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.
hehehe, if that’s a hex I’ll gladly encourage it! “You will love cute furry animals forever! And you are all a hive-mind yet disagree and even argue here fairly consistently and therefore manage to change your minds and have legitimate discussions about important things!! And you seem mostly happy talking to each other and being a community!! AND YOU HELP EACH OTHER!!! HOW DARE YOU DO THESE THINGS?!?!”
Bras, too. Ignoring them in favour of talking about bras seems to frighten them off. That’s always funny.
Speaking of which, I can recommend the Hot Milk Intuition non-maternity bra I bought the other day. Lightweight and comfortable.
“May you have both friends and pets!”
Wow, how awful. What was I thinking with this whole feminism thing?
SittieKitty – LOL it’s like we’re doing the MGTOW thing these dudes brag about, but do it BETTER and with MOAR KITTIES.
Actually I have a theory about that. Talking about bras in a non-porny way = framing women’s bodies as something other than fucktoys = misandry, how dare you!
I think that for men who hate women anything that forces them to see us as people causes immediate boner deflation.
“May you swap delicious recipes!”
“May you make new friends around the world, friends you might even meet face to face!”
“May you get to adopt a new kitty!”
Curses, I haz them.
Yeah, I see it that way about the bras, too. Talking about them as practical or pleasing items of clothing, and talking about breasts in practical terms, about as erotic as saying “My feet hurt, anyone recommend a good pair of shoes?” – misandry indeed!
omfg, that reminds me I should make that vegan chocolate cake that LBT(?) posted in that food thread…
“May you always have fuel to laugh at!”
“May you constantly be provided with a bunch of adorable videos and pictures when you’re feeling lousy!”
“May you have people around you willing to support you through tough times!”
Damn, feminism sounds so terrible…
“May you vanish for months with no explanation and, upon return, be greeted by a bunch of people who’re happy to see you and curious about how you’ve been.”
It’s all so terrifying. What we need is some nice, reassuring rape threats to make the poor things feel more at home.
Argh, I need to get to bed. It’s 11pm here. I need to be able to wake up reasonably early tomorrow so I can get to bed reasonably early tomorrow night, ‘cos I’m flying to Queensland on Monday. It’s gonna be a long day – the trip to the airport’s nearly as long as the flight.
Niters, see youse* tomorrow!
*great Oz slang, not
Sleep well Kitteh!
I should have been asleep at least 4 hours ago, but I have a fashion feature to finish.
@Dvärghundspossen: I know the feeling of not liking being angry. I get shaky and sometimes have trouble thinking when I’m really angry, and I really hate it. I also come from a (n extended) family where some of the people will deliberately say the most hurtful thing they can, because they can, so I’m a little afraid of becoming like that, especially when I’m angry. (Ex: this ties into the “women having to explain things” thread as well…boy you miss a lot when you go to bed!…had a male customer call me “beautiful little doll” and I had to try to explain why that was definitely not appropriate…only to have him tell me *I* had problems because I couldn’t take a “compliment”. Then, to show me how enlightened he was, he said “I have black friends, and trans friends, and f****t friends” and I LOST it and kicked him out spectacularly.) But I hate that feeling. I don’t like feeling out of control.
I wish we could somehow know when/if Paul is ever called for jury duty in a rape case, so we can show the prosecutor these articles…
Do we want to know what the bleeped out word is?
I should have been in bed, er… at least 9 hrs ago. Holy crap I didn’t realize it was morning already…
canuck, ugh! That whole taking a compliment thing! Such bullshit. (I also have an n-extended family, but on the whole it’s more whispers if there’s problems and not overt hostility, and it’s infrequent around my parents because they’re kinda the leaders and won’t deal with it.)
Cassandra, I assume it’s a derogatory word for gay.
I think Star Trek and other sci-fi is partly to blame for so many people not knowing what “logical” means. As much as I love Star Trek, it irks me that they constantly use the word “logic” in the wrong way, and the same goes for lots of other sci-fi that, for instance, feature supposedly supremely logical computers or robots.
For instance, it doesn’t make sense to talk about what “the logical thing to do” is in a certain situation unless you have already established various norms regarding what’s good/bad, right/wrong. And these norms themselves can never be established by pure logic. Usually when vulcans talk about what’s “logical” they’re actually using that word to refer to an entire substantive moral system.
Also, modern psychology has pretty much shown that the idea of rationality and emotion as being opposed to each other is plain false. Psychologist Antonio Damasio for instance has made an experiment where the test subjects were to draw cards from various decks. Most cards had monetary rewards tied to them, and the rewards were higher for some decks than for others, but on drawing certain cards you had to pay a fine. The decks were rigged so that people would, over time, lose money if they kept choosing the decks with the highest rewards, but earn money if they choose the more “cautious” decks. Now, normal test subjects would firstly start gravitating towards the cautious decks, secondly claim that they had a hunch that these decks were better in the long run, and only thirdly intellectually figure out how the decks were stacked. Test subjects with brain damages making them emotionally flat-lined (although they had no damage to their faculties of logic) would keep losing money much longer, eventually figure out which decks were the right ones to choose, and then forget about it again if they didn’t constantly remind themselves. All-in-all, the non-emotional test subjects were much crappier at making the rational choice in this situation.
@Canuck: Oh, that “I have X friends so I can’t possibly be prejudiced” – worst argument ever.
@Cassandra: derogatory word for gay people. I refuse to say/type it…and I also wasn’t sure if it would get me moderated.
Here I am so comfy in my little gay-friendly bubble that I didn’t even think of that, since if you tried to say that word in public here people would react as if you’d just peed on the rug.
I mentioned HR briefly in one of my first comments to this thread (though I couldn’t remember their name and couldn’t be assed to check), a couple pages back. I used way more mundane examples like telling people to follow the rules of the road =/= assuming all people are out to kill others with their car though, your bullying example is much better!
Whew, finally finished that Popehat thread. Wow that guy was an asshole. It was like… either he didn’t understand that what he’d typed didn’t correlate with what he actually meant (taking a very good faith benefit of the doubt view) and couldn’t admit it, or (much more likely) he was of one opinion in the beginning, and realized that his opinion was shit but didn’t want to back down and so instead doubled-down and resorted to gaslighting ect because he couldn’t defend his view.
Really, it wasn’t that hard to summarize:
a) If you only interfere when you see it happening, you’re going to miss many instances
b) interfering does not mean attacking someone, it can be as simple as interrupting to ask if everything’s ok – asking this question does not remove agency from the woman, since she has the agency to say “yes, everything is fine”
c) It’s not about the individuals involved (ie: perpetrator/victim) but about the larger culture to interfere and make the environment hostile to people who harass
d) As an addition to the above, it would be great (but not compulsory, since victim-blaming and all) if reporting was much much more common, in order to facilitate removal of any perpetrators who fell through the cracks of societal justice by establishing patterns of behaviour and allowing removal of those people who are “ambiguous” enough to skirt the typical behaviour flags
e) all this is facilitated by having an anti-harassment policy in place that encourages the above checking in behaviour, social checks and looking out for each other, and reporting in a safe non-judgemental atmosphere
f) this policy must be enforced in all instances – if it’s not enforced it makes all the others pretty much useless
That’s what? 6 points to an easy conclusion. Little easier to read than over 900 comments :/
Favorite response so far to the SFWA nonsense.
http://rachelswirsky.com/2013/06/a-brief-survey-of-the-accomplishments-of-chappie-writers-and-editors/
On the fish guy, even if we were to be charitable and assume that his assorted awfulness in that thread was a result of poor communication skills, we’d be left with the question of why someone with such poor communication skills would think it was a good idea to opine on controversial subjects on the internet.
I don’t get the “rapists are a very small minority of people so STFU feminists” people. In the US, between 5 and 15% of men admit to rape, most of multiple victims. In South Africa, about 25% of men admit to rape.
Would 51% of men have to say “Yes, I’ve intentionally forced someone to have sex with me when I knew they didn’t want to” in order for rape to be something done by relatively normal people, not a tiny number of psychopaths?
On the topic of “devil’s advocates”, I was arguing with a guy about abortion when he told me that, “I don’t really believe what I was saying, just so you know.” Thankfully, that was one of those rare moments in which I came up with a fairly clever response on the spot.
He definitely didn’t see that coming.
As long as it’s not a numerical majority, they can rely on the idea that it has to do with some “abnormality” or “psychopathy” that allows them to distance themselves from the idea that anyone they know, or even themselves, could/have done that. It’s an effective way to remove the cognitive discomfort that goes along with “But that person who did that awful thing is my friend – and that means I’m friends with a rapist” or “But that sounds an awful terrible lot like that thing I did that time – …and that means I’m a rapist”. If it’s only things that abnormal or mentally ill people do – and they know they and their friends aren’t abnormal or mentally ill – then there must be another explanation for it, because they don’t want to admit they might have been such awful judges of character or they might have done such an awful thing.