Yes, MRAs, you’re right: Teaching men not to rape IS like teaching drivers not to run people over.
Where you go wrong is in assuming that teaching people either of these things is ridiculous. Learning about consent is a good thing for men, and for women. So is learning to drive before you get behind the wheel.
That’s why driver’s ed classes — which generally promote a “no hitting people with your car” doctrine — are a standard part of the high school curriculum, and why would-be drivers have to take a driver’s test before they get their licence. Running people over during the test itself is generally frowned upon, and may preclude you from passing it.
Should we assume that MRAs would also prefer it if men didn’t have to pass driver’s test in order to drive? Are they so insulted by the notion of anyone telling them what to do that we should abandon any and all moral and practical teachings aimed at boys and men?
Are they still pissed off at their mothers (and/or fathers) for insisting, when they were young boys, that they not run around punching people? Are they still angry that their parents forced them to start using the toilet instead of shitting their pants?
I suppose these questions are better left up to the professionals.
In the meantime, here are a couple more iterations of this ridiculous meme. The first one I found on AVFM’s Facebook page a while ago. I don’t remember where I found the other one.
Damnit, KSRay, you stole my joke! Get out of my head ;P
Teaching men not to rape is like banana toothpaste dog groomer vomit pedal!
Sunnysombrera
But anything bad happens to them by a woman is rape; money stolen from their wallets, not having sex with them after their date, going through divorce, etc.
Hyprocrisy at its finest.
That article so women should be held responsible for basically just existing.
Tessa
I know they are basically saying that men are rapists.
The problem we have is that these douchebags are going “Did they look both ways?” every time a child is run over by a speeding asshole. And then going on and on about a cultural problem with parents.
Um, leaving aside the idiocy of the comparison, are we allowing these people to drive?
*Jaw Drop*
sunnysombrera,
If they admitted that was Real Rape they’d have to consider it akin to a man driving into your living room and over you as you sit on your couch. In their minds your home is still a busy road where you don’t belong. You should have taken more precautions to not be run over in your home. Don’t we know that nowhere is safe if men are there?
They keep saying that we think all men are rapists. It seems they don’t only because of all the rape they refuse to acknowledge. They think all men are like them. What men like this are telling us is that they are rapists or rapists in waiting. “Mangina” basically means “not a rapist or a fan of rapists”. They know women are controlled through sexual terrorism. When we are on guard at all times trying not to be raped, we are being terrorized. This begins in childhood and continues throughout our lives. Men take it for granted that women live like that. Oh well. Boys will be boys.
Still, Schrodinger’s Rapists is mysandry!
Can you even imagine if these men spent a year of their lives living like that? They’d act like they were living in a post apocalyptic hellscape.
I think I can say without a hint of reservation that I actually hate the people who made those memes. I still don’t hate them enough to wish that sort of lifelong terrorism on them, even if it is what they want for me and my daughters.
I’m sorry about the kitty. It was fluffy. I couldn’t help myself.
so… according to AVFMers, should it only be okay for male drivers to run over female pedestrians intentionally or is it also not right to tell them not to run over men? what if the driver is a woman?
I guess in this case it would be her fault, because we all know women can’t drive, right?
Never apologize for fluffy kitties, Lea. It made my morning.
Indeed, if a typical rape was truly an accident, then *both* parties would find themselves raped. That kind of situation would more accurately resemble a typical traffic accident.
Collisions between drivers and pedestrians are dangerous mainly for the pedestrian, because of physical factors like mass inequality. They can be also dangerous and traumatic for the driver (and bystanders), but that point might be easily ignored, and then you could end up thinking that a driver-pedestrian collision is like rape, where one party willfully hurts the other. Or rather, it looks like it shouldn’t matter from the pedestrian/rape victim’s POV that a car rushing on you is usually an accident and rape isn’t.
Since most rapes are committed by people known to the victim, why is it the road where collisions happen and not the victim’s own driveway or garage? I guess they’re only counting stranger rape again.
This sounds like a Roosh rape distopia where all roads are private property (owned collectively by men who all get credit for building them) and laws only apply on crosswalks, with the assumption that men have such a strong desire to crush women and children with their cars that anyone in the road is considered to blame for whatever is inevitably done to them.
Once again the MRAs manage to be the biggest misandrists by far.
Re: Sunny’s link:
1. We’re already held as accountable for
men’s“Our” actions as is physically possible, Captain! We cannae take no more! [/bad Scotty impression]2. And she calls herself a “Feminist” halfway through that anti-consent, pro-rape rant posted on what appears to be a frothing right-wing hate site focused on FREEZE PEACH. Hah.
Where did you buy your last car from, Judas Priest Motors Ltd? 🙂
I saw the “Feminist logic” one posted by someone or other on Twitter and took them to task on it – they admitted it might not be a perfect analogy, which is just about the best you can get out of someone likely to post things like that.
Yeah, except rape isn’t an accident. It’s intentional.
Here in England the Highway Code does seem to adopt the MRA mindset:
“205
There is a risk of pedestrians, especially children, stepping unexpectedly into the road. You should drive with the safety of children in mind at a speed suitable for the conditions.”
The implication seems to be that grown ups are fair game!
According to Roosh, this should be perfectly legal. You are in a private space with a car, thus the car can do whatever it wants to you.
Man, this analogy is such a colossal fail. Hitting people with cars is not a biological necessity, yet this is what these guys argue all the time about sex. So, if cars don’t get to hit pedestrians on a regular basis, then what…they’ll start drive-by shootings instead?
It’s convenient how consent has been completely removed from the equation here. Apparently the world is divided into “No-Go” pedestrians and “Open Season” pedestrians, and it’s 100% up to the pedestrian to choose which of these categories to be in. By the time the driver comes along, the choice has already been made, what can they do? I mean, why should the driver have to do any work, amirite? Their job is simply to run over as many pedestrians as possible. Legally, of course.
It doesn’t take into account that maybe nobody in the world wants (or deserves) to be hit by an effing car, like, EVER? And that a bunch of painted stripes aren’t going to stop a car that really, really wants to hit somebody in a crosswalk?
And that if you have this burning, insatiable need to hit and injure things with your car, you have three options: 1) build a brick wall in the privacy of your own driveway, and ram it to your heart’s content 2) get counseling 3) take the bus.
@Tyra Lith
“what if the driver is a woman?
I guess in this case it would be her fault, because we all know women can’t drive, right?”
Obviously if the driver is a woman she has to drive at a walking pace while her owner walks in front of the car waving a large flag to warn everyone. And men shouldn’t let most wimminz learn to drive, cause it just gives them silly ideas about independance.
With how some of them talk about female on male rape victims, maybe any man who is run over by a woman’s car should consider himself lucky to have gotten free tire marks and stop complaining?
We give driving classes and tests and if they passed they get their driving license so really we should place men in sex classes and they should get a sex license. Yep time to teach men and boys not to rape.
That’s how so many people talk about rape. It’s as if they think it’s like weather. It just happens. No one seems to ever do it. It just happens.
When teaching my kids I catch myself doing that sort of thing too. We tend to say things like “Hitler rose to power” as if it just happened. No reason. He just showed up on his own one day and gathered up power like flowers in May and no one could do anything about it. We’re taught not to think too hard about these things. If Hitler just *poof* freakishly happened then we have no reason to fear current leaders or cultural attitudes. We speak as if he did the Holocaust all on his own the same way we talk about Doctor Martin Luther King as if civil rights began and ended with him and now we can all put the ugliness of racism behind us and move on. Tra-la-la. Don’t even get me started on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving.
We get told so many lies so often to make the oppressor class seem more benevolent than it is. Rape just happens, happens rarely and is probably the victim’s fault is one of those lies.
Didn’t Richard Dawkins retweet one of these at one point? Am I thinking of some other douchebag atheist?
The crossing guard one — I thought at first that it was something an anti-MRA-er had made to make fun of the original MRA meme. Poe’s law in action, I guess.
That “women wrapped in cotton” thing is interesting because, that’s how I always saw the traditional rape-avoidance advice for women, which pretty much boils down to “don’t ever go anywhere or do anything by yourself.”
It always seemed to me as if the threat of rape was being used to trick women into voluntarily limiting their own autonomy and freedom. Especially since “random stranger who attacks you when you’re out on your own at night” is actually the least likely rape scenario.
Anti-feminists are obviously terrified of the notion of women acting with autonomy, so of course they have to reinforce the threat of rape as a punishment that happens when women don’t behave properly.
Drive by link drop re: disgusting “it’s satire!” excuse:
Penn State frat member defends photos of nude, unconscious women as “satire” http://zite.to/1MPCYRY
Lea: its part and parcel of the entirety of rape culture.
Blaming the victims. (Victims brought it on themselves. They asked for it, etc.)
Minimizing its effects.
Denying it happens at all.
When it does happen, making excuses for the perpetrator.
Acting as if its no one’s fault at all. It just happens out of nowhere.
Vilifying the victim. (Name calling. Slut shaming. Harassment.)
But what about the mens?
All tactics designed to make women shut up talking about it. Cuz here’s the thing, the more we talk about it, the more we call men on their BS, the more the likelihood that something will get done about it.
And the patriarchy and its blind supporters, cant have that. can’t have that.
The men crying the loudest about this stuff are usually the ones who have completely bought, and gotten drunk on, the purple Kool-Aid.
The car analogy is a bad one, but then again comparing rape to just about anything is never going to come out right. I agree with Buttercup and my take on this meme/analogy is that there are plenty of fun, safe ways to have sex and we can and should be teaching CONSENT. There is really no fun or safe way to hit a person with your car and the person being hit will probably never enthusiastically consent to being hit (ok, maybe in a Jackass scenario).
I know when I got hit by a car several years ago, I certainly didn’t consent to it and I’m pretty sure the two teenage boys in the truck got the same driver’s ed class as the rest of us which tells people it’s NOT ok to hit a pedestrian…and they did anyway. Similarly, when I was raped I didn’t consent to it and he for sure knew it was wrong (he even cried after), but did it anyway. I guess I’m saying I don’t think we should teach men and boys not to rape…in that, they already know it’s wrong. We should teach what consent is, what it looks like, and that if you DON’T have it or had it in the beginning and one person wants to stop, then you don’t have sex or you fucking stop. Sorry, this comment got a little derailed. MRAs are disgusting.
@proxieme
I dropped that link in another thread yesterday. I was pissed that they only got a slap on the wrist for being “naughty”. It’s sickening, considering this likely happens at frats all over the country. I personally think the Greek system should be dissolved.