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Payday response to Damon Syson In September 1999, the presentation of a 90-second cinema advert on date rape generated some press attention. Payday, a network of men which supports the work of Women Against Rape, wrote this letter to The Guardian in response to an article entitled: Am I potential rapist? (13 September 1999). It was not published. 16 September 1999 Damon Syson says that he has not recently considered the question "Am I a potential rapist?". This was precisely the intention of the advert to shake up men into asking "What are you doing?" Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? He says that "if a man is normal he knows where the boundary [between sex and aggression] lies". But he doesn’t seem to know himself, claiming that "parameters between aggression and sex" are "fuzzy". Rapists are "normal" men too, but they refuse to accept the boundary of a woman’s consent and sometimes or often choose to cross that boundary: one in two young men think that in some circumstances it would be acceptable to hit a woman or force her to have sex, one in six women are victims of rape. Women have made it absolutely clear that "no means no". In most circumstances, and increasingly, men have a nagging awareness of when we should stop, but the question is do we stop or do we carry on? If something is "fuzzy" – if we are not sure that everything that is happening is fully consensual – than we must stop. The issue is always and only consent. Syson feels angered that these questions are directed at all men, including him. But who else should they be put to? Is it not time that men take responsibility for what they inflict on women? This is what men should be doing. As Mr Syson concludes: " we do need a wake-up call" – we all need to check ourselves, don’t we? We also need to join women in asking men in power – police, judges, lawyers, journalists, politicians – "What are you doing?" when they back rapists and make it more difficult or even impossible for rape survivors – women or men – to get justice. Women Against Rape urgently needs donations. This is one way for men to begin to do something against rape. Payday men’s network |