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?
Hmmm…did you get poison oak???
@yaoi huntress earth
“The more I’ve been here, the more I see various classes of MRAs: Disgruntled “Nice Guy”, The Shock Jock, Pick-Up Artist (PUA), Bitter Divorcee, MGTOW, Entitled White Guy and FeMRAs.”
And many, with the exception of FeMRAs, are all six rolled into one.
@leatapp
“Misogynist Rape Advocates”
Spot on! I’m going to use this in the future. Thanks!
Lana, how dare you falsely accuse toxicodendron diversilobum (poison oak) of infecting me.
Typical feminist.
XD
P.S. What great comments, all.
As I said a couple of days ago, this is a new site for me. For about 2 years or so, on a popular news site, I have been exposed to this completely ridiculous, ridiculously inhumane, and incomprehensible to me phenomenon of American men hating women in general and feminists in particular. (I’m not American-born and have never seen anything like this.)
I had no idea where this vileness was coming from, or that it had a name (MRM, MRA), but became educated of its existence as time progressed (and my shock and disdain for it deepened). It started to rob off on me, I must say — one cannot be exposed to this degree of hateful misogyny and not be affected by it somehow. And then just in time, I found Manboobz — yay!
I can’t tell you what a relief it is to find out that you all exist. Bless you, David, and fellow manbooberz, for your decency, and normalcy, and a desire to speak out against the evil of MRA’s misogyny.
@Ally S
They don’t have a deadline. The site they have at the moment will suffice, it’s just that it’s pure html and they have to update it by hand. Very tedious.
You don’t have to know any wordpress at all. If we were to work on it, I’d show you how I do it. I know what it’s like to get thrown in the deep end with new software/systems and a deadline. Horrible.
If you don’t want to do it, that is cool. You don’t need a reason. 🙂 Just wanted to say that it would be a fully supported, laid back project and doesn’t need to be started right away.
Emma, did you get a welcome package yet?
And I still respect men, as a general group (although I don’t respect some specific ones): http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/9604172/Man-filmed-urinating-on-holocaust-memorial
Yes, cloudiah, I did, from kittehserf — thank you!
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to master the links and quotes, but, who knows, maybe I will, with time. Stranger things have happened. (Nah, not really, but it sounds encouraging. ;))
That horse becoming Pope, for one.
“Teach your sons to respect women and not beat them.”
“OMG feminists are so disrespectful and abusive to men!!!!”
O rly? Pleaz ‘slpain. This should be fun.
@Kim
I’m glad to hear it’s not as stressful as I thought it’d be. And I’ve actually heard that WP is easy to learn. So I’ll consider it after all. If you don’t mind, can you share your email address with me (if you don’t want to do so publicly, you can just email me at aaliyahsyed94[at]gmail[dot]com)?
Sweeping generalizations galore. And the reason we focus on respecting women is that we are assuming that it is women who aren’t respected because of their gender, not men.
Also, since when is it bigoted to criticize an individual man for reasons that have nothing to do with his gender? =S
You know, DaPoet was gone from the comments section here for a looooooooong time — and unsurprisingly, I didn’t miss him at all.
I’m disappointed by those women. I would think by now they would’ve learn how to pee standing up, lol.
Or perhaps MRAs are just upset because patriarchal society puts pressure on them to pee standing up, hence wearing out their knees faster than women, hence slipping at work and dying of an accident at an older age?
>taps foot, awaiting examples of this actually happening…<
…not to mention hard evidence that feminists are responsible for all this spurious man-abuse.
I’d have to say I think the age of the young man in the original poster is exactly right. We don’t have to worry only about how children, both girls and boys, are raised by their families.
Any schoolteacher, anyone at all really, who has to deal with year 8-9-10 boys knows that the peer pressure to be vulgar, crude and generally unpleasant is pretty strong. These boys are also funny as a fit and often very kind and thoughtful individuals – but in groups they can be completely, brazenly horrible.
Many boys who wouldn’t dare say or do disrespectful things within sight or hearing of either parent can easily get sucked into accepting, even expressing, vile rubbish if that’s the language and attitude of the group they happen to belong to. Having a sign like that on the bus stop where a group like this may congregate before or after school is a good move. As a conversation starter or as a reinforcement backing up the one or two in a group who’ve not yet found the words to object to the prevailing nastiness.
“If feminists truly wanted men to respect women then they would insist that men be treated with respect as well instead of actively promoting disrespect for the male gender both individually and collectively. Instead today’s average female is more than likely to not only disrespect men but will not hesitate to abuse the men she comes in contact with whenever it suits her”
If it’s the norm for females to be abusing men I feel like I might have witnessed a little of that by now.
“A man doesn’t automatically get my respect. He has to get down in the dirt and beg for it.”
-Jack Handy
Sorry, the MRA stance on this reminds me of an old Jack Handy quote. Except I don’t think this is what he meant…
Regarding misuse of “respect” – I once had this conversation with a former colleague. It seems some people really do get confused about the meaning, or cite the trope without understanding it:
He: I believe respect has to be earned.
Me: I mean the respect you give to everyone, as human beings.
He: …oh. Yeah. I agree with THAT.
“I’ve been in worse states than that but I applause them for there efforts what can I say drunks got to stick together.”
So, two St. Patrick’s days ago I freaked big time (oh PTSD, how fun you are!) and requested my pharm student let me stay over. Now, getting there meant walking through a college campus at like 11 pm. On St. Patrick’s day. I was expecting to end up more triggered by very drunk girls with far less drunk guys and wanting to scream at them about what could happen. Instead I saw lots, and lots, and LOTS, of groups of drunk girls, some tipsy couples but clearly going together all hand in hand and joking and still walking fine and have fun guys! I too was quite pleased that, as far as I saw, all the clearly flat out drunk girls were with other girls (I guess most were young adults, not girls, but to my 26 year old eyes they all looked so young, making me extra glad they were sticking together)
As for the wording of the poster, I do think having a much younger boy, and different wording would be better. Maybe more like “you tell him to eat his vegetables, you tell him to do his homework, do you tell him to respect women?” (Though the needing to be told to eat veggies and needing to be told to do homework age range doesn’t overlap much does it?)
“There was a recent anti-DV campaign that featured babies. The MRAs completely lost their shit over it. Elam was trying to raise money to hire a private detective to dig up dirt on one of the guys involved in it.”
Someone remind me how they aren’t the abusers lobby?
“A lot of crazy dickwads” — six unicorns, four horses, apples from Falconer, carrots from Shaun and hay and sugar cubes from Rahu. Timer reset to 8pm.
Ally — I can answer WP questions if you need me to. It’s really just a homebrew PHP though, so if you know basic PHP, you’ll pick it up quick.
@leatapp – nail. head. on. 🙂
@kittehserf – congratulations!!
Thanks, hermionesotter!
Kiwi Girl, good to see you! Is that a new kitty gravatar?
@auggziliary
That’s just it. In MRAland, DV against women isn’t a problem. Since it couldn’t actually be about DV (which only affects men), I think they interpreted “respect” as “chivalry.” That’s probably why they chose a picture of drunk women peeing–they’re unladylike and thus not deserving of bus seats/door holding.