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.

First You Walk the Walk

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® literally asks men to walk one mile in women's high-heeled shoes. It's not easy walking in these shoes. It can be surprising, disorienting, and disruptive. It's a fun event that gets the community to talk about gender identity, gender relations, and men's sexualized violence.

Then You Talk the Talk

It's critical to open communication about sexualized violence. While hidden away, sexualized violence is immune to cure. Unfortunately, it's challenging to get people talking. It's ugly and frightening. We naturally withdraw from the unpleasant. We deny it's existence, minimize its effects, or blame the victims as strategies to distance and protect ourselves. But ignorance, denial, and victim-blaming do not protect us. They only make us more vulnerable.

So we must talk. We must talk about the causes, effects, and solutions to ending men's sexualized violence. And we must act. We must act fearlessly.

Men Standing Up to Sexualized Violence

Men cannot end sexualized violence without undoing patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system that privileges men with power. With that power comes the requirement to dominate others in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social superiority, property control, and sexual supremacy over women. Men do not volunteer for patriarchy; they are born into it and subjected to masculinities dictated by patriarchy.

We will no longer knowingly or unknowingly participate in and reproduce patriarchy. We will actively work to end men's sexualized violence. We will actively deconstruct patriarchy and toxic masculinity and re/construct and co/construct gender identities and gender relations that are:

• more supportive to those who identify as male,

• masculinities that support a more ethical relationship to the earth and fellow living beings, and

• masculinities that do not diminish the identities or roles of anyone identifying as female, nonbinary, or nonmasculine.

Events Challenging Patriarchy

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Events are political and performance art with public, personal, and existential lessons. At a Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Event, there is no distinction between performer and audience. Our mission is to create a unique and powerful public experience that educates individuals and communities about the causes of men's sexualized violence, provides strategies for prevention and remediation, and empowers them to develops further and implement these knowledges and skills interpersonally and politically.

History of Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®

Frank Baird and Patti Dengler created Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® in 2001. What started out as a small group of men making a statement by daring to totter around a park has grown to become a world-wide movement with tens of thousands of men raising millions of dollars for local rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters and other sexualized violence education, prevention and remediation programs.

In 2007, Frank and Patti formed Venture Humanity, Inc, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation. Venture Humanity, Inc. develops peace, violence prevention and community projects. Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® is a Venture Humanity, Inc. project. Please help sustain these efforts with your donation.