One approach would be to try and offer the workers protection against this violence. This is obviously the most short-term approach to a solution we can take without proposing something that will merely serve as a band aid without tackling a more fundamental problem.

Another approach – and very much on the opposite side of the spectrum – would be to radically change the industry, or perhas eliminate it altogether. While this is ideal, it is possible for it to be done with the active support of politicians and the public.

The most attractive approach to us however, is a mix between the two, whereby we would try to offer protection to these sex trade workers.We want to protect the people, help them get out of the trade, and at the same time try and give the industry an overhaul so that the people who don’t want to be there don’t have to.

This is because we recognize that in order to do any real, lasting good to the survival sex trade, we would have to transform the prevailing stigmas against the people in the trade.

SFU Sociology’s own Chris Atchinson revealed to us that the prevailing demographic of survival sex trade workers consisted of First Nations women. It is interesting to note that these women come from perhaps the most disadvantaged ethnic background and class in our society. It is no wonder why people choose to ignore their personal issues, their addiction problems, and whatever else have you. If we were to make a comparison to the rich, white, upper echelon pill-poppers and alcoholics residing in the British properties we wouldn’t see much a difference (besides perhaps their substance abuse of choice). And heaven forbid one of us SFU students go missing! Yet, why does society choose to ignore and alienate these aboriginal women in the downtown east side when they are subjected to violence or go missing? Could it really be because ‘they’re only Indians anyway’??

Yes, some of them had made the choice to go into the survival sex trade, but because that was the only option available to them as people from a disadvantaged background that hasn’t allowed them to attain access to proper education, etc… Moreover, many of these people are dealing with addictions (very much like the pill popping, alcoholic, rich white women in the British properties), which worsens the problem.

Long story short, stigma is a very pressing issue that needs to be addressed if we are to make any sort of dent at all in this problem.

I did a little bit more research using that link I posted recently…

Essentially, the leadership within the organization (once it is established) should be in place and providing creative direction and legitimacy for the organization. Of course the founders need to be charismatic enough and committed to the cause in order to attract some good talent to work. “Effective NGO leaders use the talents and enthusiasm of all NGO
stakeholders—board members, staff, community members, clients, and even donors”, say the authors of the article. This could not be more true I think.  If the leadership is not there to begin with then there’s no way the movement can even begin to be sustainable.

The next issue would be who conducts the advertisements? Since it is a media agency, we would be running the ads, but with significant government support. A mechanism would need to be in place for the government to be able to at least split the cost of producing the ads with the company.

As well, we would need to run on donations and a lot of community funding. Prospects for clients could range from church congregations to sexual assault victim clinics. Basically whoever is willing to donate.The more influential the donor the better, since they too have an influence on pop culture. For example, Molson Canadian co-sponsoring an ad would send a more powerful message to the community. This would also be corroborating the suggestion that one’s peers are active against sexual assault, which, according to another article that I blogged about recently, is a more effective way of influencing people against a particular form of behaviour.

However, I would be wary of gathering support from some specific companies such as that of contraceptive vendors like Trojan for the simple reason that I wouldn’t want to be telling those that are likely to commit sexual assault that it’s okay to do so, as long as they wear protection. I would perceive a conflict of interest there if I were to try and gather support from those companies, as their target customers are interested in sex (whether they are sexual assault perpetrators or not). These companies also attempt to add more value (thus boosting profits) to sexual activity by manufacturing condoms designed to maximize pleasure.  I wouldn’t be able to perceive my specific goals for society being reached if I were at the same time encouraging teens and children (these demographics are part of my larger, all-encompassing target market) to be liberal with sex if what I was trying to do was change the way people in society perceive each other sexually. One of the objectives is to foster a fundamental respect for sex with somebody you care about, as opposed to a perversion of the idea as something to do to somebody when you feel like it. That said however…perhaps I might eventually diversify by creating another company that educates society on STDs…

This is exactly the kind of image I'm trying to fight...

Ok so I found some pretty useful tips on how to measure the impact of an NGO. I think it’s worth a read

(http://multimedia.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/library/M0070_mod3.pdf)

The author makes a beautiful illustration about measuring the effectiveness of an NGO:

“An NGO receives funding for a project to address Vitamin A deficiency by encouraging women to grow spinach in their kitchen gardens. Two years later, hundreds of households are growing spinach. Is this an example of a successful project? “There is not enough information” might be the answer of many NGOs and their donors who are seriously considering how to assess the impact of their projects and programs. There is no real sense of how much spinach is actually being eaten, whether the people enjoy the spinach, whether they plan to grow and eat spinach after the project ends, and, most important, whether there is a reduction in Vitamin A deficiency.”

The authors suggest that the moral of the story is that it is necessary for NGOs to build assessment mechanisms into the projects at the very beginning of the planning stage. In order to do that, the NGOs need to find ways for staff and volunteers to easily collect data over time. This data will help the organization to design better projects and consequently persuade donors to support the projects.

A good way for an activist media company to assess its impact on society would be to collect data from its volunteers and employees that interact in society on an ongoing basis.

I also think an assessment of brand perception and equity would be important to assessing the impact, although those would and should not be the only ways to measure success.

Well, one way would be to look at the percentage of crime rates in the area that were related to sexual assault crimes. But perhaps that might not be the best measure since perhaps my media company would cause people to do this more stealthily. Another important question would be as to whether my media company’s initiatives were having the opposite effect on sexual assault rates.

I guess the answer would most probably lie within society itself. “Are attitudes changing?” I would ask myself. The typical thing for me to do would be to conduct  a mass survey. Obviously, this wouldn’t consist of questions such as “is sexual assault wrong?” or “do you look at women as objects?” as these are leading questions. Wouldn’t want incriminating questions either: “Are you likely to commit sexual assault more if you drink?” I would have to approach it from another angle. I would have to survey people based on the factors that lead to sexual assault. For example, based on prior research, I know that excessive drinking in males leads to sexual assault, so I would ask, “Are you male/female?” “if you are male, how much do you drink?”. I would most probably have to team up with the government or different kinds of companies to disguise my company and our intentions by distributing the surveys in their name.

I would also try to ask the respondents what they perceived of the media company and assess whether their attitude towards it was good or bad, as this would clue me in to whether or not they take the company’s message seriously or not.

Thoughts?

I myself would imagine leaving the scene exactly the way it is, except labelling the guy being kicked in the nuts as somebody about to commit sexual assault.

The slogan might be something like “Your friends think you suck for treating her that way.” — cheesy but I hope you catch my drift

Phase one of the process would be to start some sort of grassroots association. Viral marketing would be the order of the day, as we team up with municipal and provincial governments  and governmental associations to raise awareness (something that is already being done by other groups in full force, so less emphasis would be placed on this), but to also educate people on how to overcome situations of sexual assault. Lots of this “education” would be in the form of very aggressive street flyers, text messages,publicly displayed video clips, flash games on the internet, etc… The actual slogan for this grassroots “campaign” might be something outlandish like “If you have sexually assaulted somebody, you are DISGUSTING” – obviously with a little bit more flare.

One thing I read on non-smoking ads recently was that some of them actually reinforced teen smoking. This started to make sense to me, having been a teenager not to long ago. I suspect that the worst of these ads were the “preachy” kind and the dramatic, uncool, parental guidance sort of ads. This made smoking seem a lot “cooler” to teens back in the day.  Here’s something on the most successful smoking ads: “Hye-Jin Paek, assistant professor at the UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, found that anti-smoking ads are most effective when they convince youth that their friends are listening to the ads. Otherwise, the ads appear to stimulate the rebellious and curious nature of youth, making them more interested in smoking. Paek and co-author Albert Gunther from the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined data from surveys of nearly 1,700 middle school students, and their results appear in the August issue of the journal Communication Research.

‘Anti-smoking ads have the greatest impact on smoking attitudes and behavior when adolescents think that their peers are listening to those messages,’ Paek said. ‘And that makes sense because people are more likely to listen to what their close peers say rather than what the media says.’” –( http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/77400.php)

That definitely makes sense. If we can apply this same principle to at least a specific demographic, we might be able to see some results. We just have to recognize that obviously sexual assault in itself is not “cool” but as I had indicated before, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem. In this case, it is the way people are influenced by pop culture and how they tend to objectify other people, consequently rendering them unable to deal with sexual tension or temptation or whatever you want to call it.

The only way to advance to being able to create ads would be to establish a media company. That said, it would be wise to establish it as a non-profit company. Hopefully we would be able to take advantage of our already-established government ties at this point to acquire some initial funds for our startup costs… In any case, here’s another exerpt you should take a look at:

“Perception is sometimes more powerful than actual behavior,” Paek said. “What we’ve found is that it doesn’t necessarily matter how your friends respond to the ads, but how you think your friends are responding.”

“Paek said many health campaigns assume that anti-smoking messages have a simple, direct and strong impact on individuals. She said that by understanding the indirect route that messages often take, health communicators can design more effective ads.

Her results suggest that campaigns don’t work by convincing individuals to avoid tobacco, but rather by helping change the social norms surrounding smoking. With that in mind, she said, campaigns should be designed for a sustained, multi-year effort.

The way the message is designed is critically important, too. Rather than using an authoritarian approach along the lines of ‘just say no,’ Paek urges health communicators to emphasize that most youth don’t smoke, and for good reasons.”

If we liken smoking to the images we see in the media, we can notice the similarities in that the media images that REALLY advocate the mistreatment of individuals are quite rebellious and thus attractive to people who want to seem “cool” (and also providing reinforcement to the people with more natural tendencies to sexual assault). Hence, the strategy for most of these media campaigns would take into account Paek’s findings above.

If we can convince societies that objectification of other individuals as well as many other things (being attracted to a child sexually, taking advantage of somebody when they’re drunk, etc etc) are all absolutely disgusting and downright uncool, I’m sure the media company would be quite successful (provided it also encourages people to act out against sexual violence. The trick is finding the “cool” way to send a message about it).

And no, I’m not underestimating the complexity of the problem of changing society.

In the United States for example, rape is the most costly of all crimes to the victim. The total cost of rape is approximated at $127 billion a year – and that’s not including the cost of child sexual abuse. Each sexual assault costs approximately $110,000. In fact, in 2002, the total cost of sexual assault to the victims was $18 million.

Because many rape victims are usually subjected to more than one instance of sexual assault, the cost per rape is approximately $87,000. The cost for sexual assault entails $500 for short-term medical care, $2,400 for mental health services, $2,200 in foregone productivity and $104,000 for pain and suffering (which includes rape trauma syndrome, emotional breakdowns, and lifelong physical manifestations of sexual trauma)

The costs don’t stop there…

The typical Fortune 500 company bore costs of up to $6.7 million a year ($282 per employee) for sexual harrassment in 1988. That said however, I’m sure the cost may have gone down since then due to the introduction and investment in more sophisticated sexual harassment policies, procedures and programs.

The data goes on, but I think we all get the picture here…

There is a big need for governments to start paying more attention to this issue and making investments into research, prevention programs and media campaigns. I’m not sure what the legislation permits or not, but there definitely needs to be a lot more of these on prime time television all over the world…

These ads are fantastic, but I feel that they are still throwing out too many statistics and not educating the public on strategies/precautions to avoid sexual assault. My guess is because the smartest strategies might be to limit one’s freedom a little bit (ie: “don’t do this, don’t do that, instead do this”). Perhaps an initiative like that is in order… Obviusly, it can’t really happen from a government standpoint, only from a public standpoint. Why hasn’t anybody come out with a sexual assault prevention ad like those awesome non smoking ads???

“- Effective programs address multiple areas of a person’s life such as health,
education, social connections, and social conditions by providing services in a
variety of relevant settings.
- Effective programs offer a wide variety of activities to address the target
problem, which usually has multiple risk factors. These activities may include
several components such as curriculum-based interventions, media campaigns,
systems change, and environmental strategies that can affect economic-social
conditions.”

I think the second principle is especially important for eliminating the tendencies for sexual assault in society. In order to attack the potential for sexual assault at a fundamental level, it’s important that you hit the sources of societal influence and education. The examples that are given which include curriculum-based interventions and media campaigns are important. However, the author isn’t specific abotu how to communicate those messages. I am still looking into the psychology of that at this point, but I am convinced that these illustrations need to educate people on how to say “no” to committing sexual assault, as well as how to avoid being a victim to it.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the main answer lies within the media. However, I think I need to decide whether transforming the media is merely tackling a symptom or actually addressing fundamental problem. Perhaps it’s a blend of both. More on that later. Until then, keep your kids away from bad TV!

Basically, it says that we can do whatever we want to try and prevent sexual assault but we will ultimately fail unless these efforts aim to turn society on its head. The author suggests that our preventive effrts have to undermine cultural and sexual support for sexual assault among men. The paper focuses a lot on masculinity and how social constructions of masculine heterosexuality are some of what’s at the core of men being the perpetrators of sexual assault.

This paper ties in beautifully with the stats i’ve published in previous posts. It suggests a lot of violence prevention strategies targeted towards male youth and male adults through mass education in schools and throughout society (described as ‘primary prevention’). The author also goes on to talk about things like ‘tertiary prevention’ that seeks to prevent further violence from males who have already committed the assaults.  The author cleverly notes that these strategies also need to cater to the different blends of gender, etc that comes with different cultures and societies.

One thing that I was particularly interested in was this:

“Undermine attitudinal support for violence against women

The goal of lessening men’s social and cultural support for, or tolerance of, violence against women has been enacted through community education strategies which seek to;

Inform men about domestic and/or sexual violence

Directly challenge dominant myths and violence-supportive beliefs

Communicate the idea that violence against women is unacceptable, a criminal act, unmanly, or undesirable in some other way.”

 you can find the pdf form of the journal here:

http://www.xyonline.net/downloads/mascsexualassault.pdf