need to navigate relationships.

What if we could actually talk with boys about how to ask for sex, or ways to flirt without being creepy? I know some parents who are doing this, but the “boys will be boys” attitude is still common. Just as most people shy away from talking with girls about these issues out of discomfort with addressing adolescent female sexuality, we also avoid looking at adolescent male sexuality with any clarity. So is it any surprise that people grow up confused about relationships? Is it all that shocking that many of my coaching clients struggle with these same issues as adults?

I’m deeply grateful to my friend for showing me what rape culture is about. For helping me understand that the world she moved through was so different from the one I moved through. For making it possible for me to take my first steps toward understanding what she and other women deal with every day.

If you’re a cisgender man, I really encourage you to ask a friend if she’d be willing to do this experiment with you. Trust me. It’ll change your life.

Charlie Glickman is a sexuality educator, occasional university professor, writer, blogger, and coach. In addition to working with individuals and couples to help them create happier sex lives, he teaches workshops and classes on sex-positivity, sex and shame, sexual practices, communities of erotic affiliation, and sexual authenticity. Find out more about him on his website (www.charlieglickman.com), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/drcharlieglickman) and follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/charlieglickman).

Matt Forney Is a Douche

This is Matt Forney, he is a douche. He recently posted an article entitled The Case Against Female Self-Esteem that has set the internet ablaze with commentary, most of it suggesting that Forney is a douche, or much more explicit things I am choosing not to repeat (despite full agreement).

Forney represents what the men's rights activists, or MRAs (i.e., all feminists are evil) call a red pill/anti-feminist (men who are feminists have apparently swallowed the blue pill, or are white knights [used as a derogatory term], or are manginas).

The red pill/blue pill thing is taken from The Matrix, where it represented the choice between embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red) and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue). In the MRA and PUA worlds (PUA = pick-up artists) being a male feminist (i.e., believing that biological sex and gender should be invisible before the law) is to have taken the blue pill.

Men like Forney (really just a sniveling little boy) are why we have something as ugly as rape culture in this era. For him, women should not get college degrees, should not have jobs, should not do anything other than submit to him sexually. Fortunately for the rest of us, those of us who are adult men, little boys like Forney are decreasing in number with each successive generation.
On the downside, they will never be fully extinct.

His article is frustrating, infuriating, and deeply flawed (at best). Rather than try to summarize his nonsense myself - it makes my brain hurt just reading the stupid flowing from this guy's keyboard - here is a post called 60 sexist incoherent things matt forney believes.

60 sexist incoherent things matt forney believes

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Clara 

 

In the event that you’re confused, check out this glorious masterpiece: The Case Against Female Self-Esteem. It has made me so angry that I have literally spent an hour (which I could and should have spent at the GCB) writing this blog post. Basically, he writes that women should stop having self-esteem because it’s killing his boner. Enjoy.

1. Women have “natural biological social functions.” Somewhere in our DNA, femininity is encoded as a series of ACGT sequences that spell out sugar and spice and everything nice.
2. America is not currently waging a war against female self-esteem. No, America is way too woman-friendly as far as media goes.
3. America ought to be waging a war against female self-esteem.
4. Girls (only girls, definitely not boys, not at all) are bombarded with pro-self-esteem propaganda from childhood.
5. We live in “a man’s world.” For some reason.
6. “Girls should be discouraged from being confident.”
7. “Most girls have done nothing to deserve self-esteem.”
8. Men get respect (and self-esteem) by accomplishing things, but women expect it to just be handed to them like a free cookie.
9. Men deserve to have self-esteem because they do important things
10. Women don’t deserve to have self-esteem because they do unimportant things.
11. Women’s achievements are “complete jokes.”
12. “Having a college degree is a strike against a girl,” because it demonstrates that she thinks education is like, important or something.
13. Women all do silly things like teach elementary school.
14. Men do the really important things, not because of any glass ceiling, but because men are better.
15. We are “girls,” and we want to “play” in the man’s world.
16. We (girls) have to obey their (men’s) rules.
17. We are “girls” or “females,” but members of the other gender are only known as “men.”
18. A couple of guitarists on Matt Forney’s street corner provide a more useful service to society than a career-driven woman.
19. “Insecurity is integral to femininity.”
20. Emotional vulnerability is the same thing as fragility. This is so wrong. Vulnerability is absolutely an integral part of any real relationship between two human beings. You need to be able to be open with your partner, trusting that they won’t hurt you, even though they can. Basically, Matt Forney thinks vulnerability is the opposite of confidence.
21. “Insecurity is the natural state of woman.” Yes, womanhood has a natural state, and that state is insecure.
22. “Given their lack of physical strength, a woman on her own should be frightened as hell without men to protect her.” That is a direct quote. I didn’t have to embellish that one bit.
23. There is a predetermined relationship between men and women, and any deviation from that script is backwards and wrong and leads to misery for everyone forever.
24. Part of the male identity requires women to need them, either emotionally or materialistically.
25. “Female insecurity is a crucial ingredient for unlocking our inner masculine instincts.” Again, I wish I’d made that up.
26. Women should be concerned with unlocking Matt Forney’s “inner masculine instincts.”
27. If only women looked weaker, men would look super strong! And that would give Matt Forney a boner!
28. “Confidence doesn’t give men erections; vulnerability does.”
29. All men get erections from the same things. (That’s why there are only three or four porn videos out there. Once they figured out what turns on the all-encompassing male hive mind, they quickly realized there was no need for any more porn, ever.)
30. My purpose is to give Matt Forney an erection.
31. Vulnerability and confidence are opposites.
32. Women need to be more vulnerable than men, in relationships, because women like confident men, and men like insecure women.
33. That’s just how it is, for everyone, forever. If you disagree, then you’re either a feminist or a manboob.
34. Girls get mental illnesses because they deny their feminine instincts.
35. Women have “inborn insecurity.”
36. “The modern woman has become an emotional cripple.”
37. Considering yourself an “equal” in the dating world is the same as viewing your partner as “a life support system for a penis.” Because I consider myself a life support system for my vagina. Hooray for equality!
38. “Confident women are incapable of viewing men as human beings.” This is the most insane jump Forney makes. He describes a vulnerable, fragile, needy girl, and then describes a totally heartless and frankly horrible-sounding alternative. None of these people are emotionally healthy! A confident woman is not a sociopath!
39. If women are confident and empowered, “men are nothing more than fashion items to help women show how cool or sophisticated they are.” Because a confident woman couldn’t possibly see a man as a human being.
40. “If I’m not the center of a girl’s world, I’m not going to be in her world period.” Matt Forney literally demands to be the center of a girl’s world. Nothing else will do, because Matt Forney is so fucking special that he deserves it, as a man.
41. “So-called confident women are as threatening as a pile of dog turds.” Matt has just described all of the horrible things a confident woman can do to a man (e.g. throwing him in the trash, exchanging him for cash and prizes, etc), but now he’s saying they’re all totally harmless, for reasons that are unclear.
42. “Women don’t want to have high self-esteem.”
43. Women with depression are only depressed because their lives are a total lie. Also, women with depression are “confident.” Because if there’s one quality I’d say I associate with depression, it’s confidence.
44. Their lives are a lie because they’re being confident, and it would be better if they were weak and submissive.
45. Women “despise their strong, independent lives.” You can tell because they take all that Prozac. You can also tell because they’re so notoriously unhappy.
46. Women “want nothing more than for a man to throw them over his knee, shatter the Berlin Wall around their hearts, and expose the lovestruck, bashful little girl within.” I cannot even begin to comprehend this.
47. Pick-up artists are only successful because women need insane displays of dominance to overpower their artificially confident psyches.
48. Lana Del Rey is popular because women all want to pretend we’re all sixteen years old.
49. Women write songs about men, because we are all totally nuts for men. Men don’t write songs about women, ever, because men are smart and women are stupid.
50. Women need men “far more” than men need women.
51. “Girls will all but die without masculine attention.”
52. Rape culture is just a made-up thing that lets women feel vulnerable, because we just love feeling vulnerable. This is the part in the article where Matt Forney’s argument goes from insane to sickening. It’s not even a little bit funny.
53. Feminists lie about rape all the time, for fun. Lying about rape is super fun.
54. “At the end of the day, there are no Strong, Independent Women™. There are only shrews pleading for a taming.” Women are like pets. Disobedient pets.
55. Girls don’t want a six-figure job.
56. Girls don’t want an apartment.
57. Girls don’t want a master’s degree.
58. Girls don’t want sexual liberation.
59. Girls want to be led back to the kitchen.
60. Girls want to make Matt Forney a sandwich.

Air Force Academy Offers 'Men and Masculinity' Class

Seems like a step forward . . . especially since the AF Academy is known for presenting and enforcing traditional masculinity roles and definitions among cadets. Unfortunately, but as one might expect, most of the students in the class are female, and the few males who sign up get a lot of shaming from peers.

The AF Academy has been the poster child for military abuse of women:

• "Air Force Inspector General Summary Report Concerning The Handling Of Sexual Assault Cases At The United States Air Force Academy" (pdf). 14 September 2004. Archived from the original on 13 May 2009. Retrieved 25 May 2009.
• "Rate of Rape at Academy Is Put at 12% in Survey". The New York Times. 28 August 2003. Retrieved 28 March 2005.
• "Air Force Ignored Academy Abuse". The New York Times. 23 September 2003. Retrieved 28 March 2005.
• Shanker, Thom (8 December 2004). "Commanders Are Faulted on Assaults at Academy". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 April 2010.

They are also known for promoting fundamentalist Christian views as the only acceptable beliefs:

• "Zealots at the Air Force Academy, editorial, ''New York Times,'' Jun. 11, 2005". Select.nytimes.com. 11 June 2005. Retrieved 2012-02-20.
• Air Force Sued over Religion, CBS News, Oct. 6, 2005". Cbsnews.com. 11 February 2009. Retrieved 2012-02-20.
• Elliot, Dan, "41% Of Non-Christian AF Cadets Cite Proselytizing", Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 October 2010.

On the bright side, the professor, Dr. Kilmartin, is a licensed clinical psychologist who is best known for his work in gender roles and preventing gender violence. His major scholarly work is The Masculine Self (link is the third ed., but there is a fourth ed., 2010), and The Pain Behind the Mask: Overcoming Masculine Depression (with John Lynch, 1999).

AF Academy Offers 'Men and Masculinity' Class

Sept 05, 2013
Colorado Springs Gazette

Behavioral sciences major Trevor Langford could have signed up for any of a number of electives this fall.

The junior Air Force Academy cadet opted to enroll in "Men and Masculinity," a new class that fulfills an elective requirement for his major.

The course, open to all cadets, aims to reduce the rate of sexual assaults at the school by encouraging students to think critically about gender constructs, resist peer pressure and laude peers who do the same.

Langford's friends have made him pay for the class choice ever since.

"They'll say, 'I'd validate that class on day one, so I don't need it,'" he said.

Or they'll ask him questions like "Are you not secure enough in your masculinity?" and "Do you need to learn how to be a man?"

Langford, an aspiring social worker, doesn't let the comments bother him.

"I don't judge people," he said. "I'll call them out on it, bring it to their attention that they're not right at all."

Changing the culture

Langford handles the course-inspired teasing exactly as his instructor, Christopher Kilmartin, wishes all cadets would.

A bit of verbal bravado can go a long way in changing the cultural climate of the academy, the military and society as a whole, Kilmartin, a psychology professor from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., said during an Aug. 15 class session.

Kilmartin gave an example: On the golf course, it's not uncommon to hear men to chide each other to "hit the ball, Alice," or to blame a bad shot on getting the putter caught up their skirt, he said.

"I never let that go," Kilmartin told his students, most of whom are female. "A well-placed phrase indicating your disapproval can be very, very powerful. I'll say something like, 'Oh, I don't know. I think Michelle Wie could have gotten it a little closer.'"

It may be a small gesture, but it requires courage, an attribute that often is associated with masculinity, Kilmartin said.

His contention: Real men would speak up.

"A lot of men think courage means running into a burning building," he said. "But isn't it also courageous to say, 'I don't like the way you talk about women?' Or, 'I don't want to go to the strip club with you. I don't want that to be part of my life?' That's courageous."

That won't stop sexual assaults. But it can cause a ripple effect that slowly changes military culture to one that doesn't tolerate rape and sexual assault, crimes that are typically committed by men against women, Kilmartin said.

"The social construction of masculinity is anti-femininity," he told the class. "We learn from a very early age what women do, and for God's sake, don't do it. The worst insult you can give to a boy is that 'you run like, act like, look like, dance like, throw like a girl.' So when we tell little boys that being like a girl diminishes you, what kind of attitude are we building? We are teaching them to disrespect women.

"My job as an educator is to name the pressure" that exists for males to conform to unhealthy masculine stereotypes, Kilmartin continued. "If I can help you name the pressure for yourself, you can learn how to resist it when it conflicts with important life goals or hurts another person."

More reports, fewer assaults

Teaching at the academy is a temporary gig for Kilmartin, who is participating in the school's distinguished visiting professor program this academic year.

This fall, he's teaching two sections of "Men and Masculinity," as well as consulting with faculty and conducting research.

In the spring, he'll teach "Interpersonal Violence."

The author of popular gender study text "The Masculine Self,"Kilmartin has spent his career teaching similar courses at civilian universities, where most of his students are usually women.

More recently, he's taken his expertise to the military. Kilmartin has worked with the U.S. Naval Academy to revise its sexual assault and harassment prevention curriculum and wrote a script for an Army training film on the same topic.

His goal for the 10 short months he'll spend at the Air Force Academy: increase the reporting rate of sexual assaults -- a move he calls a "prevention strategy" since 90 percent of acquaintance sexual assaults are committed by serial offenders, he said.

Reducing the occurrence of sexual assaults will require those who would never dream of committing a sex assault doing their part to cultivate a healthy climate, Kilmartin said.

"With regards to disrespectful behavior, a lot of people think, 'I need to refrain from that,'" he said. "The message we want to send is, 'We need more from you than that.' The way I put it to cadets is, 'Is your goal to graduate from the academy with a 2.0 GPA and exit the service at the same rank you entered at?

"We want to increase the kind of attitude of respect for everybody that's a core value here, but maybe isn't always followed," he said. "Every college, university and service academy in the country has issues with sexual assault. We want to reduce that and amplify the healthy voices, which are the vast majority."

Though it's early in the semester, students such as Langford may have already started the ripple effect Kilmartin is hoping to create.

The more Langford talks about discussion topics from the class with his fellow cadets at lunch, the more positive responses he gets, the cadet said.

"A lot of them are like, 'Oh, man. I really wish I was in that class too,'" he said.

It's nice to see students at the University of Arizona, here in Tucson, taking steps to redefine masculinity in an effort to reduce sexual violence. I'd really like to see similar programs in the local middle schools and high schools as well - if we can get to them when they are younger, we have a better chance of helping young men grow up to be good adult men.

UA Men's Project redefines masculinity, aims to raise awareness of rape culture

By SHELBY THOMAS 

Published May 1, 2013

Gabriela Diaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat The Men’s Project’s Devon Moule, an anthropology junior and one of the project’s founding interns, volunteers ...

With numerous on-campus programs committed to supporting various factions of the student body, the UA is now welcoming an internship program unique to the male population.

Only one semester old, The Men’s Project was developed through the Women’s Resource Center by Krista Millay, the program director of the WRC. Millay said she has always wanted to offer a space for men to talk about masculinity and about being a guy at the UA.

“If we want college men to engage critically, become their own people and be allies to other identities, then we need to create a space for them to go through that same journey, just like other students get,” Millay said. “Just like all student populations, our college men need some support that is geared toward them. The reality is that they need a space to grapple with issues: The good, the bad and the otherwise. I don’t think that masculinity normally gets that kind of airtime.”

The Men’s Project is run as an internship program that requires ten hours a week from its interns in exchange for three academic credits per semester, Millay said. These hours consist of a team business meeting as well as a critical discussion of current issues within pop culture. The interns also participate in separate projects. In the spring semester, they participated in the planning of Take Back the Night and the development of the curriculum for “The MENS Workshop,” a judicial sanction through the Dean of Student’s Office.

“We hope to develop this program further so that it is also a leadership class that students can take — not just because they have been sanctioned to it, but because they are interested in these topics and want a space to explore them further in a positive and supportive setting,” Millay said.

Michael Webb, a gender and women’s studies senior, is one of the founding interns of the Men’s Project, which he defines as a “program that questions aspects of college male culture and perceptions of masculinity.” Webb said specific questions the organization strives to answer and address include, “What kind of gender stereotypes are in place in our society? What boxes are we putting people in, in terms of the range of expression that we are able to embody in our day-to-day life?”

Webb’s passion for these topics made for a successful first semester for the internship, and now, Millay said she is confident that Alex Karaman, a graduate student working toward his Ph.D. in gender and women’s studies, will continue to improve The Men’s Project as the graduate assistant for the 2013 fall semester.

Karaman was a political science student at Cal State University at Long Beach when he took his first women’s studies course.

He said “the perspective that the course offered on relations between people … was so much more in line with how he had viewed the world,” and he quickly added gender and women’s studies as a second major as a result.

As an undergraduate student, Karaman said he was involved in campus politics and often addressed issues relating to college rape culture and sexual violence. He said when he saw there was an opportunity for this kind of work to take place on the UA campus, he jumped at it.

Although he has new ideas for the fall semester, Karaman said that there have already been great strides made to make The Men’s Project a very “legitimate and central part of the university structure.” He said his goal is to continue these successful services.

For example, Karaman said The Men’s Project will continue to hold “The Men’s Workshop” a few times a semester that will be mandatory for students who are repeat offenders of the Code of Conduct — more specifically, those who have broken rules that seem to indicate the influence of college male culture, such as “issues of violence” or “sexual assault.”

“Our purpose is largely to show that there are men that are actively engaged in trying to change this rape culture,” Karaman said. “I want programming to be made available that is proactive rather than reactive.”