Motivating men

Helping men change rape culture

Keith Edwards, a campus speaker and educator, will host the upcoming Katy Benoit Safety Forum with his presentation, titled “Men Ending Rape: a social change approach to violence prevention,” at 7 pm tonight in the Student Union Building Ballroom.

Katy Benoit, a former University of Idaho graduate student, was just 22 years old when she was shot and killed in 2011 by a UI professor. The forum is part of the third-annual Campus Safety Week, which was established in 2012 in memory of Benoit.

Edwards said he has been speaking on college campuses for 15 years on issues of college men, sexual assault prevention, social justice education, sustainability and student affairs leadership.

“I think I got started by someone sharing a message about how we need to not just respond well, but to really be proactive, and (it) really challenged me to think about what that means,” Edwards said.

According to Virginia Solan, coordinator of Violence Prevention Programs at UI, Edwards focuses on college males and issues around masculinity. She said the presentation name, “Men Ending Rape,” is somewhat deceiving because the presentation is about the bigger picture, not just about what men do to women.

“It’s not a ‘don’t rape women’ message,” Solan said. “(Edwards) is about reframing the whole discussion for men, and giving them a way to say ‘it’s okay if I am a little bit confused about what makes a good man, what kind of man I am supposed to be.'”

Solan said all students — male or female — should attend the event, because the message can resonate with the public about what’s its like to go through the college experience.

“Everyone would find what Keith has to say really intriguing because we all live in this culture,” Solan said.

Edwards said while most may not want to confront the issue of sexual assault, it’s still very prevalent in life, and more people are becoming eager to combat the problem.

“I think most of us think about it being awful and wanting to stop it, and when it does happen, making sure that people are responding in a way that helps address the problem,” Edwards said.

His approaches, reactive and proactive, are designed to try to stop sexual violence in the first place. He said his presentation is largely proactive, and focuses the conversation more on prevention than response.

He said there are many subtle messages in society that support a rape culture. Some of the messages he described are posters, T-shirts, beer advertisements and the way that some events on campuses are promoted or advertised.

“And often times, the people who are giving those messages to people, that these things are acceptable and okay, don’t mean that and don’t think about that, but we have to be very careful of the messages that are in our culture,” Edwards said.

Edwards will discuss perpetrators and defining what it means to give “consent.” He said that everyone, regardless of gender or gender identity can help to change the culture to make college campuses healthier, including UI.

“I think we can change the culture by using conversations with people in our lives. We can change it by the way we see messages that are supportive of a rape culture,” Edwards said.

Mary Malone can be reached at [email protected]

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