Violence against women, children, and minorities is rampant in our culture, to the extent that it is time to evaluate the climate of patriarchy that caters to the oppression of certain people, classes, and genders. America's traditional gender roles polarize the sexes, and prescribe rigid roles to us regarding our sexuality. These ideologies serve to sexually objectify women, and relegate men the subjects to be served. The result is a predator-prey dynamic. The consequences are dire, and has aided in the prevalence of rape. When a woman is violated, and when Women are dehumanized en masse, society disentigrates. Women are the threads that hold our communities together. The causes are many-patriarchal religions, media, the breakdown of the family and a lack of healthy role models, misogyny, homophobia which run rampant and are fed by systems like the patriarchal church and violent media, on and on.

As a society we must begin to examine the ways that violence is systematically raced, classed, and gendered. This involves creating new definitions of what violence is.

What You Can Do to Educate Yourself

Take a class in Women's Studies or Gender/Cultural Studies;

Read some literature on gendered violence;

Get involved with an organization in your community that deals with issues of violence;

Go online and visit organizations for more information on violence against women;

Once you have educated yourself, take the time to reach out to your community and share what you have learned.

What You Can Do to Educate Your Community

Create a program that will disseminate information to specific groups (for example, collegiate groups, high school classes, social organizations);

Join an organization or agency that seeks to educate the community on issues of gendered violence;

Offer a class at your university that not only discusses violence against women but examines gendered violence as it relates to other forms of oppression (two such classes are: Black Women, Rape and Other Treasons of the Body at Duke University and Women and Violence at San Diego State University);

Create a project, visual representation, or newsletter that will educate in an innovative fashion (check out "creative modes of resistance" for ideas).

Support Community Education Efforts

Aside from Universities, non-profit organizations are primarily responsible
for the dissemination of information, the creation of education programs, and the advancement of community projects that address issues of sexual violence.

The best ways for you to support education efforts are to:

Donate money to organizations that spend a considerable amount of time working to prevent, treat, and/or eliminate rape and other forms of violence from society.

Donate time to these organizations via volunteering occasionally, networking for them, and/or providing an additional resource in their agency.

Vote to increase funding for these agencies.

Raise awareness about the importance of these organizations by highlighting the value of the services they offer within your community.

Here are a few ways you can resist and disrupt the hegemonic order on a daily basis:

Interrupt jokes that are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic in nature--Don't perpetuate negative stereotypes. Put it in terms of not wanting to perpetuate cycles of negativity in a world already in a precarious position with regard to violence.

Call people on their sexism, racism and homophobia.

Send letters of complaint to advertising agencies, magazines, broadcasting companies, newspapers, etc. who participate in the production of images that degrade women as well as racial and sexual minorities OR that glorify or eroticize violence against any of the above groups.

Refuse to buy products wherein the producer engaged in any of these oppressive practices.

About Face is a great site that offers a list of offenders, with all the info needed to speak out.
http://www.about-face.org/

We must start getting angry and using that energy to transform our world. Every little bit helps to aid a shift in our personal lives, which inturn creates collective change.