Here we go again. Like small children who have just discovered the power of the tantrum, the terrible people at A Voice for Men seem to have realized that the only reliable way for them to get the attention of the world is to act like complete assholes in public. And so some fans of AVFM have decided to bring back the “Don’t Be That Girl” campaign — you know, the witless and misogynistic “parody” of the successful Canadian “Don’t Be That Guy” rape awareness campaign. Now they’re postering in Halifax.
But there’s one difference: this time they’ve put the logos of the real sponsors of the real “Don’t Be That Guy” rape awareness project on their phony posters. (You can see the whole list by downloading one of the pdfs of the real posters on this page.)
So far, two of the organizations listed on their phony posters – the Bryony House shelter for victims of domestic violence and the Halifax Police Department – have made very clear that their logos are being used without permission.
https://twitter.com/BryonyHouse/status/448148862193389568
@Allisomething Tk u for reporting. We're not a sponsor of this campaign and find it deeply troubling. We'll be looking into this further HT
— Halifax_Police (@HfxRegPolice) March 24, 2014
It’s a pretty safe bet that the other organizations whose logos were appropriated feel similarly.
I’d like to encourage anyone who can afford it to follow up on a suggestion from Cloudiah in the comments and donate to Bryony House so that some good can come out of all this.
Now, I’m no expert on Canadian law, but it seems rather unlikely to me that it’s legal to simply stick some organization’s logo on something and pretend that they have endorsed it. Especially when that organization is the police.
Apparently some MRAs disagree with me on that:
https://twitter.com/AVoiceForMen/status/448225043026149376
“Your consent is not required” seems to be the operating assumption of a lot of those drawn to the Men’s Rights movement.
In later tweets, Elam claims that using the logos is legal because of “fair use,” which is not actually a term used in Canadian law, and promises that the “[p]osters will continue, cupcake.”
I guess we will see. Here are several more photos of the posters. There’s more discussion of this in the AgainstMensRights subreddit.
Lots of real comedians around town apparently… pic.twitter.com/P92KmW3I41
— Handsome Adam Barrett (@im_adam_barrett) March 24, 2014
and one more before I vomit everywhere pic.twitter.com/jEJTXSSHXG
— Handsome Adam Barrett (@im_adam_barrett) March 24, 2014
EDITED TO ADD: Elam has now responded to the critics, and promises to bankroll any legal challenges against the posterers. It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t understand why the logos are a problem.
EDIT/CORRECTION: It’s not completely clear that this postering campaign originated with AVFM. It’s pretty clear, though, that it’s supported by AVFM, and that those involved in it are supporters of AVFM. I’ve made a few changes to the headline and first graf to reflect this.
“Just because there’s a demand, you don’t have to offer” – yes, can’t have women offering sex, even if it’s their work. Can’t have any suggestion of agency, any suggestion of women making sexual choices (I’m referring solely to women who do have a choice in the matter re: sex work). No, it all goes back to “your consent is not required,” every time, with these guys. No consent and gods forbid teh menz should have to hand over their precious, precious
bodily fluidsmoney.Love it Shaenon! If anyone lives Paul’s current hometown, please do print that poster out and plaster it all over the place!
Okay, now I really want this to go to trial. I so wish it could be on CourtTV or something. Can you imagine? It would be like those sovereign citizen folks who start ranting about secret bank accounts and admiralty law whenever judges ask them to do something as simple as stating their name.
Prosecutor: “Did you contact the Halifax PD to obtain consent for using their licensed trademark in connection to your campaign?”
Elam: “Your consent is not required! You won’t get away with lying anymore!”
Prosecutor: “According to criminal statutes governing the the use of…”
Elam: “You can’t stop us, cupcake!”
Prosecutor: “Please direct your attention to exhibit A, which is a poster entitled…”
Elam: “I know the word ‘satire’! Also ‘parody’ and ‘fair use’, so you aren’t the boss of me!”
Judge: “Mr Elam, this court would appreciate if you could stop interrupting…”
Elam: “We will no longer tolerate your anti-boner bigotry!”
Judge: “The defendant is remanded in custody. Bailiff?”
Elam: “MISANDRYYYYyyyyy…..”
Hey, Katz? Pierre and Poutine both have their law degrees, yes?
Vis a vis two of the issues in their posters:
1) the other reason there’s a much smaller baby abandonment problem in Canada beside safe, legal, available abortion is that they have comprehensive sex education in the public schools (and when I went there for private school for a year, it was also comprehensive), decent health care, better social safety net for women who do decide to have kids, and I believe their insurance also covers birth control. so a) fewer unwanted pregnancies, b) fewer unwanted births and c) more woman who feel that they can safely raise their children without ending up on the streets.
2) the women are the biggest abusers thing. Looked up the numbers once in an argument with someone on facebook (why are there so many people wrong on the internet?) and it boils down to this. By the strict male vs female percentage of abusers, more women abuse children than men. But if you go by an hour per hour spent with children basis, VASTLY more abuse is done by men. Same thing with child murder. Same thing with sexual abuse. I mean, you can say “Person X had only 2 car accidents in the last five years, but person Y had 3, so Y is clearly the worse driver and a problem.” but if you leave out the fact that Person X drove 100 miles in those 5 years, and person Y drover over 40,000 miles…. it’s a very different picture! The particular argument I was having was about a study that declared, breathlessly that female daycare workers were dangerous because *gasp* 38% of all sexual abuse of children in daycares was done by women! See, women are much bigger sexual abusers than we thought! The study of course left out the fact that in the US (which is where the 38% number came from), over 98% of daycare workers are women. So, 2% of workers were doing 52% of the abuse.
I didn’t realize that “dumping” a baby, generally a profound act of desperation, has anything in common whatsoever with an elective crime like rape. Huh.
Hi, footnotegirl, are you new? Have a Welcome Package, if so!
Those figures for the abuse in childcare centres say it all, don’t they. ::smh::
Not only that, I already have a picture of a courtroom.
It might…if the baby is the product of a rape. Somehow, I get the distinct feeling that the two issues do intersect in their nasty, twisty minds….
Apologies, but I’m uncertain of how to quote other comments. Delurking to say I live in a part of Canada where the original Don’t Be That Guy campaign showed up, and there was a poster along the lines of ‘Just because he’s male doesn’t mean he wants it’ with the image of a woman and a man.
It occurs to me that leaving the url on the bottom “Men ending violence against women” could still be relevant – if you take it to mean them as the men using posters to end violence against women by teaching women how to be better behaved so men weren’t forced to hit them to keep them in line. Convoluted, but consistent with the rest of their abuser logic.
(Rant Engaged. I don’t promise clarity.)
So this has just been bubbling in my mind about the child abuse statistics…
A majority of the child abuse reported is neglect, and I’ve heard (but I couldn’t find the stats on a quick read) reports that said that women were the majority of abusers in neglect cases and men were the majority of abusers in physical and sexual abuse cases.
So the thing about neglect is that it is something that almost by definition is the fault of all the child’s caretakers who are living with the child–or it wouldn’t get to neglect. It isn’t like social services are rounding up the fathers from traditional families who don’t do much of the child care so long as their wives pick up the slack. Abuse, on the other hand, can be conducted by one caretaker acting alone.
There are a lot more single mothers than single fathers, so in those cases, the woman alone is likely to get charged with neglect–since the father wasn’t living with the child.
So women are more likely to be charged with neglect is likely a response to the fact that women are more likely to be single parents and not proof in any way that women are worse parents. They are just more likely to be actively parenting.
wordsp1nner,
I think you make some good points, as does footnotegirl above. Women are primary (and secondary) caregivers the vast majority of the time. More interactions allow more opportunities.
But I hesitate to take it too far. Women do abuse children in all ways: neglect, physical, emotional and sexual. We keep insisting, correctly, that we do not think all men are rapists and if it’s not about you, don’t make it about you. I don’t want to minimize the awfulness of abuse that IS committed by women.
It’s just a piss-poor analogy on their part. The don’t be that guy campaign turned around onto women as a don’t be that girl campaign directed against child abuse, infant abandonment, shoplifting and prostitution is just false equivalence all around.
We’ve talked about it on this thread, and I think there was another recent thread. The equivalent campaign directed towards women also educates them about consent and sexual assault. Something you would think people concerned with men’s right’s would be all for, but somehow they aren’t.
@katz, that courtroom needs more use.
oops, extra apostrophes….time for bed. rights. not right’s.
@eli, Fair point. When MRAs post shit that argues that women are terrible, the natural reaction is to argue against that.
The truth is that women are just as bad as men, in equal measures. As a feminist, I argue that women aren’t better than men — just not worse. MRAs argue, often, that women are worse than men. I should remember not to bend the stick in the same direction as MRAs.
Still, “Don’t be that guy” is not a campaign that targets all men — just the subset of men who are rapists. But everyone could use educating on the “how to be a decent human being” front.
*Shudder* I didn’t click the link, just read the part of the quote that the link is in, and I realized I’d rather have Paul Elam call me “c*nt” than “cupcake.”
For the REAL stats on who is more likely to abuse a child – a man or a woman – Go to this url:
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html#soulhttp://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/statistics.html
The mra and their policy of co-opting the work of other people and twisting it to serve their interests just tells me that these guys have the maturity of a 5 year old.
And the last poster with the prostitute apparently magically appeared right after my last comment. Reminds me instantly of the quote from that University woman who was in porn, saying something about pointing with one hand and jerking off with the other. Simultaneously demanding it and deriding it.
@cloudiah. I know, we all want to push back against them, because we know they’re arguing in bad faith. And we can all use “be a better human” education.
But I don’t really know much about women committing child abuse. I’d like to, but my google search just gave me a bunch of links to AVfM 🙁
That’s why it kinda helps to just approach such with “humans – in general – suck.” It’s misanthropic, to be sure, but the fact is being a terrible person has no one nationality or ethnicity or creed or gender or sexual orientation. It’s helpful to remember so when having a negative experience with anyone from a specific group, you don’t end up projecting it onto all others who also happen to be apart of it.
MRAs obviously haven’t considered such and thus have an unhealthy fixation on hating women. The fact they think all women are utterly, yet think all men are essentially “good”, means they’re outright ignoring the fact plenty of terrible things happen due to men. That’s why they employ conspiracy theories to explain how the top leaders in finance and politics are men, but somehow aren’t in control…though they totally are.
*utterly terrible.
Didn’t know how I forgot to write that down…
Oops, the sex worker poster was up all along, my computer was just slow to load the last image before I got to the comments section.
Eli,
2. “It’s pointless and ridiculous to blame rape specifically on men, just like it would be pointless and ridiculous to blame these XYZ crimes specifically on women.”
I think it could be read this way, not that most MRAs necessarily do. Certainly this is how it would work as “parody”, albeit extremely unclear parody appropriating serious issues for petty misogyny, spiced with copyright infringement.
1. “So rape is mostly a male crime, but these XYZ, which are totally serious problems, are mostly female crimes, so checkmate feminists.”
Yes, many of them willfully misunderstood the original posters as saying “all men are rapists” to get better grounds for their outrage at anti-rape message. After some backtracking, it boiled back to “most rapists are men”, which of course is even more petty to complain about, if less dishonest.
Reblogged this on auguries14.
eli, you might like to look at this. It is but one of a number of sites dealing with the issue of child abuse.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html#soulhttp://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/statistics.html