The MRA Meme That Would Not Die: "Teaching men not to rape is like teaching drivers not to run people over!"

The crossing guard one: “Women are like children that need to be told by men what is best for them. They don’t know most places just aren’t safe for them to play. Places like colleges, work, social gatherings, public, and in their homes.”

They want us to be afraid of the dark. They literally want us to be too afraid to walk alone. But it doesn’t stop there.

The word “accountable” keeps being used by these nasty rape apologists. Does anyone actually think that means anything other than being raped or having our autonomy removed in some other way?

I can’t help but notice how often these people confuse women with kids and kids with adult women who can consent to sex.

If they think women’s crystal clear consent is not necessary so it is up to a woman to keep away from men and twelve year olds are women….

Yet they want more access to “women’s” bodies and power over our lives. If mature women and sexually experienced women are gross, yada, yada.

Nauseous now.

I really don’t like where that line of thought goes. Somebody tell me I’m wrong.

I don’t recall hearing about an epidemic of people telling folks who have been run over that they shouldn’t have had the audacity to walk.

That’s because you haven’t been reading comments in my local paper about the rash of pedestrians and bicyclists getting hit by bad drivers! Many, many readers asserting that it’s because: A) it’s far too dangerous to walk or ride a bike, and anyone stupid enough to do it gets what’s coming to them; B) Bikes and people don’t belong in the street so it’s no one’s fault but their own if they get hit by cars and besides only drivers pay for the road; or C) I see pedestrians and bicyclists breaking the law, why doesn’t anyone arrest THEM and why do car drivers need licenses when bicyclists in particular are so shitty and ignorant? So far no one has gone so far as to suggest that you need a license to walk yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.

Victim-blaming and outraged privilege know no bounds.

Do MRAs not know that drivers are required to exercise extra caution around children? In the US anyway, speed limits are lower near schools. If a driver is behind a stopped school bus, they must stop too. They’re not allowed to pass.

They didn’t think through this analogy, did they?

Also, even if a pedestrian is violating traffic laws, most people are moral enough to try not to hit them. Most people aren’t delighted to get an excuse to run someone over. Most drivers who hit and kill or hurt someone feel guilty even if they aren’t at fault. Because most people have empathy. Not MRAs though. They’re just dying to hurt people and rationalize it.

Of course, if we are going to go with this bone headed analogy, I wonder what percentage of pedestrians who get hit by cars were not even at fault. I’m a frequent pedestrian. I’ve never been hit, but I’ve had many close calls. I was only at fault one time when I thought the light had changed and crossed on a red and almost got hit by a bus. Most of the time though, I’m crossing on a green and a driver almost hits me because they were trying to turn and neglected to check for pedestrians in the crosswalk. Or I’m on a sidewalk and a driver comes barreling out of an alley or parking lot. When I jaywalk, I always make sure there are no cars nearby.

My close calls have been the equivalent of someone going out to a bar alone, but guarding her drink. Only to be go home and be raped by her husband there. That is, quite often women do everything right (according to the don’t get yourself raped crowd). They dress modestly, don’t accept drinks from strangers, don’t go alone with strange men, don’t overdo it on the drinking etc. And they still get raped. Because most rape isn’t between strangers.

@ becausereasons – Yes! Memes like this unintentionally reveal how messed up their attitudes about sex are. There’s no mutual enthusiasm or fun involved. To them it’s just a game of “picking off” as many “targets” as possible. How the target feels about it doesn’t even matter. It’s always assumed the target is consenting unless they put up all kinds of red flags and barriers. Even then, those are simply obstacles to be removed, ignored, or dismissed.

The problem with MRAs and other rape apologists is that they think the default consent state should be “yes” until proven “no”. It’s not. It’s “no” until proven “yes”. That is, consent should be opt-in, not opt-out. Otherwise, bodily autonomy becomes something women have to explicitly claim for themselves, over and over again; and worse yet, “no” becomes subject to interpretation on the part of the person who’s trying to initiate. It becomes whatever the initiator decides it is. That’s where you get into “soft nos” and PUA techniques of overriding her “natural defenses” by rationalizing away her behavior and hearing only what you want to hear.

I think consent is analagous to spam. In Canada and Europe, marketers need to have the recipient’s express permission before sending them materials. In the US, it’s “opt out”, meaning marketers can spam anyone, and the burden is on the recipient to request that the sender cease. (Same thing with those ‘3 Free Months!’ magazine deals – you then have to explicitly cancel at the end of those three months, which is annoying. They count on the fact that people will forget to do it.) I wonder if there’s any connection between that and the difficulty we seem to have in this country establishing a common, sensible definition of consent?

Oh, and I’m really sorry to hear about your accident, becausereasons. That’s awful 🙁 I hope there weren’t any lasting effects.

Lea:

The word “accountable” keeps being used by these nasty rape apologists. Does anyone actually think that means anything other than being raped or having our autonomy removed in some other way?

I’m not sure, I think so it always seems to come with the implication that men areaccountable for these actions in a way women aren’t? So I’m never really sure how exactly they view it.
Unless it’s simply equating getting raped to an action like driving drunk (I know how they love to do that). Because then it becomes not even something that “just happened” to her it’s something she did.

Are they saying not raping as analogous to not getting raped then when they say “accountable”? It was his job not to rape her, but her job not to get raped so she’s at fault too? It wouldn’t surprise me that they’d see that as being a bit too much to put on a man.

They love equating a woman getting raped to an irresponsible and potentially dangerous to others action like driving drunk. Being killed, beaten or in another way assaulted and tortured when drunk is never considered an irresponsible act that the victim probably wanted anyway since they were drunk and all. “How were the assailants to know you didn’t want to be beaten or killed? What if they were drunk too and your lips said “No”, but your eyes said “Yes”.

..and if she’s the drunk driver, who is the rapist? Is he her victim?

Sweet Cheebus. I bet he is.

.

The other day I was crossing the road behind a car that had stopped at a T junction with a Give Way sign. I was about twenty feet away from the back of the car but as soon as I stepped foot on the road the fucker deliberately reversed. I jumped out of the way and flipped the bird at him, and he looked at me with a smug “what did I do?” expression. There is no way he did that for any other reason than to try and hit me. I was listening to music at the time, volume low enough to hear his engine rev but if I had been hit, I guess the MRAs would have blamed me for having earphones in.

And of course the driver was behind the wheel of a BMW. Pretty sure the manual has “Drive like a dickbag” written in there somewhere. That’s there times I’ve almost been hit by one.

@Buttercup

“no” becomes subject to interpretation on the part of the person who’s trying to initiate. It becomes whatever the initiator decides it is. That’s where you get into “soft nos” and PUA techniques of overriding her “natural defenses” by rationalizing away her behavior and hearing only what you want to hear

I’ve been in situations where it’s clear the guy was trying to override my “defenses” because he was not really hearing or paying attention to the message I was sending out. And I know like me, a lot of women are not raised to think saying NO is ok. I was raised not to ever raise my voice or be rude, or say no. So my version of no was a lot of body language cues, making up excuses as to why I couldn’t stay, trying to change the subject or create a diversion… and these were times when it didn’t turn into rape, but I still felt awful because really, how many times and in how many ways does someone have to say no before a guy stops? Even when I was raped I don’t remember ever saying a clear, definite NO to what was happening. Silly of me to think my crying, choking, squirming to get away and telling him he was hurting me were all indicators that his actions should have stopped!

lkeke35,
Exactly.

@sunnysombrera
FFS! Why would anyone do that? I’m so sorry that happened to you! There really ought to be some kind of testing system to see who’s fit to drive and who’s not. Oh, wait. Well a lot of good that does, eh?

@reasons

Thanks. It didn’t really affect me for long but I was shaken that someone would try to do that. Where I live there is the occasional policeman on the beat and I wish there had been one at that time.

On your statement that some women are raised to believe saying no is wrong – there are also women who are, with reason, afraid that a solid no will result in violence. It’s not uncommon for a rape victim to “accept” the rape if they honestly believe that fighting back will get them wounded or killed. If the guy has shown himself capable, such women are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Another thing that they appear to be missing is that one actually has to take courses, get a license and pay for insurance should they happen to screw up in order to even get behind the wheel.

Maybe that’s the solution – some of the these people who have proven themselves so illogical about rape and consent that maybe they need to take some sort of “not-rapist’s ed” or something and get a license and some sort of insurance before they think about whipping it out. This is of course assuming that at least some of them are confused and not Roosh wannabes.