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.
But some people love fluffy, yippy little dogs. Nobody loves Mr. blog herpes – if anyone did he wouldn’t do what he does.
All hail the dark lord
Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. Psalms 34:13-14
I dunno… twisting bible verses to suit your purposes can be kinda fun. It’s not like it takes any effort.
Coming late to the party, but regarding all the talk of male survivors as inspired by LBT’s comments: I’m a male survivor too, of two separate instances, and I’ve had a whole slew of appalling things said to me in the name of feminism. “That doesn’t count.” “The only reason you’re upset about it is because of homophobia.” “Why are you talking about this when women go through worse every day?” (THAT one did a number on me, because then I felt like I was hurting all women just by having been raped.) Most of these people were just either awful or kind of crazy, but at least one was someone who just got upset when triggered about her own abuse and had a huge defensive reaction.
At first, I was worried that the occasional bad experience like this drives men to the MRM, but that’s asinine. If you talk to a jerk feminist, and you attribute the things she says to her feminism and not to her jerkiness, you probably were MRM-bound anyway.
Kind of plays back to the original topic of the post, too. If you have a hammer, then everything is a nail. If you attach your self-identity to a fictional, impossible-to-achieve concept of masculinity that is based on unapologetic aggression, dominance, and sexuality, then everything is trying to emasculate you.
True about the dogs, Cassandra! The “yappy little pest” part certainly fits him, though.
That baby’s learning a very important lesson: your role is to entertain the furrinati, human, and don’t you forget it.
There’s also the question of where you’d find a non-jerk MRA to talk to about your experiences as a victim. To me the key difference isn’t that there are no feminists who’re assholes – of course there are, because feminists are people – it’s that there don’t appear to be any non-asshole MRAs at all.
tedthefed – internet hugs, if they’re wanted! 🙁
tedthefed, 🙁 Hugs if you want them.
I agree that people who choose to say “I had a bad experience with a member of X group, therefore ALL members of X group are like that and I hate them” were likely already believing all members of X group were like that and were just looking for an excuse to justify that hatred. It’s like how all minorities are supposed to represent their “group”. If people hate feminists because of a bad experience with feminism, they already hated feminists and just wanted an excuse to justify that feeling (same with hating women, PoC, lower socioeconomic class, trans*, non-straight, non-able-bodied, non-neurotypical, ect people).
Internet hugs to tedthefed, the other survivors here, and anyone else who wants one.
“I don’t mean to sound like an ass, but this “research” the MRM is touting as “evidence” of wide-spread false accusations of rape is… really shit.”
I hereby bestow my blessing upon thee to sound like an ass with regards to horrible methodology!
Cassandra, I heard somewhere (can’t remember where now) that there was a men’s movement that specifically denounced being associated with the MRM despite having the same “pet projects” because they a) actually do good work toward diminishing the issues, and b) think the MRM is like a supremacist group and think they’re hyperbolic and harmful toward men. Kinda cool, I’d throw my support behind men who were like that.
Argenti, I’d heard the 98% thing too, but that’s, afaik, based on reported figures in some developing countries where there are about a hundred different things required to press charges and get to trial and anything that doesn’t end in conviction is considered “false”. I think that’s on the wiki page about false rape accusations. The most quoted figure I’ve heard (that actually sounds legitimate) is 2.2-6.8%.
I had an interesting argument about this the other day, about how stats aren’t at all useful in this kind of discussion because it’s like tacitly admitting that there’s a “threshold” below which rape (and false rape accusations) are acceptable, when even one rape is despicable and should be taken as a serious issue. It was an interesting perspective I hadn’t thought about before, but I didn’t think it addressed the issue of rape culture being so pervasive, and I’m jaded by my knowledge that my friend is silly and believes if you treat everyone equally then people will be equal and that you should always focus on the very worst thing ever because it’s worsetest. This is a viewpoint I find naive and lacking, so I’m inclined to dismiss him even though I can’t articulate my objections to it very well. Then, unsurprisingly, after about an hour’s debate on the topic, he said he understood my point but then said he was just helping me to be able to better defend my point and I told him to go to hell.
Which is how most of our discussions end because he gets what I’m saying, he’s just being an ass and playing devil’s advocate. One of the many reasons I strongly desire to tell him I’m a survivor (of a friend of his actually (in part)), so he’ll be a little more sensitive, and the primary reason I will never tell him that.
Urgh, the sort who treats things as an intellectual game for him to play. Never occurs to them that they might be talking to someone who’s survived it, and they’re not usually even talking insensitively but in good faith, ie. wanting to help but going about it the wrong way. It’s just “I’m so clever” wankery.
Have you tried telling him flat out that the fact that he does that makes you enjoy being around him less, and that if that trend continues you may eventually not want to be around him at all?
Thanks for the support, folks!
Y’know, it occurs to me: One really dismissive stereotype about feminists (and the same goes for any progressive group) is that it’s a total hive-mind. Thus, if a non-feminist reads one “feminist” point of view that’s totally full of shit, pointing that out somehow means you’re lost to the cause forever. Which is BIZARRE, because you’d think at some point in their life they’d have been in a room that has two feminists in it.
Here’s the other thing about false accusations that always confuses me: Yes yes, I get the Kafkaesque nightmare of an innocent man hounded by a terrifying system, but who are these Irene Adlers not only falsely accusing but creating evidence that gets the guys arrested, much less convicted? Do MRM people seriously have to resort to nutso conspiracy theory where prosecutors, police, and judges decide that the accused no longer have rights if it’s a rape accusation? I have my own problems with the system, believe me, but I am aware that, you know, accusations don’t automatically result in immediate jail time?
Bleh. I guess if you can discern no difference between a man not having sex once and his testicles being cut off, you create narratives to support it.
I’ve been around lots of different political groups and never encountered another one that’s as prone to disagreement as feminists. There’s a reason we use herding cats as a metaphor for how difficult it is to arrive at a consensus on anything.
tedthefed, don’t go asking MRAs to produce facts or evidence! Anything except total acceptance of their assfax is MISANDRY!
Argh, I enjoy devil’s advocate but goddamned do you prefix it with “to play devil’s adovacate” or such and STFU when asked to stop!
And yeah, one rape is too many, and it’s serious, etc, but thus pfft to stats? No. In part because it’s impossible to go from 1 in 5~ women will be raped in their lifetime to nope, none, ever without middle steps. Steps which require actions, campaigns, research into their effectiveness, etc. Then you can say, for example, that “don’t be that guy” has reduced rape by x% which means y women didn’t get raped. And, oh hey, that’s y cases of Bad Bad Thing averted.
Philosophically I get the point, practically, it’s stupid. Numbers, statistics, help people get a sense of scale, and some perspective. For example, if we treated every trans* suicide (attempt) as a single incident, one horri-bad thing, and says that applying statistics would diminish that person’s suffering…well, you miss that nearly half of trans* people attempt suicide.
Hell, even the flip side, where the Bad Thing isn’t culturally pervasive, stats help put people’s fears in perspective. Shark attacks for example. We treat them as HORRIBLE THING, which they are, but they’re really quite rare.
In summary, no, I don’t think applying statistics inherently means saying that some level of Bad Thing is acceptable, so much as showing how unacceptable the current level of Bad Thing is (or, in some cases, acceptable, as yeah, shark attacks are going to happen unless we hunt sharks to extinction and the rare attack is an acceptable risk if the “solution” is wiping out an entire family of creatures). Of course, that paranthetical about acceptable risks doesn’t apply to Bad Things caused by humans being willfully evil, but shit like sharks, car accidents, nature being cranky, results of choices that only affect you.
Risk assessment, it be complex!
Cassandra, yeah, I’ve told him. There gets to a point in the conversation every so often where I literally tell him he needs to go away right now or we won’t be friends anymore. He respects that and leaves and never brings it up again. Our friendship is …odd I guess, he’s like my brother and it would take a lot for me to just walk away from him forever, but there are times when I’m legitimately upset to the point where I would. To his credit, he recognizes when he’s done it, and a) leaves to give me space, even if he doesn’t understand it he always respects my telling him he has to go away right now, and b) makes amends after he feels that I’ve been able to process it a bit and I’ll be able to stand talking to him again. He also thinks about what I’ve said a bit more and he’s slowly coming around to the idea that maybe things aren’t as easy/equal as he’d like to think they are.
Kitteh, yeah, he’s definitely got that smarmy thing going on. He also generally starts in good faith, trying hard to articulate his points – which he fails to realize, generally, that I actually understand, I just think he’s wrong because I see things in a more meta light in that society has two separate things, the institutional and the individual and he only focuses on the individual and doesn’t understand the institutional.
This isn’t a dissertation!
…and that’s real
That was the most frustrating thing about the stupid popehat thread, the insistence that performing threat assessment = assuming that threatened thing is definitely about to happen. Like, yeah, it must be nice not to have to worry about this stuff, but sorry to burst your privilege bubble, the reality is that bad stuff does sometimes happen, and the most frequent targets of bad stuff have to take that into account. This is not the same thing as assuming it’s about to happen, right now, for sure, holy shit you’re so paranoid!
The fact that men who have been targeted, even once, usually get it afterwards convinces me that this really is a privilege issue.
Argenti, I like that! I’m going to use that shark attack thing next time it’s brought up. I think the middle steps are important, and I think that he believes that stats can be used to “prove” just about anything? This is his primary abhorrence of it I guess. Which basically makes him think that either side is wrong/reactionary and makes him dismiss what anyone says. Otoh, I dunno if he has any real experience with feminist writing beyond Reddit, so uh… I take everything he “hears” with a grain (a grain the size of a boulder) of salt.
On an off-topic for this post but kinda on-topic for the site in general note, found this on r/againstmensrights on Reddit:
http://io9.com/the-rise-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-douchebag-757550990
Article includes a brief summary of some prominent evolutionary psychologists’ shoddy research and making of douchey statements, most recently, Geoffrey Miller, who Tweeted an offensive message to obese PhD applicants, then deleted it and claimed he was doing it as part of a research project, which the University of New Mexico where he works investigated and said wasn’t the case at all. The last part of the article also mentions the overlap between evo psych theories and men’s rights/pua talking points.
Right, Popehat thread. I was trying to get through that… ::goes back to that attempt:: Totally gonna get distracted again, I know it, but only because a) omg boring troll is boring, and b) people hearing/reading only what they want to hear/read and not what’s actually said/typed and seeming to not realize what the topic actually is is annoying as fuck. It’s the reason why I’ll always try to explain 3-4 times, before stopping the conversation and asking someone wtf they think we’re talking about so I can clarify my refutation and understand the direction I need to take to actually have a productive conversation.
I must also add that “Kanin” means “bunny” in Swedish.
Part of the irritation is that I don’t think the problem is them not being able to understand, it’s them semi-consciously attempting to invoke their privilege in an attempt to shut down the conversation because it’s getting uncomfortable. Men aren’t the only people who do this, white women do it during conversations about race too, and it always makes me want to stop and say “look, I know you’re not this stupid, and are you sure that you want me to assume that you are?”.
Like the whole omg you’re trying to destroy male sexuality thing, that’s one part actual paranoia/not getting it and 9 parts deliberate attempt to dodge the issue.