If you live in New York state, you may have seen the poster above plastered on a bus shelter; or you may have seen it posted somewhere on the internet. The message is pretty simple, and it’s sad that it has to be said: kids are pretty impressionable, so teach your sons to treat women with basic respect.
The purpose of the ad campaign, sponsored by the New York state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, is pretty clear as well: teaching boys respect for women lessens the chances that they will abuse women as adults.
Numerous studies have found that men with sexist attitudes towards women are more likely to try to control their wives or girlfriends with physical abuse. Indeed, one recent study even found that brief exposure to sexist jokes made men more inclined to brush off violence against women, at least amongst men with sexist attitudes to begin with.
Speaking of which, the sexist jokes over at A Voice for Men have unveiled a hilarious new “meme,” which just happens to be inspired by the “awaiting instructions” PSAs we’ve been discussing. And here it is:
The logic here is airtight: because some women get drunk and urinate in public, women don’t deserve respect.
I guess men never get drunk and urinate in public, or ever do anything vaguely embarrassing that gets caught on camera?
Is it really asking too much to respect people as people, foibles and all?
Well, that makes perfect sense. If A woman drinks and publicly pees, women aren’t entitled to common decency!
Misandry is okay because Paul Elam. Checkmate, dudebros.
Of course men can’t respect women! Because everything’s a zero-sum game, and respecting women at all, ever, means men aren’t getting the
blowjobsfree housekeepingobedience from fear of violencerespect that’s their right.Really, because that’s not at all the message I’m getting from the poster. The message I’m getting from this poster is that we should respect people for what’s between their ears, not what’s what’s between their legs. That’s literally all it’s saying. Nowhere on the poster does it say that women do not deserve respect, nor does it say that men don’t do stupid things that warrant not being respected.
BTW: Am I the only one who finds it a little weird how the kid on the poster has a shirt on that says “Awaiting Instructions” like he’s some sort of mindless drone or a robot of some kind?
At Elam’s age if he knows many/any women who do stuff like that he’s a creeper, because how many women in his age range go out, get wasted, and end up peeing in alleyways with their mates? Maybe if he wasn’t so fixated on college girls that would help (both him and the girls who would no longer have to deal with his creepy obsession with their behavior).
If getting drunk and peeing in public is the great barrier to attaining basic respect, maybe we DO need a men’s rights movement after all.
It’s a common theme I’ve noticed in the manosphere & other similar places, a call for respect for women (or a race or a sexual orientation) is usually met with “people have to EARN respect! Nobody deserves my respect!” and it always baffles me. Are we working off different definitions of the word or do they seriously believe human beings aren’t worthy of basic respect unless they’ve proven some kind of specialness by jumping through whatever behavioral hoop the observer demands? I seriously do not get this.
Charlotte, these posters are part of an anti domestic violence campaign. The idea is that you should teach boys to treat women with basic respect, not treat them as inferior beings to men who deserve to be beaten up when they “misbehave.” It’s not about putting women on a pedastal or woirshipping them because of their vaginas or whatever else Elam thinks or pretends that it is.
Second, the added text suggests that it would be ok for the boy not to respect women if all the women he knew acted like this. It also seems to suggest that this is an actual possibility — and indeed enough of a regular occurence that this is probably why boys don’t respect women. Really? His grandmothers act like this?
So… drunk means it’s OK to disrespect women? Hmmm…. where have I heard that before?
Also, the “awaiting instructions” line might be a bit creepy, but the point of it is simply that kids are impressionable. And again this relates back to domestic violence. Virtually everyone who studies DV, including those who aren’t feminist, believes that the family dynamics/attitudes, etc that kids are exposed to in their early years affects their behavior a great deal when they’re older.
I appreciate what the campaign is trying to do, but it is a copy writing fail. The word respect is too ambiguous, and their target audience are the ones most likely to interpret it exactly the wrong way.
@Charlotte
“Respect Women” in the context of the original poster simply means “women are not any less worthy of respect just because they’re women.” That is to say, don’t tell your kids “how many women does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” jokes, etc.
AVFHM misses the point completely; they interpret the poster to be saying something like “respect all women regardless of their behavior,” which is of course absurd. Like they do pretty much all the time, they’re attacking a strawhumanman.
Kids absorb a lot of stuff from their parents and other adults. You knew that, right?
Charlotte: “Nowhere on the poster does it say that women do not deserve respect”
No, it doesn’t say it. It implies it
And you’re right, CassandraSays, he is always fixated on young women. Like their behaviour represents all of women. What is up with that? Maybe he doesn’t acknowledge women over 25 exist (fucking sweet).
Ninja’d by David.
Good of you to blur out the faces.
I think “treat women as people” is better copy than “respect women”. It’s not ambiguous and has a more similar structure to the other sayings.
What Paul Elam is suggesting is total bullshit, men who disrespect women don’t do it because women aren’t deserving of respect, it’s because they are taught they shouldn’t or don’t have to respect them, period. Women are homo sapiens like men, so yeah we do dumb and/or disgusting things sometimes, although I have no idea how peeing in public is akin to deserving to be disrespected. I have peed in alleyways along with the guys I was with, yeah it’s not “polite” behaviour but goddamnit if you leave the bar at close and have an hour trip home with no washrooms in sight WTF are you going to do? I’d rather not piss myself, thank you very much. Somehow men peeing in public is not at all regarded as evil behaviour, it’s just something they do.
Charlotte it is cute you are trying to make this poster seem less vile than it really is. But come on, that is not what this poster is doing. Also, telling people to have respect simply means basic human compassion and understanding. So, you can still find a person’s behaviour unpleasant but realize they deserve your respect because they are human beings. Respect doesn’t mean you have to worship them or treat them like royalty, it just means accept that people are flawed and don’t deserve to be abused. Perhaps if we used different terminology that simple message might be more clear to the dopes over at AVFM.
So does this mean we can now have a pass to disrespect all men because some drunken college boys have a tendency to puke all over themselves and roll in their own shit and piss?
I have seen this..hell…I’ve done it in college.
Charlotte, imagine the screams from AVfM if someone suggested that men as a class shouldn’t get basic respect because some men get drunk and piss in the street. Doesn’t it strike you that Elam’s making treating women with respect – ie. basic decency – contingent on behaving in a way he approves of, while not ever suggesting the same for men?
There’s also the little point that women as a class get nothing like the automatic respect men do, even before you get to the matter of violence against us. Surely you’re aware of that?
@ Robert LOL yeah if we projected the behaviour of frat boys onto the entire male population it wouldn’t be pretty. I think some of the stuff that young people do is a bit troubling, mostly because of personal safety and what not, but it’s not as bad as AVFM likes to make it out to be, nor does it reflect the entire population.
@Kim
Yeah, but there’s that Aretha Franklin song. Emotional resonance is generally preferred to clarity in advertising. “Respect” is vague, but feels better.
This is one of the reasons that all marketing people will be forced into reeducation camps once the revolution comes.
@ Kim I agree, I think respect gets confused with “treat them better than everyone else” (even though that’s not what it means)
This one man misbehaves. Women misbehave.
This one man can’t drive. Women can’t drive.
This one man can’t do math. Women can’t do math.
This one man doesn’t deserve respect. Women don’t deserve respect.
And so on and so forth.
@Charlotte On my planet it is customary to give our children instructions because our children tend to be naive and inexperience in the ways of world and they tend to need guidance, whereas if they are denied instruction and guidance they tend to err and at times get into deep shit.
How is it on your planet?
I also can’t fathom how they don’t realize just how asinine posters like this make their “movement” look like to the wider public.
I’ve been in worse states than that but I applause them for there efforts what can I say drunks got to stick together.
I suspect its a lack of life experience that causes the members of AVFM to pass judgement so swiftly on those young women.