Where’s the Prevention Frame? Seizing Opportunities to Advance Violence Against Women Prevention

January 23, 2007

Presenters: Larry Cohen & Rachel Davis, Prevention Institute

Host: David Lee, Prevention Connection

Following recent school shootings in which girls were specifically targeted; the primary response was to call for school safety generally without attention to the gender of the victims and the implications. In the wake of announcements that OJ Simpson’s book on how he would have committed murder, there was an outcry and plans were scrapped. But did we miss an opportunity to bring attention to the need for prevention? This dialogue explored how we can advance a prevention frame, the barriers to doing so, what it might look like, who the audience and messenger(s) could be, and what steps we need to take to be more ready when opportunities, as horrible as they are, arise.

Materials

• Text Chat Transcript PDF
• Audio Transcript PDF
• Presentation Slides PDF

Readings:

• Family Violence Prevention Fund (Press Release), Fox ‘Acted Responsibly’ by Cancelling Simpson Special. November 20, 2006
• Bob Herbert, Why Aren’t We Shocked? The New York Times. October 16, 2006
• Optional Reading: Jackson Katz, Coverage of “School Shootings” Avoids the Central Issue. CommonDreams.org, October 11, 2006

The session had a lot of discussion about the recent campaign to remove “Problem Solved” shirts at Kmart. Here are some articles highlighted from posts in the Prevent-Connect email list.

• Kmart’s “Domestic Violence” T-Shirt Irritates Shoppers, The Consumerist, December 19, 2006 (includes picture of shirt)
• Hardy Girls Healthy Women Response (includes picture of shirt)
• Young Boy Beats Kmart to Solution, More Organizations Protest T-Shirt, Press Release, December 22, 2006
• Demonstrators protest ‘problem solved’ T-shirts, Toledo Blade, January 22, 2007