public service announcements

Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College.

Women’s vulnerability to men’s violence and harassment is a common topic of public service announcements (PSAs) in industrialized countries.  More often than not, however, awareness campaigns are aimed at women and tell them how to avoid victimization.  We’ve posted already, for example, on campaigns telling girls and women that they are responsible for stopping internet predators, preventing sexual harassment, and instigating domestic violence.

Critics argue that stopping predation, harassment, and violence by men requires telling men not to do those things and telling women to restrict their activities to avoid men who might victimize them is only doubly oppressive.  So, when Jeff H. sent in a nice example of a U.K. anti-rape ad targeting men, we thought it was worthy of a post (and see this anti-domestic violence ad for another example).

In a less complimentary mood, Copyranter noted that the poster was hanging in bathrooms and published in men’s magazines and wondered if anti-rape messages should really be communicated with a women’s nearly-naked navel, crotch, and thighs.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Re-posted to add to the discussion about sexual assault in the aftermath of the Steubenville rape trial, the Senate hearing on rape and harassment in the military, and the controversy at Occidental College. Cross-posted in Portuguese at Conhecimento Prudente.

Rape reporting, prosecution, and conviction rates across the country are appallingly low, but it’s easier to get away with sexual assault in some places compared to others.  Pennsylvania is one of those places. In Pennsylvania, expert testimony isn’t allowed in the courtroom.  Instead, jurors frequently rely on abundant, harmful rape myths.

We shouldn’t be that surprised, then, that earlier this week the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) aired an ad plainly promoting the idea that women are to blame for being raped.

The ad shows a young woman sprawled on what appears to be a bathroom floor, underwear down at her ankles, with the caption, “She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t say no.”  The victim blaming here couldn’t be any clearer, right down to the illogical language suggesting that the victim both had agency (she is to blame) and lacked agency (because she couldn’t say “no”).

Crafted by the Neiman Group, this ad was part of a larger $600,00 campaign — two years in the making — to raise awareness of the ill effects of drinking.  Several different themes were proposed, but this was the “winner.”  Another ad in the same campaign holds a rape victim’s friend responsible for her rape.

The PLCB pulled the ad campaign in response to hundreds of messages from concerned citizens, some of whom claimed they were traumatized by the image/message.  However, a statement from the PLCB shows that those in charge still don’t comprehend the problem:

“We feel very strong, and still do, that when we entered the initial discussion about doing a campaign like this it was important to bring the most difficult conversations about over-consumption of alcohol to the forefront and all of the dangers associated with it—date rape being one of these things.”

The PLCB is right that alcohol and “date” rape (a term that trivializes rape) go hand in hand, but not because women are responsible for the criminal actions of the approximate 6% of men who perpetrate this crime.  Instead, perpetrators exploit cultural narratives — like the idea that intoxication = miscommunication and that “date rape” isn’t “real” rape — to repeatedly commit this crime.  In a recent study of college students, 4% of men were found to be serial rapists; they committed an average of 5.8 rapes each.

In short, sexual assault is committed by (often serial) perpetrators.  Yet ad campaigns like this will continue to ensure that sexual assault will continue to be the only crime in which society treats the victim like a perpetrator.

Caroline Heldman is a professor of politics at Occidental College. You can follow her at her blog and on Twitter and Facebook.

I absolutely love this six-minute video by Karen B.K. Chan, tweeted to us by Alex Darasang.  A professional sex educator, she tries to re-frame how we think about sex, and sexual consent, by offering a different metaphor.  While we use metaphors to talk about sex all the time — weirdly, often related to carpentry: bang, nail, screw, etc. — she wants us to introduce an alternative metaphor: jam.

Jamming — shared musical improv — asks us to work together with others to spontaneously create a piece of art that has never quite existed before.  It’s a lovely way to think about what sex should and could be.  And, importantly, it utterly changes what consent looks like and its role in sexual pleasure.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The Belgian Cancer Foundation is trying to increase awareness of skin cancer and the importance of wearing sunscreen to protect against it. Unfortunately, they’ve recently decided the best way to get this across is to fall back on a familiar message: ladies, if you don’t do what we say, you’ll be hideous and your guy won’t want you any more. In this video released as part of the campaign, ostensibly aimed at men (and sent in by YetAnotherGirl and Grace W.), guys fall asleep with their young female partners. After they fall asleep, the women sneak out of bed and their moms take their places, and we get to see the startled reactions when the men wake up, with the final warning that if men don’t make their girlfriends wear sunscreen, “she’ll start looking like her mom far too soon”:

Because you know, ladies, if you don’t wear sunscreen, you’ll age, and that makes you so gross and scary that men will fall out of bed trying to get away from you. And what could be more romantic than a boyfriend lovingly reminding his girlfriend to put on some sunscreen so she doesn’t someday totally freak him out?

Via Gawker.

The first drug court started in Miami in 1989 as an effort to stop the cycle of drug addiction and crime.  The program brought together judges, prosecuting and defense attorneys, addiction counselors, and social workers to collaboratively build an individualized treatment program.  Rather than sending people to jail, the drug court program was designed to treat addiction while participants lived in the community.  Drug courts have become an increasingly common way for communities to engage with low-level drug offenders.

Seeking to raise awareness and support for drug courts, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals has released a series of PSAs entitled, “All Rise.”  Using a mix of celebrities and drug court judges, these commercials assert that 75% of drug court participants are never arrested again.

The promise is clear.  Drug courts not only treat addiction, they also treat a number of social problems (“no more families torn apart… no more neglect… no more overdoses”).

Are drug courts really this successful?

The truth is, we still don’t know.  The 75% success statistic comes from a study published in 2003.  The authors report that only 27.5% of drug court participants had been re-arrested and charged with a serious crime within two years.  So, we don’t know what re-arrest rates look like after that two-year period and the data doesn’t include arrests for minor crimes or arrests for serious crimes that did not result in a charge.  This is a far cry from the claim made in the video: that 75% of drug court participants are never arrested again.

The claims asserted in the “All Rise” campaign, then, should be treated with caution.  That said, drug courts are a significant move away from punitiveness for addicted offenders. Increasing the time to reoffending is a very positive step for the offender, for the community, and for the criminal justice system.  Additionally, most recidivism occurs within three years of release, so if the drug court program is helping participants to make it past this milestone it may indeed lead to some graduates leaving criminality altogether.

But before we turn to drug courts as “the” solution, we need more research on the effectiveness of drug courts.  Women and Caucasians fare better in the program than men and people of color.  And large courts tend to be more effective than small courts. Nevertheless, since the 1990s drug courts have spread across the nation to all major cities and many medium and small-sized cities, some of which have limited resources and less dedication.  All Rise’s enthusiasm should be tempered with a critical eye aimed at making these programs work well, and for as many people as possible.

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Kimberly Baker is an assistant professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Ithaca College.  She teaches classes in crime, deviance, and law.  Her research is on drugs, addiction, and U.S. drug policy, including drug courts.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) sponsored two new billboards in Albany, NY, warning residents that cheese makes you fat in what is possibly most irresponsible way ever. The first features an obese man’s disembodied torso and the words, “Your abs on cheese.” The second features an obese woman’s butt and thighs and the words, “Your thighs on cheese.” The images make a very clear statement: fat people are disgusting.
The PCRM advocates for a vegan diet. The aim of this campaign is to get Albany residents to reduce their cheese intake, as cheese is a common source of saturated fat and, according to the PRCM, a major contributor to obesity in the United States. In Albany, home to several dairy farms, 63 percent of adults are obese. This is higher than the statewide obesity level of 59 percent. Obesity prevention is a valid cause, to be sure, but at what cost to other health issues?

According to their website, the PCRM is “a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.” For an organization so concerned with ethical standards, the PCRM has sunk pretty low with this offensive and damaging campaign. In the jargon of health communication ethics, the PCRM have committed a common and classic misstep: the failure to consider the unintended consequences of their message.

Just like a single food item (in this case, cheese) is not responsible for the entire obesity epidemic, obesity is not the only serious health problem facing Americans. We are also struggling with our body image and self-esteem as we cope with the barrage of photoshopped and unrealistic “ideal bodies” in the media. The National Eating Disorders Association states that “in the United States, as many as 10 million women and 1 million men are fighting a life and death battle with an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. Millions more are struggling with binge eating disorder.”

In the medical hegemony, physical health tends to outrank mental health in “importance.” But the line between physical and mental health issues is not always clear, especially with the confluence of obesity, body image disturbance, eating disorders, and self-esteem. The PRCM is wearing blinders to these interrelated health issues in their dogmatic pursuit of a singular, isolated objective.

Physicians are taught to “do no harm.” The PRCM needs to understand that insensitive words and pictures are absolutely harmful to our health. There are better ways to educate and motivate people to make healthier food choices; ethical health campaigns do not sacrifice one health issue to promote another.

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Leah Berkenwald is a graduate student of Health Communication at Emerson College, in collaboration with the Tufts University School of Medicine, and holds a MA in American Studies from the University of Nottingham. She is currently designing a social marketing campaign on body image for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also works as the Online Communications Specialist at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and blogs at talkinreckless.com.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Nickey R. sent in a commercial by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota that aims to encouraging people to stop putting off exercising, eating healthy, and quitting smoking. The problem with these ads is a simple one. It represents all unhealthy people as overweight… or smokers. It ends by flashing the phrase “for the health of all.”

But while exercise and eating healthy may correlate with being thin (and to what degree this is true is still very much up for debate), there are, in fact, lots of non-thin people who do exercise and eat right and lots of thin people who do not. Being thin is not the same thing as being healthy (as research and real people demonstrate), but these ads say that it is, justifying anti-fat prejudice and miseducating the public.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Last month I wrote about gender differences in notions of health in a 1922 public health campaign designed to teach American teens about sex.

Today, we might not recognize that any of these recommendations had anything to do with sex. But in fact, they many of them were about masturbation.  At this time, fewer physicians thought that it would cause madness, epilepsy, homosexuality, or gout, but they still believed that it would encourage depravity and a lack of self-discipline.

To encourage a healthy sexuality, they advised lots of exercise. Exercise was believed to teach self-control. It was also considered a good outlet for “energy,” leaving one to worn out to masturbate.

TEXT:

Can you walk 20 miles in a day? Can you work an 8-hour day in the field? Can you “chin yourself” 8 times? Can you run 100 yards in 12 seconds?

They promoted a healthy diet.  Too much meat and too much spice were thought to encourage masturbation.

TEXT:

1. Eat fresh vegetables, cereals, bread and butter, eggs, fruit and a little meat or fish. 2. Eat slowly and thoroughly masticate (chew) your food. 3. Use judgment in amount and choice of foods. 4. Drink 6 to 10 glasses of water a day. Do not drink much water after supper. 5. Use your tooth brush at least twice a day — in the morning and at night.

People were also advised to sleep in well-ventilated rooms and to wear loose clothes that did not cause any friction:

TEXT:

Sleep with the windows open. “Turn in” at regular hours. Get 8 to 9 hours sleep every night.

Interestingly, only the boys’ posters actually discuss masturbation directly (self-abuse).

TITLE: Outdoor Life (avoid self-abuse)

TEXT:

1. Athletics. 2. Abundant outdoor life. 3. Wholesome companions. 4. Lots of good fun. 5. Constant employment. 6. Will power will help a boy break the habit called “self-abuse” (in case he has acquired the habit) and recover from any harm it may have done. This habit does not produce the terrible effects some ignorant people say it does. Most boys who have abused themselves stop before any great harm is done. Self-abuse may, however, seriously hinder a boy’s progress toward vigorous manhood. It is a selfish, childish, stupid habit. The strong boy will “cut it out.”

The posters are held at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

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Christina Barmon is a doctoral student at Georgia State University studying sociology and gerontology.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.