Title: Disrupting Rape Culture Through Education

Source/Author/Date: Teaching Tolerance, Colleen Lutz Clemens, September 15^th 2016

URL Link: http://www.tolerance.org/blog/disrupting-rape-culture-through-education

Relevance: As educators, not only are we required to guide our student’s academic learning but we have a responsibility in teaching them how to better individuals in society.

By better, I mean that we have a responsibility to teach our students right from wrong and have conversations that empower each individual student in their daily lives. Rape culture is a phenomenon that is wide spread through America and it is the idea that we promote acts of sexual assault from a man towards a woman. We as a nation punish the victim of sexual assault more so than the perpetrator. As evident in the most recent media case, the Brock Turner rape case, the judge decided to give the Stanford athlete no more than 6 months in jail because it would “have a severe impact” on Turner’s life. Did the judge think about what kind of impact a light sentence would have on the victim? The reason I chose this article is because we as educators can play a critical role in teaching our students how to respect each other.  The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports that one in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives. We as educators, we will touch the lives of so many men and women and if we teach our students how to respect each other and how to respect someone’s decision, we can play a pivotal role in ending this idea of American Rape culture. It all starts with a conversation-a conversation we can have with our students. 

Key Points: 1) Don’t make children give hugs when they don't want to. 2) Don’t tell girls that when boys tease them, it means they “like” them (or vice versa). 3) Resist dress codes that police girls’ bodies. 4) Call out songs, TV shows or movies that send the message, “No doesn’t really mean no.” 5) Talk about consent.