The combination of jalapenos, chest hair and "the power of Grayskull" remind David Sloane Rider when he first learned what it means to be a real man.
Rider, the keynote speaker for Sexual Assault Awareness Week, spoke Monday to an audience of about 40 people at Cardinal Hall in the Student Center.
When Rider was 10 years old, he said his family went to a Mexican restaurant during a vacation to Canada. On the table was a bowl of jalapeno peppers.
"I was scared," Rider said. "I said to my dad 'Those are just for decoration, right?' He responded, 'I'll give you five dollars if you eat one, come on it'll give you chest hair.' So I ate one, and it wasn't bad at first."
Rider said after he ran up and down the streets of Canada he returned to the restaurant for water. His father asked how he felt and responded by quoting the cartoon "He-Man" saying, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power."
"It was my first attempt to be He-man and to show my father I was a man," Rider said. "In my family if you had chest hair, you were a real man."
Seventeen years later, the Duke University graduate works for an organization called Men Can Stop Rape, which reaches out to young men and empowers them to work as allies with women in preventing rape and other violence. The six-year-old organization is a non-profit group based in Washington, D.C.
Rider was working for Duke University as an academic adviser and volunteering at a crisis center answering a rape hot line before he went to work for MCSR a little more than a year ago.
"I was getting all these calls from survivors who needed help getting back on their feet," Rider said. "That's where my passion was. I was thinking how are we stopping this, what are we doing to prevent it?"
Rider said looking at sexual assault as only a women's issue results in only half the community working on the issue.
"For years women have been fighting this alone," he said.
Men cause 95 percent of sexual assaults, Rider said, but women misunderstand that to mean 95 percent of men sexually assault women. Very few men are perpetrators, Rider said. He also said 80 percent to 85 percent of rapes are by acquaintances.
"Women have a hard time trusting us because of what other people they know or trust have done to them," Rider said.
Rider said advertisements portray an idea of what it means to be a real man. He said media sends a message that men are not supposed to respect women and that men are better than women.
"Bud Light doesn't care if it defines what a man is or isn't," Rider said. "They just want you to order their beer. Of course men wouldn't want to speak out against violence if these are the messages they are getting."
Men may not be directly affected by sexual assault but many of them know a woman who has been sexually assaulted. Rider was first affected his sophomore year in college when his best friend was raped by someone she knew.
"I didn't know what to say," Rider said. "I was just so angry. We know men are affected by this but we also know men aren't doing anything to stop it."
Rider ended the presentation with the quote from James Baldwin, "The most radical step you can take is the next one."
"It's going to take time," Rider said. "It will never happen unless we start taking steps to change. There is so much silence around the issue but as long as we keep talking we may one day end sexual violence."
After the presentation, Rider led a two-hour training session. Rider said the goal of the session was to develop a men's group on campus that would speak out against the sexual assault of women. John Stachula from the Ball State Counseling Center said he would be organizing the group.
"We're just trying to create one first," Stachula said. "The meeting times will be based on when people can get together."
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