3: Do You Ask?
- Posted by Cara on July 26th, 2008 filed in day of blogs
Via SAFER, I absolutely love these posters from the Date Safe project, aimed at sexual assault prevention in teens. There are two main reasons: 1. they are aimed at educating on how to not commit sexual assault rather than how to “avoid” being sexually assaulted and 2. they use the concept of affirmative/enthusiastic consent — in other words, consent means a “yes” rather than the absence of a “no.”
I also love that the posters are diverse in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation:
As I’ve said before, I genuinely do wonder the impact that affirmative consent models could have had on my life as a teen. It was not a message I had ever really heard. It was one I needed to hear in order to know that what was being done to me was wrong. Fear is not consent. Silence is not consent. Consent is telling your partner what you want. It’s freely saying yes.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Love those posters. I think I will get some for my office. That should wig out my colleagues.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I like these even better than the Men Can Stop Rape ads from about a decade ago: “My Strength is Not for Hurting” was a good slogan, but it did reflect some very traditional ideas about masculinity.
This is really good stuff. Keep at it, Cara.
July 26th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Love!
July 26th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Oh, I’ve not seen those before! WANT!
July 28th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Those are fantastic! I love that they reflect a wide range of relationships and many ethnic groups. It also goes to show how important the way we word things is. Maybe if rape education focused more on making sure someone says “yes”, rather than, as you mentioned, teaching people how to avoid rape, people would be less inclined to blame the victim.