(Not quite relevant, but the podcasters went on to say that online click-through ads aimed at getting people to do some specific action, like make an account or sign up for a newsletter, are the way to go. Or any other form of advertising that can get people to do some action that advances them in yours sales process or gets them on your email list. They had some pretty advanced software tools for finding out which traffic came from where, how far it advanced, and how much they were paying for each sign-up or sale.)

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What I think would be more effective than these prescriptive campaigns are real examples of what people *should* do when they see some sketch hanging around a woman who can barely stay on her feet. Don’t just say ‘don’t rape’ without explaining what rape actually looks like (hint: rarely physical, and committed by all genders) and without actually showing what Decent Person behavior looks like. Get bros to call out other bros if they’re harassing some girl (or guy) when she/he’s plainly uncomfortable – and the same for women, because women are offenders too, just ones no one takes seriously. Get fathers to tell their sons it’s not fucking cool to crack rape jokes, whereas stand-up people respect boundaries. Call out the wolf-whistlers. Stop telling women it’s their duty to monitor the way they dress (as if that actually ever stopped anyone) and start telling people only a fucking loser would harass someone because of their skirt. Remind your friends that just because you find someone attractive and keep pumping Nice Things into them like quarters, they are not candyball machines who have to give you something back. Make sexual assault something that survivors can talk about openly, without feeling like they’re discomforting people or like they’re carrying a dirty shame. Change our culture from the ground up.

Get people to not just ‘stop raping’, but value enthusiastic consent – because who the hell wants to sleep with someone who isn’t into you? And yet we keep pushing this narrative that all men are horndogs who would do anything for ANY piece of tail, and that’s Just How Men Are so it’s okay for a woman to force herself on one. We keep pushing the idea that women have to hold themselves back (no sex for the first three dates!) or else they’re ‘devaluing’ themselves, as if the woman is a prize that the guy has to beat all these levels to attain and therefore her lack of initial enthusiasm is just a cutesy obstacle, a puzzle to unlock (so dude, just keep at it). We keep pushing this undercurrent that says a girl who gets tipsy actually wants to get laid (‘so how was I supposed to know, she was drunk!’) and not, oh, because she’d like to have fun and hang out with her friends, or because no drinks = no socializing in so many circles these days.

Don’t just ‘not be a predator'; that’s the very lowest standard for behavior. Be a stand-up guy. Be a decent person. Don’t be That Guy who just laughs uncomfortably when his teammate is all over some 14-year-old, or That Girl who doesn’t want to tell her friend that groping a cute boy’s ass without his consent isn’t so much a surprise compliment as assault. Some flyer declaring “DON’T RAPE” can’t embody all these things.

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As a final thought, the biggest reason why these ‘social change’ campaigns tend not to work for me is because they don’t really explore *why* something happens, they just call for change. Men are Like This, Women are Like This. We talk in generalizations but we don’t actually try to *understand* how these generalizations might have come about, or why the other side might sometimes act the way they do. For example, despite what sitcoms and Hollywood might think, my ‘fat friend’ isn’t coming over to cockblock you ’cause she’s ugly and jealous, she’s coming over because I’ve made a small signal that I would really like her help in getting rid of you in a way that doesn’t offend you, or make you think I’m an utter bitch. Some of that is my own fault as an individual for not being assertive enough (because I hate hate HATE hurting someone’s feelings), and some of that is a valid fear from personal experience that you might flip out, and I would be severely disadvantaged in any physical confrontation with a guy. So what do I do with guys? I tend not to be as straightforward as I want, but rather skirt around their feelings and bow out of the situation as gently and non-offensively as I can. I will say ‘no’, but I’ll say it gently and after a lot of signaling and trying to slink away with my friends, rather than yell NO with a forceful shove.

I’m sorry if that makes my behavior frustrating for a lot of guys, or if it’s offensive to assume a guy might harm me just because he’s bigger, but I value my safety over someone’s feelings. When a lot of people do this – certainly my female friends do – then it can add up to a culture where guys are looking for that forceful NO and then get confused when confronted with less direct signs, maybe even a ‘nice’ letdown that they think leaves room for hope in the future. And then you end up with ‘oh Women are So Annoyingly Complicated, Men are such Simple and Befuddled Creatures harhar’. That’s why, even though I think it’s so important for both genders to be assertive with their boundaries, I also think we need to better understand and TALK ABOUT how these things came to be, rather than feel victimized by assumptions. This is a genuinely complex subject, and we need a kinder, braver dialogue. I’m not sure how that is going to come about, but it won’t be through posters, fliers, or ad campaigns.

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In sum, they reviewed 985 interventions that aimed to reduce various kinds of prejudice (Oddly, this workplace study is not included in their review). They found some evidence that some interventions worked, some evidence that some interventions did not work, and a lot of evidence that most of the interventions were not designed to enable the collection of valid evidence.

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In America, we certainly have a stigma against obesity, but having both made serious (and successful) efforts to lose weight, and watched other people do so, I’ve noticed that one of the major hurdles one tends to face is other people encouraging you to eat more. They’ll tell you “Oh, you have to try some of this!” or “You can make it up!” or “You’re not fat! Don’t worry so much!” The “polite” thing to do is accept the food they’re encouraging you to eat (to do otherwise is something close to a rejection of hospitality,) while the effective weight loss response is to always reject it.

In Japan, and probably some other countries with similar norms, your peers can criticize *you* for eating too much, tell you things like “you’re going to get so fat!” or “aren’t you supposed to be on a diet?” *without being seen as rude.* In America, someone acting like this is likely to start an argument and then the person they treated this way will start to avoid them, or at least view them adversarially if they can’t escape interacting with them. The fact that you can separate yourself from and draw your social circle in opposition to this kind of social stigma in America makes it totally different from a place like Japan where the stigma is practically universally enforced and inescapable.

I would be very surprised if this stigma has nothing to do with why people in Japan suffer so little from obesity.

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In fact, that’s what feels like a *good* idea to me. I think the assumption is that people have a stereotype of being raped by a “rapist” who deliberately targets a stranger, but a much, much larger problem is people who think what they’re doing is normal, who think they’re flirting with someone and then pressuring them to have sex when they’re not sure, but which is actually rape. And those people don’t think “sent to jail for 20 years” applies to them, because (a) that only applies to the “bad” people and (b) it’s not happened yet, is it that much more likely to happen next time because they’ve seen a poster?

But that the theoretically lesser but more likely threat of social disapproval is actually more likely to have an effect.

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