Men's Program: How to Successfully Lower Men's Liklihood of Raping, The

Journal of College Student Development, Nov/Dec 1999 by Davis, Tracy

The Men's Program: How to Successfully Lower Men's Likelihood of Raping

John Foubert

Holmes Beach, FL: Learning Publications, Inc., 1998, 116 pages, $19.95 (softcover)

Only six years ago Schewe and O'Donohue (1993) lamented that "the current state of rape prevention programming adds little to our knowledge about prevention" (p. 668). Rape prevention efforts generally were aimed at developing programs, but empirical evaluation of such interventions was rare. An even greater paucity of research existed regarding prevention programs designed specifically for men (aimed at potential perpetrators). Foubert's book represents one of several recent efforts (e.g., Earle, 1996; Schewe & O'Donohue, 1996) to fill this void in the literature.

The Men's Program describes an all-male sexual assault peer education program designed to build empathy in men for female rape survivors. Chapter 1 describes The Men's Program, a primarily lecture-format workshop, with the major focus on a video produced by the Seattle Police Department that describes a male-- on-male rape situation. The stated goal of this intervention is to convey to men what it might feel like to be raped. Participants are said to be engaged in the program because, unlike many other programs, this intervention helps men to feel less blamed. According to the author, "by framing the workshop as a training workshop in which men learn how to help women recover from a rape experience, The Men's Program appeals to a `potential helper' persona, rather than the `potential rapist' persona" (p. 5).

Chapter 2 provides the script for implementing the workshop and chapter 3 details an excellent curriculum for training peer educators. Each unit is clearly outlined and content is designed to meet precisely stated goals. Some of the topics include gender role socialization, communication, relevant diversity issues, rape trauma syndrome, sexual orientation, and homophobia, important topics to cover for rape prevention work with men. Foubert also does an outstanding job outlining course assignments, identifying key readings, and giving the reader exact copies of important handouts.

Chapter 4 focuses on how to recruit men to become peer educators. Foubert details both the process and written content one could use to successfully recruit male participants, including how to screen applicants. Chapter 5 gives a sample Constitution and Bylaws that can be modified to establish a peer educator group on most campuses.

The Appendices begin by including a summary of two research studies claiming to substantiate the positive impact of The Men's Program. The results of these studies raise concern about the confidence with which several claims are made due to tenuous findings and important methodological limitations. In the introduction, for example, Foubert (1998) writes that "men who see this program experience a 50% drop in rape myth acceptance" and "two months later this drop remains significantly lower (p

A similar problem occurs in the second study cited, which is a synopsis of Foubert's dissertation research. He cites this study to bolster claims of program efficacy and says that "even more compelling is that men's reported likelihood of raping dropped significantly after they saw the program, and remained significantly lower for seven months" (p. 4). Once again Foubert does not mention until the Appendix that results of the study also indicated that "long-term change did not significantly differ from an untreated control group" (p. 68-69). This raises questions about the confidence with which effectiveness of the intervention is articulated. In fact, findings from rape prevention investigations using knowledge or attitude surveys as measures of program effectiveness need to be stated with caution since attitudes are only secondarily associated, at best, with actual perpetration. That is, even if attitudes are temporarily changed, we do not know whether or not this translates into preventing men from actually raping.

In addition to overstating tenuous results, Foubert does not pay close enough attention to the methodological limitations of his research. For example, even though his research population consisted of college fraternity men who were largely Caucasian (91%), he claims that "The Men's Program is appropriate for local rape crisis centers, the military, and high schools (with appropriate modifications)" (p. ix). While The Men's Program may be appropriate in a wide variety of settings, the research cited to assert claims of effectiveness does not support this.

There may also be problems with appealing to men's "helper persona." While I agree with Foubert's intent of trying to overcome men's defensiveness in rape prevention programming, I am not convinced that appealing to the "men-- take-care-of-women" archetype is the best process. This is especially troubling given that Berkowitz (1994) and others (e.g., Parrot & Bechhofer, 1991) persuasively argue that a clear connection exists between traditional masculine gender roles and men's perpetration of sexual assault. Capraro (1994), for example, claims that rape prevention education for men "will bring about the greatest change only when men themselves begin to question the prevailing models of masculinity and redefine, in practice and theory, what it means to be a man" (p. 23). I question, therefore, whether Foubert's appeal to traditional masculinity will restrict rather than promote men's development. It is, furthermore, ironic that in a workshop aimed at raising empathy for the rape of women, women's voices and female survivor's words are absent. Genderrelated power differentials (e.g., men speaking for women) may be more central to the perpetration of rape than lack of empathy.