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.
“When they put up the “Don’t be that guy” posters, I don’t think feminists were concerned with reducing rape; I think they were more concerned with painting men as rapists.”
…Which is why that saying “Don’t be that guy” has an implicit qualification for “guy,” suggesting that only certain guys i.e. those who rape are being targeted by those posters. It didn’t say “Don’t be a guy,” after all.
Another MRA whose interpretation skills are abysmal. Nothing unusual.
Wow. I’ve always heard about the proverbial abusive narcissist who thinks women who get too uppity and challenge their authority need to be raped in order to teach them a lesson and put the fear of god into the others- but here he is in the flesh, blogging away.
This is the same archetype who rallied the lynch mobs in the south back in the day. Sometimes it really pisses me off that the internet gives these dinosaurs a microphone and a giant amp.
@Nepenthe:
My guess is that men who go on about how terribly rare rapists are, and only completely sick-in-the-head psychopaths would ever dream of raping someone, either have never heard about those statistics, refuse to believe them, or only believe them about other countries but not about their own. (I remember the member of SD (racist political party) who once claimed that “real Swedes” don’t commit rape because “real Swedes” don’t have the rape gene.)
I think men who go on about how terribly rare rapists are believe that it’s like 0,1 percent of the population or something like that.
I think one (out of several) big problem with men playing devil’s advocate is that it’s connected to mansplaining. Like, they have this patronizing idea that they’ll help your intellectual development by forcing you to think hard about your own arguments.
Back at the Popehat, slightly different thread:
http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/11/a-statement-of-support-in-the-event-of-legal-threats-or-lawsuits/#comments
In essence, Ken White (main blogger at Popehat, I think) has made it known that, should the person who harassed Elise Matheson at Wiscon attempt to bully his way out of the situation by suing her (for defamation & loss of employment or whatever), he will use the Popehat signal to hook her up with a pro-bono lawyer.
Pollock and a few others are now in a big whine about how unfair it is that she should get free lawyering, and how making the offer is an intimidation tactic, and what ever happened to presumption of innocence. It’s just frankly amazing.
Regarding the devil’s advocate thing, I’ve found that one of the most useful phrases in argument is “I don’t have a dog in this fight,” because it shows you that the person who has said it is utterly full of shit.
Yeah, Hippie Redneck’s claim that rapist men are just a tiny minority of psychopaths made me laugh and think, “Oh, naive little one, you don’t realize how lucky you are not to know any better.”
I mean, my rapist? I never liked him. I can’t even hate him anymore, because I lack the emotional investment. But he’s not what people imagine when they think ‘rapist.’ They think some big burly asshole who’s mentally ill. He was a slender, “sensitive” guy with a BAD case of Nerd’s Lament who even at the age of 20 couldn’t let go of his identity as the nerd oppressed by jocks and cheerleaders. He wrote my sister bad love poetry, he considered her the love of his life, the reason to make something of himself.
He just also happened to believe a bunch of heinous things, such as girlfriends being status symbols, that sex was a man’s unbearable physical need, and that he could drive better if he was getting sucked off at the same time. (We never bought that one.)
This was a man who as a grown adult still couldn’t control a docile, naive, dissociative teenager. He had to focus on teenagers because adults knew his schtick and wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot-pole, and he was still babyfaced enough to pass.
He was a pathetic, self-obsessed, whiny little piece of shit, but he wasn’t a psychopath. He was just a shit.
Have you read “the sirans of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut? That book features an uppity woman who’s raped by the hero and that teaches her a lesson and she becomes a much better person. *vomits*
Off topic but BIFF’S HERE!! Squee! I got my Infinity Smashed book thingy from LBT!!
Utterly tangentially, my brother recommended a UV LED flashlight if you plan in spending much time moving about at night in scorpion country — seems they get all neon under UV. (And he wants one, and I’m an arachnophobe >.< )
RE: Argenti
Huzzah! I was hoping it’d arrive today! That was faster than I expected.
Here, have an appropriate sketch.
RE: Argenti
I’ll just stick with my hand-crank, thanks. I got rechargable batteries, but they’re going to be either in my camera or my CD player the whole time. Also, insects generally don’t bother me.
Totally off-topic, but does anyone know how I can submit something to Artistry for Feminism and Kittens? I just realized that one of my favorite cool-down snacks in the summer constitutes a bona-fide FREEZE PEACH and I want to share the recipe with y’all!
Karalora — pester cloudiah.
LBT — but they bite! And sting! And are generally evil!
Step carefully if you go out for a midnight piss then, and shake out your boots if you leave them exposed (actually, that’s probably a good idea in general)
And I’d get rechargeable batteries to help save on cost, though that would mean carrying the charger.
In conclusion, scorpions are evil.
They are kind of cool looking…though I agree, not so much if they’re in your sleeping bag.
Did someone mention my blog? XD
If anyone wants to submit some manboobz-related artistry to Artistry for Feminism and Kittens, you can email me at my ‘nym at gmail. Or make a comment on the blog — the traffic is so light, I won’t miss it!
I just cooked a healthy, low salt breakfast for friend who is recovering from heart attack, thus proving to him that healthy food can taste yummy. MISANDRY!!!
Okay, cloudiah, I sent you an email! Hope you enjoy it!
They just caught a serial sexual offender quite near where I live. Apparently he would prey on students that would come home to my student apartment building late at night to harass and intimidate them. I’m always out of the loop on these things, I swear I’ve been hearing random screams late at night for months and I would ascribe it to the amazing capability of people to make noises to irritate me and think nothing more of it, but it seems it really was something quite horrible. (there were at least a dozen victims)
I never go out, so I think I was never at risk, so I don’t know how my fellow co-habitants felt about it, but I can hardly imagine otherwise than that this must have been an at least slightly frightening and intimidating experience for everyone who lived nearby. Not to mention the people actually targeted by him, although I don’t know any of them.
I don’t know who the offender was. The report that was posted in the building claimed it was some random middle age guy.
These posters are BS and the talk about false accusations is just a pretext to try to make them look like they have something real to discuss. These groups want to go back in time to when the definition of “legitimate rape” was a woman attacked in the bushes by a stranger and she yells and fights and screams for her life. A woman who goes to a private place with a man basically couldn’t be raped. A woman who blacks out can’t be raped. A wife certainly couldn’t be raped. Men being raped (supposedly) didn’t exist, or if they did it was because they were in prison-haha.
That is why there is all the talk about how annoying consent is. They want to move the legal and moral conversation away from consent and push it back to “did she fight hard enough, what was she wearing, what is her character, did she drink too much.” And they sure as hell don’t care about men who have been raped.
“Men’s Rights” is a joke. It’s really about “I (a white privileged man) should be able to get whatever I want when I want it–screw anybody else’s thoughts or feelings.” Textbook sociopathy.
Misery — oh gods, that’s horrible!
I have no kitties to offer, but I do have a tiny new plec! (scale here? That round thing top right is a variety of flake food, smaller than a pencil eraser)
Unimaginative, that thread is particularly ironic given the last, with the expected “Oh, but if you report it you might be ruining someone’s life!” responses in there. And they wonder why reporting doesn’t happen more often?
Argenti, your plec is soooo cute! I had a long-finned bristle-nose plec once, she was spotted and so loveable.
Is it looking at the camera? I have a friend who can always get amazing photos of her cat and I’m certain her cat indulges her by posing for those photos. 🙂
And myes, it’s a horrible tale. I honestly never before felt any emotional connection to victims of sexual assault other than a sort of abstract empathy (it’s not a good quality of me), so I think it’s instructive to have it hit closer to home to remind me of how horrible this is. I think if people were aware of what actually went on in their neighborhoods or at parties they’ve frequented in terms of sexual assault they wouldn’t be so glib in making MRA-type rationalizations. (maybe I’m giving them too much credit)
It just got introduced earlier today and is far too engrossed in all the varieties of algae to give a shit about the camera! (I really hope it likes hair algae, because holy fuck do I have a lot of it!)
SittieKitty — yeah it is! And I’m hoping that since it’s so small, and not really afraid of hands, that I can train it to be hand fed. The one before big cranky would let people (like, everyone who wanted to, not just me) hand feed him.
Dvärghundspossen, I can see where PMS making a person able (or just more able) to be angry could be an empowering experience. Hormones can really have a huge effect, as I found out firsthand when I started taking birth control to get my testosterone levels under control and hopefully make my ovaries work properly. I feel a lot less sudden rage these days, and no longer want to go out and punch all the things/people so much. TBH I really miss that part of me sometimes. That kind of emotion can be very useful, if it’s not constant.
That said, I never missed it until it was gone; I can definitely also see where being easily and often angered can be very tiring. I think it’s just a matter of grass-is-always-greener, really… moderation in all things, etc etc with the platitudes, but whatever your native state is probably just gets tiring and boring after a while, and it’s nice to experience the opposite… Unless the opposite becomes your native state, in which case it’s back to peering over the fence.