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FPU men don high heels to help stop rape, sex abuse

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The 'Walk a Mile in her Shoes' event highlights incidence of campus sex assasults. (Courtesy photo)

RINDGE, N.H. - If you are on Franklin Pierce University's Rindge campus on Thursday afternoon, you may see men in the highest of heels get their strut on for "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes": The International Men's March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence.

Event organizers expect well over 100 men to don high heels to help raise awareness and contributions to combat violence against women. "The last time we did it we had close to 300 participants walk including Vice Presidents and many of the men's athletic teams," said Richard Koch, one of the event organizers.

Each year, an ever-increasing number of men, women, and their families are joining the walk, which provides an opportunity for men to raise awareness in their community about the serious causes, effects, and remediations to men's sexualized violence against women.

There is an old saying: "You can't understand another person's experience until you've walked a mile in their shoes." "Walk a Mile in Her Shoes" asks men to literally walk one mile in women's high-heeled shoes. It's not easy walking in heels, but the goal is to have fun and to get the community to talk about something that's tough to talk about: gender relations and men's sexualized violence against women.

Sexualized violence does not just affect women. It affects the men who care about them, their families, their friends, their coworkers, and their communities. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network:

  • Every two minutes someone in America is raped.
  • One in six American women are victims of sexual assault. That means someone you know, someone you care about, has been or may become the victim of sexual violence. It may be your mother, your sister, your friend, your girlfriend, your wife, your coworker or your daughter.

College campuses are not immune to this societal issue.

  • 2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation (among all graduate and undergraduate students).
  • Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.
  • 2% of students have experienced stalking since entering college.

The event is slated to begin at 2:30 in the Library Courtyard. Walkers will don their heels and walk from the library around the freshman dorms and back. Everyone is encouraged to walk either with or without heels.

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