The fight to end rape culture in the media

A panel of advocates gathered to discuss media coverage of rape, rape culture, slut-shaming, and other topics regarding sexual violence against women on Tuesday afternoon at Ryerson University.

One of the goals of the panel was to educate journalism students at Ryerson on how to report on these topics while respecting those who are involved and still create a safe space for conversation and awareness around the issues.

“We’ll be focusing on the prevention of violence against women and youth, and how we can work with our allies, the media, to cover these issues,” said moderator Wendy Komiotis, executive director of METRAC, a not-for-profit Toronto-based organization that works to prevent and eliminate violence against diverse women and youth.

“Reporting on sexual violence is hard to navigate when also trying to be respectful of survivors," says Shannon Giannitsopoulou, a representative of Femifesto, a grassroots feminist collective that works to end rape culture. “Thats why we came up with media toolkits,” she says.

Inspired by the Chicago TaskForce’s Media Toolkit, Femifesto’s kits have scans of media articles and highlights the framework and language in each, and the challenges they present.

“Sexual assault is happening, the conversation surrounding it is happening, and we want to support journalists and help them do their job,” says Farrah Khan, another representative of Femifesto.

“If a woman reports her assault, she fears she will be blamed, or that she will have to relive the experience over and over again,” says Sandra Diaz, Vice-President of Marketing and Communications at the Canadian Women’s Foundation. “Less then 10 per cent of women who are sexually assaulted report it.”

“The claim that rape is brought on by what a woman wears is offensive to both men and women,” says Diaz, “Rape predates the mini-skirt. No woman, no matter what she says, does, wears, doesn’t wear, is ever to blame for sexual violence.”

On the panel was Cyndy Baskin, Associate Professor at Ryerson University, who spoke on behalf of aboriginal women. “Violence against aboriginal women is eight times higher than any other female demographic in our country.”

Being painted as sluts, drunks, drug addicts, mothers of seven children with different fathers are only some of the stereotypes aboriginal women face, according to Baskin. “Aboriginal women are viewed as disposable, so the violence against them is viewed as justified,” she laments.

“Often violence against women is not engaged by the media at all,” said Ron Couchman, a representative of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women.

“We can’t just have conversations about men and boys when they are perpetrating violence,” says Couchman. We need to talk about how to create a culture of no rape chants, no violent social media groups, we need to teach men to step up and say, ‘No, this is not okay.'"

“Language is political, your job as a journalist is a political task,” Stephanie Guthrie says, a Toronto women’s advocate. “You shouldn’t only discuss these issues when you’re writing words for a story, you should be discussing this regularly.

“The more conversation we have about rape and rape culture, the more coverage we get, and the more change we see,” says Guthrie.

The discussion took place in the Sears Atrium of the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, beginning at 1 p.m. The panel, hosted by the Media Education Project Knowledge Exchange Group in collaboration with Ryerson University School of Journalism, consisted of six speakers from various women’s rights groups.The discussion ended with a question and answer session with the audience, ending the panel at 3 p.m.