Long-term success requires educating the public.

If we are to truly end domestic and sexual violence, the cycle of abuse in our society must be broken. As long as each generation learns domestic and sexual violence from the last generation, our society will always be plagued by it. Primary Prevention & Education (PP&E) makes breaking this cycle possible.

The Women's Shelter of South Texas was one of the first agencies in Texas to adopt a primary prevention & education focus by establishing a Primary Prevention & Education department in 2007. Our team of two community educators and PP&E Manager are a fixture in the cities and counties of the Coastal Bend, presenting educational programs to groups of all ages and backgrounds. Our Educational Material Specialist provides graphic design, illustration, and web design to make our message engaging and easy to understand.

Our Primary Prevention & Education team challenges the citizens of the Coastal bend to consider how domestic and sexual violence is portrayed in our society, what social norms perpetuate domestic and sexual violence, and how we can change as a society.

This challenge is also Primary Prevention & Education's greatest challenge.

Social norms are often deeply held beliefs, passed sown from parent to child, and woven into our culture. Victims of rape have their justice denied because society stereotypically claims they were "asking for it", and "should have known better". Much of the humor in mainstream movies rely on negative stereotypes of how men and women "should" act. Male athletes fill the sports pages of every magazine, but equally talented female athletes can only hope to receive equal exposure if they are also physically attractive. And pornography is ever evolving to demean and humiliate women, often in sexually violent acts, caring only about the safety of pornographer's First Amendment Rights.

Change can be painful, people are human, and humans do not like pain. Without this change, and without efforts like Primary Prevention & Education working to make that change, our society will follow the cycle of abuse, and suffer the effects of domestic and sexual violence. The previous decades have proven that our society cannot self-regulate how we manage domestic and sexual violence without education.