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August 4, 2023

Registration begins at 6:00 PM; Walk will start at 6:30 PM

FREE event open to all ages!

Put Yourself in Her Shoes™

Since 2001, men, women, and their families around the world have joined award-winning Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®: The International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence. It is a dramatic opportunity to raise awareness in your community about the serious causes, effects, and remediations to men’s sexualized violence.

Why Men in Women’s Shoes?

There is an old saying: “You can’t understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” To get people listening, learning, and talking, Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® education Events organize around men literally walking one mile in women’s high-heeled shoes. It’s not easy walking in these shoes, but it’s an experience around which a lot of education, self-reflection, and change happens. It’s impressive to see such a visually stunning public statement of listening, learning, ally-ship, and commitment. It’s an engaging event that gets the community talking about sex and gender biases, gender identity, gender relations, and men’s sexualized violence.

What is Sexualized Violence?

Sexualized violence is any act of physical or psychological violence targeting sexuality or gender and used to undermine a person’s sexual or gender integrity. Sexualized violence is a deadly virus lurking in everyday cultural beliefs, attitudes, and practices, and, while hidden, is immune to prevention, treatment, and cure.

Anyone can fall victim to sexualized violence regardless of gender identity. Sexualized violence devalues women, female practices, feminine ways of thinking, feeling and being, feminine energy, and femme presentation. The target of sexualized violence can be a female body, the body of someone presenting as female or femme, or a male-bodied or male-presenting person insufficiently performing masculinity. The goal of sexualized violence against someone sufficiently male-bodied and satisfactorily performing masculinity is to degrade them by feminizing them; otherwise non-sexualized forms of violence are used.

Prevention Education and Action

We must talk about the causes, effects, and solutions to ending men’s sexualized violence. We must educate ourselves and others, examine the sexual and gender biases that seed sexualized violence, and inoculate ourselves and our cultures.