> "Um, maybe if it were effective, women wouldn't still be getting raped?"

Yes, clearly nothing that has been tried to date has been 100% effective, or even close.

But that's not evidence that public awareness campaigns can't/don't/haven't produce(d) reductions in the number of rapes per year, possibly significant ones.

And if they can, I'm afraid I'd support them, whether or not they distress people (I don't care much if they cause offence; I do care a good deal if they cause distress, but not enough to justify not supporting something that would reduce the number of rapes).



>That's the kind of guy who needs to be educated. Apparently some on this thread think it can't be done, and others think it doesn't need to be. Either way, that's a pretty dismal assessment of men.

Again, I think you're wrong to think in terms of all-or-nothing rather than percentages. The vast majority of men are not rapists; some will always be. The question is not "can we stop men committing rape" but "can we reduce the number of men who commit rape" - or, alternatively, "can we reduce the number of men who would commit rape when presented with an opportunity". And I'm afraid that I'm sceptical that we can - not because of a dismal assessment of men, but because so much is already being done.

Rape is already more stigmatised than any other crime, including murder*, and it's also very severely punished (in the minority of cases where it can actually be proved). I'm not convinced that public-awareness "don't rape" campaigns will tell anyone anything they don't already know, or change the thinking of any of the small minority of men who don't already get that rape is wrong.

Whereas I think that public awareness campaigns highlighting ways to reduce the risk of being raped at non-excessive cost to oneself** may well provide people with new information, change the way they think, and hence do more to reduce the number of rapes than campaigns targeted at the one demographic who don't* want to reduce the number of rapes.

I don't have any data to that effect, but I think it's the way to bet, for the reasons I've stated above.




*Rightly, in my view - murder is clearly far worse for the victim, but whereas a non-trivial number of murderers appear to have motivations I can feel at least a little sympathy for, I find it hard to envisage any non-monstrous motivation for rape.

**Not "campaigns highlighting ways not to be raped", and they shouldn't be framed as that, either by their supporters or their opponents.