The “Don’t Be That Girl” Poster Controversy in Edmonton, and A Voice for Men’s History of Rape Apologia
Two of the Don’t Be that Girl posters
I‘ve been traveling, so I’m a bit late getting to the whole “Don’t Be That Girl” poster controversy in Edmonton. For those of you who don’t already know all about it: A group called Men’s Rights Edmonton, closely associated with our favorite Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men, has been putting up some pretty obnoxious posters parodying an anti-rape poster campaign called “Don’t Be That Guy,” turning the anti-date rape message into one that targets alleged false accusers of rape.
Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams has a pretty good dissection of the whole thing here. As she notes, one of the biggest problems with the “Don’t Be That Girl” posters is
the idiotic defensive assumption that [the original "Don't Be That Guy"] campaign expressly created to educate men and women about consent merits a hateful, finger-pointing response. And it makes the classic presumption that getting drunk, hooking up and then crying rape is a standard chick operating procedure — an idea that is based, by the way, on no solid statistical evidence.
That’s as good as far as it goes, but I would go a bit further:
I don’t think that MRAs are really concerned about false accusations. If they were, they would be working with groups like the Innocence Project that actually help men (and women) who have been wrongly convicted for crimes they didn’t commit.
No, it seems to me that what they’re really worried about is true accusations.
MRAs, with these posters, and with their endless whinging about the alleged complexities of sexual consent, are trying to push back against the date rape awareness campaigns of the last several decades. MRAs and PUAs like to pretend that consent is a complicated and weirdly arbitrary thing — something that women decide to bestow or not to bestow on a whim, and that women sometimes like to retract after the fact.
Feminists say that whenever there is a question about whether or not you have consent, you need to stop and ask. MRAs and PUAs pretend that this somehow means the death of spontaneous sex if not all sex altogether.
Ironically, for all their complaining about the allegedly blurry line between consent and non-consent, many MRAs and PUAs want to keep that line as blurry as possible. But unlike feminists, who want the blurriness to be resolved before anything happens, most MRAs and PUAs seem to want “blurry” to count as “yes.” That is, unless a woman is shouting no, guys are good to go, and if a woman later says she was raped, it’s because she’s “That Girl” and she’s arbitrarily decided to revoke her consent after the fact.
That’s what’s so insidious about the “That Girl” poster campaign.
And that’s why those responding to it should point out the history of the people sponsoring the campaign. Men’s Rights Edmonton and its spokesperson, Karen Straughan (Girl Writes What) are both closely connected with A Voice for Men, which is actively helping coordinate MRA activism around the issue.
So it’s worth pointing out what A Voice for Men has previously posted about rape — and perhaps putting some of these things on posters.
AVFM founder and publisher Paul Elam blames date rape on its victims, writing in one notorious post — which regular readers here will no doubt remember — that women who are raped after drinking and going home with a man are “begging” to be raped:
I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks … paying their bar tab with the pussy pass. And the women who drink and make out, doing everything short of sex with men all evening, and then go to his apartment at 2:00 a.m.. Sometimes both of these women end up being the “victims” of rape.
But are these women asking to get raped?
In the most severe and emphatic terms possible the answer is NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED.
They are freaking begging for it.
Damn near demanding it.
And all the outraged PC demands to get huffy and point out how nothing justifies or excuses rape won’t change the fact that there are a lot of women who get pummeled and pumped because they are stupid (and often arrogant) enough to walk though life with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH – PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.
Elam has also said that if he is ever on a jury in a rape case he will vote to acquit even if there is clear evidence that the accused is guilty, and he has urged other men to similarly “nullify.” Here is his exact quote:
Should I be called to sit on a jury for a rape trial, I vow publicly to vote not guilty, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.
The post of his in which this quote appeared is now missing from the AVFM site, but he has confirmed he’s said this elsewhere on the site. [EDIT: I've been informed that the original post is also available via the Wayback Machine here.]
Meanwhile, AVFM Editor in Chief John Hembling takes a certain pride in his callousness towards rape victims, and has gone so far as to make several videos in which he’s announced that he doesn’t care about rape, and that if he ever sees anyone being raped, he will simply walk on by. (You can find excerpts of both vidoes here.)
There are many other examples of the site’s utter contempt for rape victims, but perhaps the most telling is the site’s use of the term “rapetard” to describe people who take the issue of rape seriously.
The people behind the Don’t Be That Girl posters claim that they’re merely trying to protect innocent men from false accusers. Their real agenda is much more insidious than that.
Posted on July 12, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, consent is hard, creepy, evil sexy ladies, evil women, false accusations, FemRAs, GirlWritesWhat, hate, johntheother, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, paul elam, playing the victim, rape, rape culture, rape jokes, the poster revolution has begun and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, don't be that girl, edmonton, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, rape, rape culture, rape jokes. Bookmark the permalink. 451 Comments.
Every time the MRM gets a chance to make an actual point about men’s rights, they do something like this. They could have done posters about male rape victims, about how girls can pressure men into sex and assault them too, but no, they would rather mock an existing campaign. And then they wonder why so many people think they’re just anti woman and not pro men’s rights.
Wow, I’ve never been the first one to comment on a post before…I feel I must say something really really insightful. However, I’m really tired, so I don’t know how that’s going to work.
(although by the time I actually post this, I may not be the first. Slightly less pressure FTW!)
Have the head honchos of the men’s movement ever given any reason for their rampant misogyny? (Besides “women, ewwwww”) I mean, not to excuse their behaviour, but what the hell has given them all these crazy ideas about women’s supposed “high status” in society? I’ve only been following this blog for about a year and a half…did I miss something that explains it?
Also, just found out that two women have been attacked in my neighbourhood. Eeeeek…I work late. :S
Sorry, I hope that’s groundbreaking enough. ;)
I think you are absolutely dead on: It’s not false accusations that freak them out. They want people to be able to date rape and not get called out for it, let alone potentially prosecuted for it.
TheTruePooka has mentioned this ad campaign on his blog. Here’s the post:http://thetruepooka.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/dont-be-that-activist/
Dean Esmay shows up to defend AVFM by strawmanning Pooka and claiming that he has “better” statistics which show false rape allegations are not rare. Here’s a quote from him, “I can provide peer reviewed and publicly available literature that gives more realistic answers”. He never provided said “publicly available literature” so no one reading the comments could look over that literature to even determine whether these statements were true or false nor could we examine the studies and potentially find flaws in the methodology or conflicts of interest. We’re just supposed to accept his word on faith? Why?
Why should anyone believe this ridiculous movement when they fail to provide evidence for their claims?
@Canuck: It often seems to come down to: “Why won’t women do what I want, when I want it?” Couple that with emotions and personal ideals that are arrested at the toddler stage, and you end up with MRAs.
Wow that seems really….sad. I kinda feel sorry for them. (only a little though…)
baileyrenee, that’s a really good point. And would have been a valid way to turn that campaign to their pet projects without drawing so much shit.
From what I understand this is directly from AVfM. They are the ones who organized and set this up.
Chalk JudgyBitch (aka Janet Bloomfield) one up for more blatant apologism and some serious backpedaling. avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/false-rape-culture/lets-talk-about-those-rape-posters
MRA Edmonton has a post up, by fidelbogen, of course trying to appropriate the anti-lynching movement carried out at great actual risk by civil rights activists. Not linking to it because of graphic lynching photos, the use of which in this context is incredibly offensive and disgusting. So I just want to remind everyone of the facts collected by the NAACP, which showed that the vast majority of people lynched were accused of crimes other than rape or attempted rape. (Often those “crimes” were having more money/land than white folks thought they should have.)
These ahistorical asshats piss me off.
*shakes head* I have a limited tolerance for people acting like histrionic wingnuts over the concept of saying no to sex, but yeah, these guys have a very strange idea of how sex and rape works.
Just… ugh. This is only making me aware of how much ‘rape-proofing’ I still have instituted in my life, even though it never did me one lick of good.
@princessbonbon
Paul Elam has said and I quote, “To clarify, no one to my knowledge associated directly with A Voice for Men created the meme, but it is a fine piece of work and I wholly support the message it carries. Whoever did it has my thanks.”
So, the originator of the meme is unknown, however the AVFM, or at least Elam. has definitely thrown their support behind the message.
@SittieKitty
I just don’t get how they didn’t realize what a bad idea this was. If they did ads like this in response to an actual case of false rape accusation, I wouldn’t be upset at all. Why choose to bring it up in response to anti-rape ads, though? Can they seriously not see how offensive and stupid it is to do something like that? Why do they need to feel as though they are fighting against woman’s issues and not with them?
It’s really depressing. I’m sure there are lots of guys in this movement who are really expecting some positive changes from it. The way things are going, it doesn’t look like they are going to see anything positive come from these people at all.
I don’t know what’s sadder, thinking they knew exactly what they were doing when they made these posters, or having no idea.
meadhreid, yeah, I think I’m going to do a separate post on JudgyBitch’s post. It’s awful.
Also, welcome!
This is one of the strange things, and I bet it has something to do with these creeps seldom, if ever, having long-term relationships.
Why the emphasis on spontaneous sex? It reads like they need to get it shoved in there now, quick, before he loses his erection, or before he’s in any danger of having to TALK to her, or take some time in mutual pleasuring (“foreplay” just goes with the idea that PiV is the only important thing about sex). It shows their incompetence as bed-partners as well as the misogyny that likely causes it.
I bet the idea of conversational sex would send them into a total panic.
AVFM describes this in several posts on its site as a poster campaign from Men’s Rights Edmonton. The spokesperson for that group is Girl Writes What. AVFM promotes the group all the time, and the main guy in that group contributes articles to AVFM. So it’s pretty directly linked to AVFM, though only GWW is literally on the AVFM masthead.
Oh, never mind, Elam was referring to when the posters first appeared last spring, not to the current poster campaign.
Thanks for clarifying, David!
@sarahlizhousespouse
Actual quote by Elam: “No wonder the MHRM is growing so rapidly. People are starving for intelligence in the wasteland.”
LOL
@sarahlizhousespouse
Actual quote by Elam: “No wonder the MHRM is growing so rapidly. People are starving for intelligence in the wasteland.”
LOL
From TheTruePooka’s response to Elam:
“You use grandiose language, heavy trigger words and exaggerated claims when approaching topics.”
Ya don’t say….
@ sarahlizhousespouse
Dean Esmay even claims that feminism is not about equality. *facepalm*
RE: Kittehserf
I don’t get the focus on spontaneous sex either, but then again, it’s only been in the past couple YEARS that I’ve been able to “just have sex,” rather than treating it like a tiger hunt, and I have a long-standing rule that I should never, EVER be surprised with sex.
From Dean Esmay:
Funny thing is, that figure is not solely from Brownmiller. It’s also a figure from an FBI study.
Yeah, exactly, asshat. “Do you believe false rape accusations are a huge problem, or an acute problem?”
What I want to know is, why are so many of these asshats from Canada? I have no words scathing enough. Really, I’ve been trying to write them, and erasing them. Insufficient scathe.
This post is dead on. You couldn’t have said it better, David.
Semi on-topic rant….
Reading about these people makes me feel horrible for men who are rape victims, or have been falsely accused of rape.
Male rape victims are already unsupported and mocked by society. False accusations are terrible, mainly to the accused obviously, yet if I did know a woman who falsely accused for shits and giggles I’d be pissed as hell at her for giving MRAs another excuse to shame rape victims.
Its like male rape victims are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have society that mocks and shuns them, but now there’s the MRM, shoving them into their anti feminist propaganda(while also mocking them horribly too).
Unimaginative, isn’t Canada pretty progressive with feminism? It’s probably just a knee jerk response to it. Jerks* like MRAs get louder when they feel “threatened”.
*Calling MRAs jerks makes me cringe actually. No I’m not kidding, it’s a horrible thing to say, most jerks are not even this awful. I can’t find words to fit them,
Welcome to any new (or newly de-lurked) folks! Have a welcome package:
http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
RE: auggziliary
I’m a male rape survivor, and I generally have a standing offer with any MRA who comes here that I’ll happily join the MRM if they ever show proof of actually caring about shit regarding me.
Thus far, I’ve had two folks take up the offer, and both have failed miserably.
Feminists are far from perfect regarding male victimization, but thus far, they’ve had the highest success rate in my life for actually giving a damn.
David Futrelle
You wrote,
——————————————————————————————————————–
That’s as good as far as it goes, but I would go a bit further:
I don’t think that MRAs are really concerned about false accusations. If they were, they would be working with groups like the Innocence Project that actually help men (and women) who have been wrongly convicted for crimes they didn’t commit.
No, it seems to me that what they’re really worried about is true accusations.
MRAs, with these posters, and with their endless whinging about the alleged complexities of sexual consent, are trying to push back against the date rape awareness campaigns of the last several decades. MRAs and PUAs like to pretend that consent is a complicated and weirdly arbitrary thing — something that women decide to bestow or not to bestow on a whim, and that women sometimes like to retract after the fact.
——————————————————————————————————————–
You know that gives me an idea. You know about the movie the watermelon man, about this racist white guy who wakes up one morning and has turned into a black man? I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard it was funny. What if one of these sexist male “MRA” were to wake up one day and suddenly realize that they had magically turned into a woman? Man that could make a hilarious movie! I wonder what they could we call it. Any ideas?
“Feminists are far from perfect regarding male victimization, but thus far, they’ve had the highest success rate in my life for actually giving a damn.”
Out of curiosity, what do you think feminists need to improve on in order to be better regarding male victimization?
@auggziliary: Legally, yes, We’ve got some good laws here, but still face the same asshattery that American women do (especially when you work with alcohol, ARGH) when it comes to actually living in this world. And the Conservative government seems hell-bent on destroying the rights we DO enjoy. (Although not even Harper is fanatic enough to touch the abortion debate. HA!).
I think one of the things with the “false rape stats” is that (and this is completely my opinion) for some women, what happens is this: they are assaulted and they report it. The cops blame them. The doctors blame them. They don’t “act like a rape victim”. They were wearing the wrong clothes. Every step makes them feel re-victimised. So they drop the charge, and try to pretend it never happened. And the MRA’s pick it up and say “See! Another man’s life ruining by a false accusation! If she were really raped, she wouldn’t have dropped the charges. She only did it because she was found out to be a liar”. It makes me so furious.
It’s borderline disturbing to see MRAs on reddit and elsewhere tremble giddily as this story makes the rounds through news outlets. They seem to believe that the notoriety their campaign has produced will somehow make the MRM a legit social movement. This event has not only made it clear that the MRM isn’t about helping anyone in any real sense, they have made evident how bad they are at even being decent people. They ought to be trying to do damage control, distance themselves from their actions, and making it clear that they take rape culture seriously.
Instead they have their spiritual leader, GWW, announcing to the world that “I can’t even believe the emotional response that it’s gotten out of people. Just sort of blanket instant condemnation out of people. Just a knee jerk, ‘how could they do this, how could they say this.'”
Really? You can’t believe that people are upset at your rape culturing crusade?
Delurking
I just read the salon article earlier today.
Glad you’re going to do a post on JudgyBitch’s post (which she ‘helpfully’ linked in the comments top the article). In an odd sort of way, I can almost understand misogyny coming from men There’s still no excuse for it, but some people find it easy to hate the ‘other’ and I can sort of work out how that line of thought happens (I don’t follow it). I really don’t get internalized misogyny. As a woman, I just can’t wrap my head around that at all.
The whole campaign (the MRM one, not the original) is sick and twisted, but the excuses and rationalizations are terrible too. Reading some of the comments on the original article was nauseating.
@ Ally S
I find his statement “depending on how you ask the question” very suspicious.
Because how you ask the question is of great importance. If I ask two people who were witness to a car accident two differently worded questions I can get two different answers. “About how fast did the car “slam” into the telephone pole?” and “About how fast did the car “bump” into the telephone pole?” have the potential to produce two very different answers.
I couldn’t find the FBI study or report, but I did find this report http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/research/perverting_course_of_justice_march_2013.pdf
Based on the figures of how many people were prosecuted for rape (5,651) versus the number of people prosecuted for false accusations (35), the percentage of false accusations would be less than a percent. It’s a more recent study and I’ll have to look at it more closely, but the findings are interesting to say the least.
Canuck with pluck, also sometimes when someone is raped, and they don’t know their attacker. Or the charges were dropped because of there not being enough evidence.
LBT, I wish feminists did more work with men’s issues* though.
*actual men’s issues. Like being expected to “man up” all the time, men who are raped, etc. Not the “how the hell am I going to get laid with all this ‘consent is important’ stuff” I hear from PUAs all the time.
As to Pooka’s post and the associated comments, this one was interesting to me, “Feminism is a load of bullshit aimed at “Empowering Women” but all it does is make women believe that they are worthless and need to be active to change things. Men and women are equal, schooling and opportunites for advancement are allowed for both men and women. But to force women to believe that they are unequal and worthless makes feminist anti-women”
Uh, what? Feminism makes women believe they are worthless? How does that even almost make sense?
So now, have these posters been torn down yet? Will we have a GWW version of boxcutters?
@CriticalDragon: Wasn’t there that one episode of Johnny Bravo where Johnny pisses off some fortune teller and she turns him into a woman until he can see what it’s like? Now granted, Johnny isn’t really an MRA, just kind of a douche. A douche who gets beaten up all the time, but still a douche nonetheless. He gets annoyed by guys hitting on him all the time and notices that it’s happening to every woman around him. He then realizes that it’s wrong and then turns back into a guy. Of course, he does forget it instantly afterwards, but still, it’s quite a good episode.
RE: Ally S
Out of curiosity, what do you think feminists need to improve on in order to be better regarding male victimization?
Hmm. ‘Feminists’ imply that I think feminism as a whole has a problem. Really, I’m not even sure guys like me even come under the feminist domain. It’s just that they actually seem to TALK about rape, rape culture, and recovering from a rape, while men’s groups still never seem to talk about it.
I don’t see it as ‘feminism’ as the whole having the problem. Just feminists are people, and people may be assholes about rape. In my opinion, it’s far more on men themselves to work on creating their own structure, not feminism. I’m just in a really odd position, gender-wise, so don’t really fit into one-gendered groups or spaces.
They don’t realize the attention they’re getting for this isn’t positive. Just when I think they can’t get worse…
I can totally wait to see their bullshit justifications for this.
Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
@CriticalDragon1177,
I’m pretty sure it would turn out to be a case of Exceptional Woman Syndrome =(
Judgybitch, DriverSuz, GWW, TyphonBlue, etc.
That’s a very interesting study – thanks for sharing.
I’ve seen them say things like “thanks for the extra attention” to blogs such as this one. You know, as if a social movement is like some bad movie where negative attention can be a good thing.
Auggziliary,
‘LBT, I wish feminists did more work with men’s issues* though.
*actual men’s issues. Like being expected to “man up” all the time, men who are raped, etc.’
Honestly this is one of the reasons I consider myself a feminist. I hope y’all don’t mind the back story, but when my father passed away I was married, my sister was at college and my mom and younger brother were still living at home. Someone called him the ‘man of the house’ and I went nuts. He was 12, not a man and no one had the right to tell him to ‘be a man’ for our mother or to ‘man up’ or any of that crap. He was a child and still needed to be treated as a child and not get the responsibility of taking care of my mother dumped on him. My mother was not a child and did not to be considered in need of protection or whatever. I found the idea insulting and degrading to my mom and presumptuous and heartless to my brother
I tend think they’re more like certain children, where bad attention is better than no attention.
RE: auggziliary
Yeah, and it was actually feminism that helped me get through my own homophobia and transphobia issues. Because shock! Feminism was the thing that seemed interested in breaking down those ideas of what men and women were!
RE: CriticalDragon1177
Tempting a fantasy as it may be, believe you me, being a gender doesn’t mean you won’t be a misogynist.
@auggziliary: Also true! I was thinking sort more along the lines of date/acquaintance rape, where they WOULD know who did it. But you’re spot on. And the lack of evidence would definitely apply in that scenario. (Also, the scenario would apply to male victims as well. I’m sorry I didn’t use gender-neutral pronouns. I was trying to reply to the article, which specifically referred to female victims)
I remember trying to explain to a friend that woman can rape men. She didn’t believe me. I had to stop the conversation because I was getting so frustrated. I did a paper in my second year about prison sexual assault…it’s disgusting how little people care.
Feminists do, but that’s kind of a by-product rather than a focus, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Feminist bees,
GWW is more stupid than disturbing, IMO. It’s like she tries to make scathing points, but it always ends up with totally moronic and laughable, like when she tried at sarcasm when criticizing WBB. She basically listed WBB’s “accomplishements” and one of them was “squeezing out babies” along with a tedious rant about her being a mother.
I think she was trying to be hurtful and catty, but that gimmick goes out the window when you remember that GWW is a mother herself…
Also, she can’t take criticism. At all. She responds to her critics, or hell, even people who ask hard questions with “why are you so OBSESSED with me? You’re just stalking me!”
Seriously? Even most gullible people aren’t *that* oblivious to the fact that a bit of criticism is not creepy or intrusive.
GWW sounds exactly like a fucking 12 year old. A whiny, spoiled, smug 12 year old.
@LBT
This is exactly why this made me so mad… like I said before, they could have used the original ads to talk about male victims and they chose to do this instead. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
I’m sure you’ve heard of this site before, but in case you haven’t (and if anyone else wanted a place to start when it comes to help for male abuse victims):
http://www.malesurvivor.org/
They have a tonne of links and resources on here.
LOL
I think conferring upon them devious motivations is the incorrect course of action. I think many do put a lot of work into what they do, what they do is unfortunately sexist but I do think there is true passion there, that they hold to their beliefs firmly.
I am reminded of how much of a mistake it can be to assume you can get into your opponents head every time a MRA claims that feminists and other anti MRA types know MRAs are not sexist and are only claiming that as a shaming tool. This is obviously incorrect and any assumptions made on our side are equally as likely to be incorrect.
The rest of what you said I think is quite accurate, it of courses perpetuates the notion of “date rape” and “grey rape” and “blurred lines”. There is just rape. And no, nobody’s behaviour can ever invite rape.
I find it interesting that they claim that rapists are a statistical anomaly, and then seem to insinuate on the other hand that any guy could rape if a woman flirts with him enough and consequently she is “begging for it”. Which is it, are they are rare or everywhere?
They have also falsely claimed that the “don’t be that guy” campaign targets all men. When the language makes it quite clear that the posters are targeting a certain type of guy.
RE: baileyrenee
Thankfully, I feel that I’ve been able to put my rape history behind me, but I’m sure the link’ll be handy to others. And frankly, I kind of expect people to be assholes about it. I’ve found that if people are really itching to try and hurt me, they’ll go for the rape.
RE: canuck with pluck
My goddamned Sexuality professor argued that men couldn’t be raped, and did this whole thing where he was like, “Come on, someone tell me they’ve heard of any man getting raped by a woman.” And one brave student raised her hand and said, “I knew a guy who got raped.”
And he was like, “How did he get raped?”
She says she didn’t ask for details.
“Well, ask him! This I got to know!”
I was shaking furious, and after a day summoned up the guts to confront him, but just came off as an overemotional know-nothing that he took such delight in shutting down. Failure.
I admit I’d like to see Owly turn into a woman, as long as he tried sitting on a corner and crying to get things.
LBT, sorry for your experience.
Also, your Sexuality prof was amazingly awful. That’s terrible.
RE: Galunadi
Yup. Thankfully, by that point I’d discovered Scarleteen and feminism. With the kind of ‘legit’ sex ed I got, it’s amazing I ever blundered into hubby’s pants.
@LBT
Good to hear, I assumed you had put it behind you, just making sure you know there are thankfully at least a few places for advice/help/whatever. I agree we should have more for men though.
And dude… I remember thinking like that professor of yours when I was seriously, like, TEN. I remember talking about a friend of mine about if a woman can rape a man (why, I have no friggin’ idea, but I remember talking about it). We understood what a man raping someone would look like, but couldn’t figure out how a woman would do it… after a while we decided that there probably was a way a woman could indeed rape someone. We were CHILDREN and we figured that out!!
Again, how the hell that came up at such an age I have no clue.
*Correction, talking WITH a friend
@Criticaldragon1177 We would call it “What Women Want” or “Jack and Jill” or “Sorority Boys” or “White Chicks” or “Big Momma’s House” or…
@auggziliary
Yeah, I have been at the other end of her “You must stalk me because you remember things” assertions. She’s not very good at responding to criticism, and when faced with her own stupidity, she resorts to petty rhetorical ploys or veiled insults. It’s almost a relief whenever you see her take center stage, because you know that something embarrassing is about to happen for the MRM.
What they are saying is, “DO be that girl–who deserves to be raped and humiliated.”
@LBT: That’s horrible! And from a sexuality prof? Our society has ingrained this “men want sex all the time” mentality, and the harm it does can be hard to gauge, since we’ve also ingrained the “men don’t talk about feelings” bullshit..
LBT, glad you found Scarleteen, feminism and hubby :)
Kamilla, that or “look, chick, we know you’re lying. Shut up already.
LBT: same here with homophobia.
Before becoming a feminist, I had the attitude towards feminism like “I’m not like those women, they’re hypocrites, women are equal so it’s actually *insulting* for people to think that we ‘need’ feminism”. Then when I actually started reading actual feminist stuff, I realized that feminism isn’t “needed” as an emotional support for women(also I realized I wrongly associated those smug “girls rule, boys drool” attitudes with feminism).
I was also pretty homophobic, but not in the stereotypical way. I was an atheist(somewhat militant), a randroid for a while, and I was pretty damn critical towards tradition and conservatism. I even supported marriage rights for gays and wore a rainbow bracelet. Yet I still considered women to be inferior(rand considered pure femininity to be submission to a hero), and homosexuality to be something that still belonged in the closet. Being a bisexual female, these ideas made me feel pretty shitty about myself. I thought that these feelings of guilt and failure would be fixed if I “fixed” myself too, by becoming more “feminine”(the bad definition) and straight. It became a vicious cycle(I ended up actually hurting myself often, since I was in love with one of my best friends, and I used that love to try to “cure” myself through classical conditioning with self harm).
Sorry for getting a bit off topic, but one thing I learned from this is that internalized sexism/homophobia aren’t black and white. You can be all for gay rights and be like a liberal woman that’s practically half feminist, and still be extremely homophobic/sexist because of how complex the issues are.
Anyways, feminism helped me get out of that vicious cycle. Since I was super liberal I thought there was no way I could be sexist or homophobic, but after reading about feminism I realized how complex those issues were, and how I was actually being really sexist and homophobic.
canuk_with_pluck, “Our society has ingrained this “men want sex all the time” mentality, and the harm it does can be hard to gauge, since we’ve also ingrained the “men don’t talk about feelings” bullshit..”
Ugh, yes. The stupid idea that there’s something wrong with you or you aren’t a ‘real man’ if you don’t want sex all the time with any woman. And of course, men not only can’t talk about their feelings, but men are ‘too rational’ to have all those silly emotions in the first place and men don’t talk as much as women
/barf
@Cthulhu’s Intern,
You wrote,
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@CriticalDragon: Wasn’t there that one episode of Johnny Bravo where Johnny pisses off some fortune teller and she turns him into a woman until he can see what it’s like? Now granted, Johnny isn’t really an MRA, just kind of a douche. A douche who gets beaten up all the time, but still a douche nonetheless. He gets annoyed by guys hitting on him all the time and notices that it’s happening to every woman around him. He then realizes that it’s wrong and then turns back into a guy. Of course, he does forget it instantly afterwards, but still, it’s quite a good episode.
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I haven’t seen that episode, but that does kind of sound like him.
I don’t even get the first one. The only thing I can read into it is that girls shouldn’t drink because then they become irresponsible. Why ‘especially when sex is involved’ though? It’s just bizarre. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s offensive.
@Galunadi: I’ll never forget the first time I saw my father cry. I was 17, and his aunt/mother had died. She was his mother’s sister, who pretty much sacrificed her entire life to raise her nieces and nephews with her sister, after my grandmother left an abusive marriage, in the 50’s no less. Those women are two of my strongest role models. (sorry, tangent). While my dad is pretty traditionally “masculine”, I just thank god he disregarded all that when it came to dealing with death. I know that sounds really weird, but….