This was posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, with the headline: “Saw this today and I suppose that’s where we’re headed.” It’s gotten 556 upvotes, last I checked. (Those are net upvotes: it got 848 upvotes, 292 downvotes.) This is the world that a lot of MRAs, and Redditors in general, think they live in.
A handful of Redditors, like this one, objected to the hysteria:
Notice the downvotes.
Amazingly, one of the few voices of reason to emerge in the whole discussion (besides that downvoted commenter and serveral others) turned out to be none other than Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society (now called Community of the Wrongly Accused). While not averse to spreading misinformation about rape and false rape accusations himself, he argued in a comment (and in a similarly worded blog post) that this kind of raving hysteria wasn’t helpful, concluding:
The delicate balance that commands us to punish rapists while not punishing the innocent is extremely serious business. We need more sober, more adult, more serious voices to be part of the public discourse. The last thing we need is more Chicken Little hysteria, no matter which side it’s coming from.
I’m guessing the upvotes he got for his comment must have come from visitors from his blog, because up until he posted that comment the few dissenters were mostly being dismissed.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Waxing hysterical about imaginary oppressions since March 2008.
Well, I’ll give ’em this: If I saw anyone wearing this shirt I would back right the fuck up.
Preferably all the way out of the room without making eye contact.
I might be a bit dumb, but I don’t understand the t-shirt’s message. Why does it say “if you can read this”?
MRAs won’t be happy until they’ve conclusively proven that rape never occurs.
Then legalized it.
This seems more like a pua pick up line.
@Kyrie,It means you should stand further away, so far that you can’t read their shirt. Women with good eyesight, beware!
We should really get the “rape never actually happens” and the “rape happens because women are so slutty, like open wallets in a dark alley” misogynists together.
…Although it seems like there are already a lot of people who somehow hold both beliefs.
sweet, so frs is shutting down, then?
wait but
men can read your shirt too
help
There’s only one way to deal with people wearing obnoxious shirts like this, and that’s a pint of beer down the front.
His beer, not mine 🙂
Well, that shirt does do one thing: it guarantees I will never be alone with the person wearing it.
Not because they can be convicted of rape if I read their shirt (which is ridiculous), but because I don’t want to give them the opportunity to do anything to me that *would* get them convicted of rape. Like, y’know, rape.
I assume MRAs would be grateful I was getting the fuck out of there. Seeing as they’re so worried about being convicted of rape merely for being in another person’s presence.
(I’m not getting the “if you can read this” language either. So can the shirt’s wearer *not* be convicted of rape if I can’t read English? How does that work?)
But Maniacal, why? It doesn’t matter how close they are, since they’re alone! Why would it be easier to lie if they’re close? They’re alone, nobody but them will know how close they were.
…Just noticed my previous comment is very “one sentence per paragraph,” and it looks weird and sort of prose poem-y. Not my intent. 😛
Oh I don’t actually understand where they are coming from. Its definitely a fail in the logic department. It sounds more like one of those back handed “compliments” puas dish out. They truly believe that men are convicted of rape based on being alone with a woman when in reality most rape victims are dragged through the coals before they prove their case. And many drop the cases to avoid this happening.
I feel bad for any survivors of rape that run accross this shirt.
across*
Considering how hard it is to be legally convicted of rape when you actually rape people, you’re probably cool, asshole in an asshole shirt.
In a way, T-shirts like this do a public service. When assholes wear these shirts, they’re letting everyone around them know they’re assholes. They don’t even have to open their mouth. The shirt says it all.
What if a woman wears it?
I’m just saying, I like irony and I have a closet full of men’s shirts already.
Isn’t the “if you can read this” just a really lame takeoff on the bumpersticker “If you can read this, thank a teacher”? And I guess the one before that said “if you can read this, you’re too close”, to warn tailgaters.
I saw a guy a while ago in my local grocery store wearing a black t-shirt that read “Dead women don’t say no.” He creeped me out royally, and pissed me off. I even went up to him and said “You need to know that your t-shirt is incredibly offensive.” He mumbled “whatever”. People afterwards said I should have asked him “why are you wearing that?”, to, you know, start a dialogue. Bleh.
Kyrie, there’s some old jokes that start with “If you can read this”. There’s a mug that says “F u cn rd the u cn hv my jb” for secretaries, which is speed-writing for “If you can read this, you can have my job.”
There’s a t-shirt that says (upside-down) “If you can read this, you’re sitting on my face.”
If you can read this, the power is back on. If you can read this, you’re not dead yet. It’s a meme, but without the internet.
I should be 500 kinds of triggered right now, but all I can think is that I hope these people who have had NO experience with rape NEVER do, because they are piss poor equipped to handle it.
So it’s like a joke, (because it has some of the same words as an actual joke) but in this case it doesn’t make sense, it’s not funny, and for bonus it’s offensive. Got it.
Thanks for the bit of culture, though.
I believe the origin is bumper stickers reading ‘if you can read this you’re driving too close’.
Very well said, GingerSnaps.
Also: No one they know should ever get raped, ever. (Obviously *no one* should ever get raped, ever, but some people are criminals and I’d rather be surrounded by supportive friends and family than these guys.)
reddit/mr is A W E S O M E. 🙁
OT/derail, but AVfm has jumped the gun on Mother’s Day with TWO posts
honoringvilifying mothers. But there are also two hilarious comments on an earlier post about Utah’s adoption laws & policies.Someone named Arvy says,
If you check out the story, you find that a woman suffered significant injuries when her car hit a moose, and now has some kind of post-traumatic amnesia. That’s not funny, obviously, but Arvy using THIS as an example of a woman “getting away with it” is hilarious. What exactly did she get away with? “My car is destroyed, I have head injuries, two bones in my neck are fractured, and I’VE STOLEN YOUR SPERM AND I AM FINALLY GOING TO GET THE BABY I DESERVE!” Or whatever.
Even funnier is this quote from Dr. F:
Flying rabbits? On rails? Swarming in the sky? Weirdest apocalypse ever.
Then he goes on to say some other shit, but it’s not funny so I’m not quoting it.
/derail