So over on the Men’s Rights subreddit – you know, the old one, not its newfangled would-be replacement – the fellas are complaining about how oppressive it is for a university to put up signs suggesting that consent is good and rape is bad.
Clearly, these signs are an insult to non-rapist men, in the same way that “don’t feed the animals” signs in zoos are an insult to those of us who aren’t planning to feed the animals.
Happily, the dude calling himself anti-everyone has come up with a way to fight back against this feminazi tyranny:
Is the Poster Revolution moving to its next stage?
I’m seeing a flaw in this plan..
(Unless there’s a type of glue I don’t know about that dries white rather than clear).
Take a sharpie and draw a twirly mustache on the ‘pear culture’ poster and write, “I cultured this poster.”
If I were in charge of PR for MRAs, the first order I would give (besides “shut down forever”) would be:
Never talk about rape again. The only time you are allowed to talk about rape is in the context of supporting male rape victims. (And even then, not if you use them as a “counterargument” to female rape victims.)
Because for fuck’s sake, fellas, you could get people on your side with, like, the “support single fathers” thing and the “it sucks to be expected to be a tough masculine provider all the time” thing. You could probably even get people into the workplace accidents thing and you could definitely get people into the men’s health and men’s shelters stuff.
But when you guys talk about rape, you just completely fucking forget what you sound like to non-MRAs. You go off the fucking rails. Even if you had a point about false accusations, you quickly bury it in a mound of “things that are horrible and nonconsensual, but we think shouldn’t count as real rape” and “rape that is real, but the woman deserved it” and “any mention that rape exists fills us with disproportionate fury.” You cannot handle your rape discussions.
If MRAs could just stop talking about rape altogether, they would be roughly 500 times more likely to not look like complete crackpot misogynists to the outside world.
But they’d have to stop being complete crackpot misogynists to stop talking about…. OOOOOOOH.
“Hey, they should have the ‘consent is sexy’ posters in the women’s bathrooms too” = reasonable point.
“‘Consent is sexy’ makes me feel like a rapist” = NOT A REASONABLE POINT.
MRAs: proving the need for feminist and antirape activism simply by opening their mouths.
Speaking of which, I picked up a pro-choice washington water bottle sticker and a “consent is sexy” button at my school’s club fair. A friend of mine ended up talking to a man from some organization that is trying to form a conservative club on campus, and the man claimed that (a) he’d wanted to become a doctor and (b) Akin’s theory had a scientific basis.
Someone did try to start a men’s group on campus, but it was more about exploring how Patriarchy Hurts Men Too, and it was hampered by the fact that its head was already helping to run the feminist and LGBT club, so he didn’t have time on his hands for something else. They did manage to get a discussion about men and body issues going, which I think is something that is often overlooked.
It’s pretty clear to me that those other issues are just afterthoughts compared to their desire to shit on rape victims.
I suspect the nature of their protest is just the opposite, actually – they hate being told not to rape because they do want to do it and hate that they could get in trouble for it.
Crumbelievable – Eh, a lot of them are also excuses to shit on DV victims. Like “fathers deserve fair custody” sounds all reasonable until you realize that 95% of the fathers they defend are blatant abusers. (PROTIP for MRAs: If a guy gets weekend custody, it’s because the judge thinks the mother should be the primary caregiver. If a guy gets zero custody, he did something. Men who want custody don’t get zero just because of caregiver stereotypes. There’s something else going on.)
Or “men suffer from DV” is totally true, except that they mostly use it to attack any education or outreach for women at risk for DV.
Yes, let’s “spooge”on the posters and make rape jokes. Because rape is soooooo funny.
Here’s a pair of kittens.
That thread is a Shit Fondue.
From the OP:
Oh noes! Not self-doubt! Those poor babies.
This gem from qdub, explaining why it’s offensive:
All Men: they’re just like PoC in the United States.
Here’s a whole series of comments, with net upvotes, showing how sensitive r/mr is to male rape victims and their plight:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/ywuvv/need_to_vent_new_workplace_is_getting_to_me/c5zk7wy
The collective wisdom of R/MR judges these comments to be better than this one, with ~21 net downvotes:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/ywuvv/need_to_vent_new_workplace_is_getting_to_me/c5zjlzl
Cliff: “Fathers should have fair custody” is perfectly reasonable, as is “the primary caregiver should in most cases take primary custody of the children.” The problem is that men are not usually primary caregivers, and that’s something that reforming the legal system won’t solve.
if constantly being reminded about the importance of consent is really filling you with that much self-doubt then it’s because you know you’re doing something you shouldnt be and the solution is to stop doing that thing
Oh, puh-LEEZE! The reddit crap is unreal.
For the record, I am affiliated with a university, and this is a steaming pile. They are exaggerating juuuuuuust a little bit, to say the least. This stinks of whiny sense of entitlement that is being thwarted by the evuhl authorities. “If I can get her drunk enough then I can score and I didn’t do anything wrong. Or if I went further than she wanted to that’s too bad, it was her fault for getting the car. I am so not a rapist just because I want sex, and this makes me question whether what I actually do makes me one and I don’t like that because I don’t want to think of myself that way.”
@freitag: I like your icon, and I wish I’d thought of it first.
People always make this argument on my blog to explain why they should never have to ask consent for anything ever.
YO, MAYBE THERE IS SOMETHING IN BETWEEN DO YOU THINK
Uh, if you’re an university *employee* and you have sex with a student then that’s rape by the school’s policies, yeah. (Well, maybe not if you’re a janitor.) I don’t… think that’s a bad thing?
Also, it is really not hard to make sure that people whom you are having sex with want to have sex with you. Seriously, I do it ALL THE TIME.
it’s not like theyre actually worried that theyre engaged in rapey behavior because they dont actually give a fuck about rape. theyre worried about being labeled as rapey because Mean Name is the worst oppression ever.
“These posters are offensive and bad because they’re calling me a rapist, and that makes me feel bad! Now excuse me while I whine for several paragraphs about how hard it is to get consent and get laid at the same time.”
Tulgey Logger – Yeah, if they are going to (not recommended, fellas!) complain about being called potential rapists, they at least need to get the “but it’s not rape if” and the “but women ask for it” and the “ha ha, rape is funny” guys the fuck out of that discussion.
@Falconer, thanks. I just learned how (with much Boobzer help!) to change my gravatar yesterday. I still wanted to be a cat, and hey! Now I’m a Cat!
@ozymandias42, yes. It is absolutely, positively, no exceptions, against every policy there is for faculty/staff to have sex with a student. But the policies for inter-student-sex aren’t so strict. Consent matters, and as you and everyone else (everyone else who’s sane, anyway) points out,it ain’t that hard to get it. It doesn’t require step-by-step “can I switch boobs” or other BS. It does, however, require a bit of self-awareness which a lot of MRA types seem to lack.
Right. Also, you have to consider that if your partner wanted the sex they probably wouldn’t accuse you of rape. They’d probably be all “yay! I had sex!” I mean, false accusations sure, but if someone were falsely accusing you of rape they wouldn’t need to be like “he touched my breast without asking!” they could just say “he had sex with me while I was screaming no!” because, you know, they are lying.
It’s not like we have Rape Police going into random people’s bedrooms, you know?
EXCUSE ME SIR DID YOU GET A SIGNED CONTRACT TO TOUCH THAT BREAST
There’s also the relative ease of determining if the other person is enjoying the sex. If they’re unconscious, assume they’re not. If they’re not responding, tensing up, pulling away, muttering things that sound like they’re uncomfortable, then, oh, I dunno, maybe you ought to stop for a minute?
Really, how hard is this?
I saw this little nugget by mayonesa, advocating the creation of a place to just get away from all that misandry:
I immediately thought of a rickety old treehouse with a “No gurlz allowd” sign.
@Freitag
I loved that episode of Doctor Who.