Performing Activism to Prevent Rape: Feminist Pedagogy in Rape Prevention

Education Programs for High School Aged Girls

Before transitioning into college where incidents of date rape skyrocket, young women
trained in rape prevention techniques are better prepared for the challenges of college life.
Many college aged young women do not recognize behavior that may lead to dangerous
situations, which is why colleges offer necessary and helpful programming for their
students, like theatre based improvisational programs designed to raise awareness about
sexual harassment or sexual assault. These programs point to the necessity of mentoring
and educating younger women about rape and sexual assault before they reach the
“traditional” college age. Feminist rape prevention education uses feminist pedagogy to
mentor young women to actively interrupt the (pre)scripted role of women as sex objects
or victims, and gives them tools to help their peers do the same.

Project H.O.W.-Healthy Outlooks for Women’s location in the rural mid-west makes it
an interesting case study because “feminist” young women work against a local culture
concentrated with conservative religiosity and patriarchy. Project H.O.W., though, helps
young women develop the tools to recognize many of the ways in which their roles as
women are already scripted. Through classroom discussions and lab research sessions, to
planning a sexual assault survivor art show with mentors from the local university, and
finally to self-organizing the Clothesline Project on the local high school campus, the
women of Project HOW learned about rape and how to recognize social symbols that
promote women-as-victims in culture at large.

Through feminist pedagogy young women in a rural town developed the personal
confidence to confront sexism and deploy (within their various subcultures) rape
prevention educational techniques; in essence, Project HOW women learned to help
themselves and their peers move away from playing a passive “feminine” role toward
embracing feminism as an agential means of raising awareness about and preventing
rape. Feminist mentoring programs for high school (and junior high school) aged women
are significantly important, because the young women have not yet reached the critical
age of 18-30 where women are raped at alarmingly high rates—necessitating prevention
programs in the college setting; furthermore, young people are increasingly taught
abstinence only-until-marriage through morally conservative pedagogy in their high
school educational settings. Feminist agitation is not part of the current high school
curriculum; therefore, feminist driven rape prevention programs, like Project HOW, are
developed through the local women’s shelters where young women learn to raise
awareness about rape in a community of their peers, thus, prospectively preventing future
rapes and becoming active agents against sexism in the culture at large.

Cierra Olivia Thomas-Williams

2451 East 10th Street
Bloomington, IN 47408
cthomasw@indiana.edu
812-857-0760
Gender Studies
Doctoral Student
Indiana University Bloomington

Chris Martin
cmshelter@eoni.com
541-963-7226
Sexual Assault Response Advocate
Shelter from the Storm
Domestic Violence Shelter