How Many Politicians Does It Take to Prevent a Sexual Indiscretion?

By Patrick McGann
Director of Strategy & Planning

I finished writing Part 5 of “How I Came to Work at Men Can Stop Rape” yesterday (the part where I actually finally end up at MCSR) but then this morning read the Washington Post and learned that Rep. David Wu (D-OR) is accused of having “aggressive and unwanted” sex with a teenage daughter of a friend. My reaction, said out loud at the kitchen table: “What is wrong with these guys?” It wasn’t directed at Abby, my wife, as much as it was an expression of exasperation. So, I’m delaying posting Part 5 for addressing political scandal.

Part of me still expects, I suppose, high standards of behavior from our public representatives. Idealistically, I assume they understand their need to uphold and represent our democratic principles, and that “sexual indiscretions” (media language) are not in line with those principles. In a more practical sense, surely they have already seen enough politicians fall from grace so that they are aware of the potential consequences to their own careers? When I went to Texas Tech we told Texas A & M jokes about how many Aggies it takes to screw in a light bulb. Although I can’t quite wrap my head around it right now, I’m thinking there’s a similar joke about how many politicians it takes to stop a sexual indiscretion.

Of course I know why these male politicians keep acting in inappropriate ways. Isn’t traditional masculinity the root cause for so many things we men do? And doesn’t it need a light shined on it in the hallways of our government buildings? It has been invisible for too long in our Capitol, I say! Not only do politicians suffer the consequences when one of their own creates a “Guys Gone Stupid” video, we as citizens lose any sense that the people in charge of our country are credible, responsible, and respectable adults.

Our politicians need help! They can’t prevent these indiscretions on their own or they would have already done so. I challenge them to bring in the masculinity and gender-based violence prevention experts. I personally will guarantee the services of Men Can Stop Rape. We usually limit our From Theory to Practice trainings to 20 participants or so, which means it will take us a while to get through the Senate and the House, but it will be time well spent. Our country will be better for it.

Politicians, I beg you: ask not what masculinity can do for you, but what you can do to change masculinity.

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Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence. Share

Is "My Strength" a Bystander Intervention Campaign?

by Patrick McGann
Director of Strategy and Planning

[I've been in all day trainings and at a photo shoot this week, so I didn't have time to write the next part of "How I Came to Work at Men Can Stop Rape." I'll continue that next week. This week I'm using a blog I wrote a month or two back to have ready for a situation like this.]

For some time now, I’ve identified our “My Strength Is Not for Hurting” campaign as primarily consent focused rather than bystander intervention focused. The campaign language primarily represents two people in a relationship. Examples include: “So when she changed her mind, I stopped,” “So when I got mixed signals, I asked what she wanted,” and “So when she was drunk, I backed off.” Both people are inside the experience. They’re participants. No bystander would be part of the scenarios according to the definition of bystander: “a person present but not involved; chance spectator; onlooker.”

But Sarah McMahon, Judy Postmus, and Ruth Anne Koenick (2011) present a different view. They update the Bystander Attitude Scale and Bystander Behavior Scale and rename BI the “engaging bystander approach” (EBA) to stress that a bystander can take action. Some of the EBA interventions in their scale fit my understanding of what it means to be a bystander: “Check in with my friend who looks drunk when s/he goes to a room with someone else at a party,” and “Challenge a friend who made a sexist joke,” for instance. But some don’t. Some are very similar to the consent messages in the My Strength campaign: “Stop sexual activity when asked to, even if I am already sexually aroused,” and “Decide not to have sex with a partner if s/he is drunk.”

Overall, I find McMahon, Postmus, and Koenick’s study very helpful – especially their framing of EBA and the Bystander Attitude Scale in relation to what they term the sexual violence continuum. But I also find their article confusing. Who is the bystander in “Decide not to have sex with a partner if s/he is drunk”? Is the suggestion that the person making the decision is the onlooker? Is this onlooker intervening by deciding not to have sex with her/his drunken partner? If s/he doesn’t intervene, does that mean s/he sexually assaults her/his drunken partner? What if we apply this understanding to another situation? Melanie Carlson (2008) writes about the gang rape of an unconscious 15-year-old girl by four males with six other males present. Would we claim that all 10 are bystanders or just the six? Are the lines being blurred between perpetrators and bystanders?

When we go to a college to conduct trainings, one of our goals is to help everyone – students, peer educators, RAs, faculty, campus police, administrators, and so on – get on the same page when it comes to engaging men in the prevention of sexual violence on campus. I’d like to get on the same page with McMahon, Postmus, and Koenick – especially because I respect their work so much.

WATCH FOR MCSR'S NEW COLLEGE BYSTANDER INTERVENTION CAMPAIGN THIS SUMMER!

REFERENCES

Bystander. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from Dictionary.com Web site: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bystander

Carlson, M. (2008). I'd rather go along and be considered a man: Masculinity and bystander intervention. Journal of Men’s Studies, 16 (1), 3-17.

McMahon, S., Postmus J.L., and Koenick, R.A. (2011). Conceptualizing the engaging bystander approach to sexual violence prevention on college campuses. Journal of College Student Development, 52 (1), 115-130.

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence Share

How I Came to Work at Men Can Stop Rape, Part 4

by Patrick McGann

Director of Strategy and Planning

My journey leading to Men Can Stop Rape in Parts 1, 2, and 3 had involved engaging with feminism, either in the context of my academic learning and scholarship or in my relationship with Abby. It might seem obvious that part of any man's investment in feminism should automatically include an investigation of traditional masculinity that includes its critique and the construction of alternative, healthier masculinities. This wasn't an obvious part of my political map, though. I was stuck on the back roads and didn't know main roads even existed that traveled through the landscape of masculinity, until in the late eighties and early nineties when I came across masculinity studies scholars like the Michaels – Michael Kimmel, Michael Kaufman, and Michael Messner.

They put masculinity on the map in a way nothing else had for me up to that point, as did Changing Men, a magazine published by the National Organization of Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). I found Changing Men in Barbara's, a bookstore where I bought other alternative news magazines like Z, The Progressive, and Mother Jones. Through it I learned that NOMAS would hold its 1992 conference at the Chicago Convention Center. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to afford registration and travel, but since it was in the city where I attended graduate school and since I could attend as a volunteer, I signed up. The conference was attended by both academics devoted to masculinity studies and male activists committed to realizing the goals of feminism, so it merged these parts of me. And I got to hang out with Fred Small.

Fred has been hailed by Pete Seeger as “one of America's best songwriters.” He sings songs of conscience in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs. The conference organizers needed someone to pick him up at the airport. I had Abby's and my car at the Convention Center, so I volunteered. I heard him sing that night. And it was an emotional experience – especially when he sang “Every Man,” a song from his I Will Stand Fast album. Here are some of the lyrics to "Every Man":

I have killed but I am not a killer
I have cried out at the devil in the dark
I have reached out through the bars of my confinement
I have watched the tower I built fall apart.

Gonna listen for the breathing of the baby
Gonna hold him in my arms when he cries
Gonna meet my lover's gaze without turning
Gonna see myself and be satisfied.

He captured for me something I’d never heard so clearly in a song before: being caught between the pressure to be the “real man” – to be aggressive, to be in control, to show no fear – and the desire to have caring and connected relationships with others. His music seems a little preachy to me now (ironic, given that he became a Unitarian minister), but at the conference I felt like I did when I was a teenager and heard the Beatles' Abby Road for the first time. When he needed to get back to the airport, I made sure that I was the person who took him.

I returned to the conference just as it was winding down. The organizers, as a final ceremony, asked everyone to form a line in the ballroom and to curve around and move like a snake so that we had the opportunity to look directly into the eyes of those ahead of or behind us in the line. It felt awkward to stare at people I didn’t know, but a month after the conference, I took the memory of that roomful of mostly men with me when we moved to Washington, DC, the home of Men Can Stop Rape.

To be continued…

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence Share