|
|
"The Men's Program" Frequently
Asked Questions
Everything about our program is based on what has been shown by the research literature to be most effective. The research is fairly conclusive that when you talk to college men about rape, the most effective way is in all-male audiences with male peer educators presenting. One of the things you often find in coeducational programs is a defensiveness among men to the issue, and a polarization of their attitudes. This is not healthy. Our program focuses on empowering men to learn how to help women recover from rape -- treating them as potential helpers not as potential rapists. We do this in an environment where they can safely ask questions and not feel defensive with women in the room. Any time a woman wants to see our program we make sure she has an opportunity to do so. When we present to men though, we try to do this in an all-male environment given its proven efficacy. How do you know this program works? Our former advisor, John Foubert, did his dissertation on this program. Prior to his dissertation, the most effective rape prevention programs changed men's attitudes for up to 2 months and their likelihood of raping for only 1 day. No program was able to go beyond these levels. In his dissertation, Dr. Foubert found that our program led to a statistically significant change in both attitudes and likelihood of raping for seven months. So, with his study, the longest ever attitudinal effect of a program went from 2 to 7 months; and he moved the longest ever effect on likelihood of raping from 1 day to 7 months. What is even more startling is that of those "high risk" men in his study (those most likely to rape), 75% of them became less likely to rape after seeing the program. So, we are able to reach those men best who we need to reach the most. These results are published in his book "The Men's Program" and are in articles in the Journal of College Student Development, the Journal of American College Health, and the NASPA Journal.* Other research on his program found that men also significantly improve their ability to help women recover from rape. Thus, our program, "The Men's Program" has a dual benefit -- we make men better able to help women recover from rape, and at the same time make men less likely to be perpetrators in the first place. Do you ever get any criticism of the program? The most common reaction we get from people is overwhelming support. We're a bunch of male student leaders who are working proactively to end rape with a program that's proven to work. Every once in awhile a woman will question its all-male format. Once we explain that we do our program the way we do because research shows it works best -- and that she can see the program if she wants to -- the overwhelming majority of people who question this aspect end up strongly supporting us. On the whole, the program has very strong support -- so much so that it's in place at 22 universities right now with many, many more in the planning stages. Your video is very powerful. How do guys react to it? Stunned silence. They really learn by watching it what it might feel like to be raped. Through it, we build the empathy men need to really understand what it is like to be overpowered, controlled, and violated. Research shows that rape prevention programs that use an empathy based intervention work far better than those that just present guys with facts or statistics. Also, when you look at the different empathy based programs, the research shows that describing a man as a survivor is the only effective way to build men's empathy for rape survivors -- they learn that rape is a crime of violence, that it hurts, that it's violating. They see in a new way what it's like to be overpowered -- to be raped. Its important to keep in mind that empathy is a distinct feeling state. It requires participating in the experience of the other, through having a similar experience directly or through imagination. It is the sharing of the experience which permits a sharing of the feelings and needs which emerge in response to the experience. Barring an actual rape experience, there can be no true empathy without walking audience participants through a male rape experience. This simulated rape experience is the crux of "The Men's Program," and cannot be removed, replaced, or significantly altered, without rendering the program ineffective. Is there any concern that describing a male-on-male scenario might bring up any issues of homophobia? No, not with the way we do our program. We have to remember that rape is primarily an act of violence. What is depicted on the video is clearly a violent act. One of the things we do is in our program is combat any pre-existing homophobic attitudes among members of the audience. A common manner in which homophobia manifests itself is that if a man is raped, his attacker must be a homosexual man. The video we use describes a situation in which a man is raped by presumably heterosexual men, thus helping debunk the myth men who rape men are necessarily homosexual. In addition, we hit this point home immediately after the video concludes by noting that the perpetrators were presumably heterosexual, as with many male-on-male rape situations. Thus, we work to attenuate homophobia, not perpetuate it. Also, think about this for a second. Many programs for women have focused on describing women being raped and the effects it has on them, but these programs surely don't perpetuate misogyny and violence against women just because they talk about women who are raped. In the same way, our program does not perpetuate homophobia or any other type of violence. In fact, in one of the studies on the program it was found that our program has no effect on homophobia at all. Also, when asked to write about how the program impacted their attitudes and/or behavior, no respondent in a comprehensive evaluation study of the program wrote any comment that would even remotely suggest that the program was interpreted as homophobic. Thus, whether we pursue this question from a philosophical, logical, or research basis, the answer is the same. *Foubert, J. D. & LaVoy, S. L. (2000). A qualitative assessment of "The Men's Program:" The impact of a rape prevention program on fraternity men. NASPA Journal, 38, 18-30. Foubert, J. D. (2000). The longitudinal effects of a rape-prevention program on fraternity men's attitudes, behavioral intent, and behavior. The Journal of American College Health, 48, 158-163. Foubert, J. D. & McEwen, M. K. (1998). An all-male rape-prevention peer education program: Decreasing fraternity men's behavioral intent to rape. The Journal of College Student Development, 39, 548-556. |
