16 Days, Day 5: Men Against Sexual Violence

Another great resource to consider, in the spirit of 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence is the group Men Against Sexual Violence. Based in Pennsylvania and put forth as a resource for Pennsylvanians, I still find their site to be full of great information and support. They also focus not only on violence against women but violence against men, as well as focusing on what men can do to help prevent such violence. From their site:

It is estimated that 876,064 rapes of adult American women, and 111,298 rapes of adult American men occur each year. Traditionally, participants in the anti-sexual violence movement have focused efforts on treating those individuals whose lives have been permanently altered by perpetrators of sexual violence, and much progress has been made toward helping survivors, convicting perpetrators, and raising awareness of this horrible epidemic. However, the number of sexual assaults has not declined since the anti-sexual violence movement was begun in earnest in the 1970’s. Children, women, and men still fall victim to an unimaginable number of sexual crimes in our state and across the United States daily. Therefore, a new strategy must be utilized in order to address the issue of sexual violence. It is necessary that we as males of all ages recognize that we need to take part in the struggle to end sexual violence. We need to become aware that there is a problem. We need to talk to our friends, our children, our wives, our mothers, and our peers in order to spread the message that rape and sexual violence are problems that will not go away without a collective commitment to end the problem.

I would add that we need to seek out multiple strategies for dealing with these myriad problems, and I'm always happy to find men doing feminist work to help do so.