Stop Demand's key platform is education - through public awareness raising, calling for local and global action, co-ordinating campaigns, mobilising the community in particular the male community, media engagement, and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental agencies.
In every country, sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration of women and (mostly girl) children is widespread.
Sexual violence: Millions of men have raped or are raping and sexually assaulting women and children - in the home, the community, institutions, refugee camps, in situations of armed conflict, and through cultural practices and beliefs.
Fact: In one South Africa study, one-quarter of respondents admitted having raped.
Prostitution, stripping, sex tourism: Millions more men assert a "right" to sexually use, abuse and exploit women and girls through prostitution, so-called "gentlemen's" clubs, strip and lap dancing clubs, sex tourism - where women and girls are treated as little more than goods, objects, toys or chattels.
Pornography: Countless more men assert a "right" to seek out and masturbate to images of women being degraded, physically and verbally abused, penetrated by multiple men - fuelling a world in which women (and girls) are reduced to their orifices and treated as less-than-human.
Sexual denigration: Across all communities and cultures, from sports locker rooms to comedy clubs to corporate boardrooms, the sexual denigration of women is widespread through denigrating jokes and banter.
A call to women
If women "hold up half the sky" why do so many tolerate a world in which millions of their sisters and daughters are violated and left to live shattered lives - emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually?
Some women, too many of them, invite men into their lives and beds who later violate and shatter the lives of their children. Some go on to support the predator while disbelieving or even blaming their own child.
Other women cognitively distort and accommodate male-privileging industries that entrench countless women in sexual servitude within prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, stripping etc.
Stop Demand urges women to demand a world where women and girls can live lives free of sexual violence and exploitation.
A call to men
Many men see sexual violence as a "women's issue". Wrong. Sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration is overwhelmingly a men's issue to own and to solve. Women and children desperately need men's help to solve it.
We know that the majority of men are better men who do not participate in such behaviour. But many within that majority are silent. Silence is collusive; silence is consent.
A collective call must be made on male leaders, the silent "good" majority and potential and active perpetrators.
Sexual violence, exploitation and denigration is NOT inevitable. It's a choice men don't have to make. It CAN stop. We call on ALL men to stop it.
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While we acknowledge and in no way minimise that some acts of sexual violence and exploitation are perpetrated by women, and that some men are victims/survivors of adult man-on-man sexual assaults, Stop Demand's focus is on the cumulative, endemic gendered sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration committed around the world by men against women and girls, simply because they are "female". We are addressing the 'elephant' in the picture, rather than the 'ant'.
Put simply, if we were to remove all sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration committed by women against boys and men, we would not scratch the surface. However, if we were to remove all male-perpetrated sexual violence (rape, incest, rape in war etc), sexual exploitation (within global systems of prostitution, pornography, sex trafficking) and sexual denigration (sexual harassment, rape jokes, etc. spanning locker rooms to boardrooms), women and girls would live in, and experience, an entirely different world.
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No.
It is a FACT that men (as a subgroup within the human species) are overwhelmingly responsible for sexual violence, sexual exploitation and sexual denigration of women and children (two other subgroups, both of which are equally entitled to maximise their potential).
It is a FACT that without men's help we cannot stop it.
This website is not about blame (the negative); rather, it calls on all men to find solutions and to encourage all men to make better choices (the positive).
You make a difference. Don't under-estimate the power of one.
Be informed.
Bookmark this website to become more informed.
Research those issues that particularly stir you, to find out more.Don't be silent.
Silence is a vote for the status quo.Don't be overwhelmed.
Being overwhelmed can be paralysing. Instead ....
Be angry. Start a conversation. Reframe your thinking. Critically analyse what you hear and read. Talk to your fellow men. Join local campaigns. Get physically active. Get spiritually active. Support the work of Stop Demand.
If we could harness just a fraction of the passion, energy and enthusiasm men have for sport, to stopping sexual violence, the world would be an entirely different place. It's do-able, guys! For the sake of your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your nieces... and those of your friends, neighbours, work colleagues...