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?
What is it with hate groups and mixing up ‘recognition’ respect and ‘appraisal’ respect? It’s almost as if they have a vested interest in making disingenuous, equivocating arguments to make basic human rights seem like a complicated issue…
kittehserf, yes, I finally went ahead when the instructions link was posted upthread. And congratulations on the anniversay.
We’ve just been out having done a -slow- 5km walk playing Ingress. 🙂
Thanks, Kiwi Girl!
Ingress sounds way too complicated for me! I just Googled it and was all Wha? (Mind you in this heat figuring out things like “What day is it?” is enough to reduce my brain to sludge.)
Ingress sounds like a good way to keep fit and see places, though, apart from the fun of the game. 🙂
Oh my fucking GOD if I had a dollar for every time I have seen an intoxicated man pissing in public I would be able to buy a Playstation 4. This one time I was even forced to walk in the street to avoid a huge puddle some dumb ass was making across the sidewalk. On the other hand, I have never seen a woman do what those women are doing in the photo. I have only ever seen women peeing outside while camping. Does this mean I don’t have to respect men?
The trouble with a lot of men today is that women are questioning their logic and the reasons why they do/say certain things and they don’t like it one bit. God I can remember in the 80s having to respect my male bosses, agree with them when I thought they were wrong etc etc and was treated like a silly, little girl. They were far superior to me and to my shame I actually believed they were better than me.
Thankfully that’s been knocked on the head and I’ve come to my senses! They hate it when we question them or want examples of the things they say. They are terrified because they no longer have the control they used to have over us and I really believe they wish it was like the old days when we weren’t allowed to say a darn word or leave the house and they had the LAST WORD. Before I forget I can remember in one office where I worked a guy who was my boss actually slapped me on the backside as I was going up the stairs and all I could do was give a nervous laugh! I hated myself for that. I should’ve given him a right mouthful. Another man who was one of the big bosses had too much to drink one lunch time and cornered me behind the photocopier trying to grope and kiss me. Their behaviour was completely out of order and their opinion of women was terrible. Like all we could do was type and we were all just there as their play thing/something to keep them amused and to speak down to.
It just makes me sick when they expect women to earn their respect when many of them behave like sexist, fucking baboons. The old days are gone. Deal with it. Doesn’t it even make them feel ashamed that they thought women were beneath them? Seems many of them still do on that ridiculous website of theirs. Rant over lol.
I respect people automatically until they let me down as a result of their own poor judgement. Respect isn’t earned, it’s lost.
And does Elam really think that there’s a pre-teenage boy (or several) just off camera in the second photo? Because that’s the clear implication of what he’s saying.
It seems like raging against PSA posters via Photoshop is the fourth most popular form of MRA activism, behind advocacy via comment boards, internet harrassment, and rage blogging.
The MRAs who complain that Manboobz misrepresents their “movement” need to reveal to the world all the proactive substantial MRA activism that is being done in secrecy under the cloak of darkness.
Offtopic: Just in case David needs to expand the boob-roll:
https://www.facebook.com/AnitWhiteKnightCoalition/timeline
(I found this while looking for incoming links – someone there posted a link to RW’s article on Cathy Brennan)
@Kitteh
Congrats!
@JoJo
Love the Jack Handy quote. Love Jack Handy.
@Emma Welcome and glad you found out about it :). You will quickly see that MRAs think that sitting around on mainstream news sites like C**, all day it seems, and writing horrible comments, downvoting comments that go against their views and upvoting MRA comments (mostly anonymously and less so unanonymously) on any article that has anything to do with women is ACTIVISM in its highest form.
It is really a sign of how desparate they are to be seen as the majority view. I used to get angry about their preeminence, but I soon realized that there wasn’t a point. If I ever comment anymore I leave my bit and go. Unlike them, I don’t need to dedicate my life to “comment activism” to try and convince myself that Internet comments are somehow representative of the average person’s views.
It is sad that they jump in and ruin any reasonable discussions you might want to have, though. There are reasonable people at C** and I’ve had some nice discussions on other topics there.
White supremecists and transphobics do the same thing on the same site (though I am pretty sure the latter overlaps with MRAs and isn’t a concentrated movement). Kind of like supporters of a certain politician in 2008 and 2012, come to think of it…
MRAs are utterly transfixed with women who are sexually desirable (according to unimaginative patriarchal narratives). It is remarkable… At once obvious yet also unclear, much like the often scatalogical profile names and puerile slogans they coin.
A bizarre group of oddballs.
Happy anniversary Kittehs! There needs to be more honey and cuddles in this world!
Even shorter Paul Elam: “I want to abuse women.” The rest is just window dressing.
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.
Absolutely true. In the most misogynistic cultures women don’t even appear in public without being covered from head to toe, they don’t talk and they barely exist to serve every whim of their male relatives and yet they receive the most horrendous and violent treatement. It’s also interesting to notice how those men always rationalize that somehow it was the woman’s fault and she deserved it. The point is if someone is taught to hate and abuse you it doesn’t matter what you actually do.
Paul Fucking Elam in a nutshell: Why can’t I abuse women? Why can’t I rape drunk girls? MISANDRY!!!
@Z, Is it wrong that I’m just amused that they spelled their own name wrong in their URL?
But that would require us to view women as people in the first place…
We also have to remember they go by different definitions of respect and abuse when it comes to women disrespecting /abusing men.
Remember ….women controlling the vagina supply is tantamount to a hate crime.
MRAs are confused. They assume they are disliked and disrespected because they are men. In actuality they are disliked and disrespected because they are turdlets. I hope “today’s average female” person (I’ll just add that for them) is very likely to disrespect MRAs. I hope the same for today’s average male person.
Happy Anniversary, kittehserf! 😀 It always makes me happy when I hear about loving couples ^__^
Btw… is this “pee week”? Is there a theme going on in MRM world?
I am always late in the comments section… but as you all have mentioned, I also believe that “respect has to be earned” is a big pile of crap. One has to respect others regardless. Why do women and other groups have to “earn” respect? It is indeed dehumanizing.
I believe the first thing would be for women to be recognized as people, as human beings. Before that, there is a long road ahead. I remember one of the things that touched me the most about feminism a long time ago was a poster that said “Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings”. It made me think a lot… back then, I did not consider myself a feminist, mainly because, in reality, I had no idea what Feminism really was. So that poster was really significant for me on this journey.
“Respect has to be earned” has been spouted so much by people who are being outright hateful to me that I’ve begun to identify it as the phrase of a person who doesn’t want to admit that they’re being an asshole, so they try and project their assholery onto the other person in the conversation. So, I definitely agree with you, Pineapple. I might even go so far as to say that respect should be the default, and DISRESPECT is the thing that should be earned – on an individual basis.
“Btw… is this “pee week”? Is there a theme going on in MRM world?”
Heh. Astute observation there. 🙂
Also, I would like to say in my nearly 40 years on the planet I have never, ever seen three young white blond women peeing on what appears to be a train station floor (maybe) together. Although I will grant that it’s most likely happened somewhere. I doubt most young boys see if with much frequency, though.
Actually I have never seen three people of any kind peeing on a public floor together. I have seen a number of people peeing in public but it seems like it’s usually a solo activity.
Grumpycat – it’s currently only in the Olympics as a solo sport, but there’s increasing support for adding it as a team activity. Mixed doubles would be exciting.
Also, respect is apparently only guaranteed by the foresight of having been born white, male, cis and heterosexual. All others must earn it (if possible).