Is MRA thinking simply beyond satire?
Cartoonist Rebecca Cohen (@GynoStar on Twitter) recently decided to offer a satirical take on the false rape accusation paranoia that’s endemic in Men’s Rights circles, producing the list of tips below, designed to mirror some of the terrible advice that’s regularly given to women on how to avoid rape.
It turns out that Men’s Rights Redditors think she has some good ideas.
In a recent thread on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the regulars considered her list and decided to add some suggestions of their own. Only their suggestions weren’t meant as jokes.
Ted8367 offered six “Real tips to keep yourself safe” inspired directly by Cohen’s originals.
- Always Be Recording. That’s your real buddy.
- Try not to go out alone at any time. The more potential witnesses there are around, the better.
- If you must walk alone at night … stay on well-lighted paths where your camera will work better.
- If you meet a woman who has been drinking, leave immediately.
- I couldn’t think of one for this. How do false rape accusers dress anyway?
- Maybe just avoid college campuses altogether for social events. Go into town instead.
(Emphasis mine, because, woah.)
Elebrin had six suggestions of his own, “essentially for college students.”
- live off campus
- don’t date girls at your school
- don’t pick up women at bars or places that are serving alcohol
- keep your head down so the administration doesn’t have a reason to be watching you
- When you do go out, dress in a way that isn’t intimidating. The black hoodie pulled tightly around your face or the muscle shirt that shows off your gorilla arms is probably a bad plan. Your best bet is to learn to dress “professionally” and do that the majority of the time.
- know who the potentially dangerous people and groups are and stay away from them. If they are going to be protesting an event, don’t go to that event. Don’t participate in protests yourself – keep your honest opinions about controversial subjects behind a wall of anonymity.
If you see this woman, RUN LIKE THE WIND, obviously.
Other MRAs piped up with suggestions of their own.
don’t talk to women on campus unless its about school/work/emergency.
videorecord all your activities, even sex acts, using bodycam
I’m sure your dates will be thrilled when you strip down to nothing but socks and a plainly visible bodycam.
[N]ever touch an American woman under circumstances, and try not to be alone with them, always have witnesses.
Don’t fuck women in college. Ever.
Don’t fuck SJWs, ever.
avoid feminist women, outside of the classroom or the workplace, just stay away from them.
avoid women like the plague and never talk to them except for school and work related issues and topics.
I was going to make a comment about the incredible paranoia going on here, but, you know, it probably would be a good thing if all of the world’s MRAs actually did decide to avoid women altogether and perhaps all went and lived on an island together.
In another thread on “false accusations” a couple of weeks ago, other Men’s Rights Redditors offered some strikingly similar advice:
If you’re going to be intimate with a woman, make sure you have some sort of video evidence of the act.
Stay away from college girls. You can record and CYA all year long, but many times evidence won’t save you. The emotional maturity of women is plummeting. Obviously they’re not worth having anything to do with until they’re older. Probaby MUCH older, if at all.
Keep a camera running in your room if you have a female guest. Do not (obviously) share such recordings with any person other than for giving evidence. Do keep it stored safely in case of a later accusation.
Keep an alibi app running on your smartphone (there are many, but Alibi is one I know of on Android that’s good) and switch it on when in an intimate situation with a woman. This will give you extra audio evidence.
If a woman shows even the most minimal sign of reservation with you during intimacy, walk away immediately.
Still others had more original advice:
If you break up with a girl try to make it look that she broke up with you and not the other way around
Er, ok.
Turn gay. Worked pretty well for me.
Well, at least one of these guys is thinking outside the box.
Apart from the creepy desire to film everything, I am also in agreement with most of that advice. If they’re afraid of false accusations they should stay the hell away from anyone. Of course then they’ll complain about what miserable ‘incels’ they’ve become.
“[N]ever touch an American woman under circumstances, and try not to be alone with them, always have witnesses.”
So, only non-American women should be targeted?
I have family members who make a conscious effort to do this. Not to avoid “false accusations”, but to avoid being targeted by police. It’s the same reason Isaiah Washington bought a Prius.
Somehow, the best advice ever spoken out of the MRA came from a hilariously literal interpretation of obvious satire. And you know what? I’m not even surprised.
“The best way to avoid rape accusations is to not rape. I’m glad that men are finally afraid of the consequences.”
Not being a rapist myself, I’ve never been afraid of the consequences of rape…
Yeah, wait till her sexual market value has plummeted, then you’ll be safe! Only girls who haven’t hit the wall are false accusers! /all of the sarcasm, all of it, in the entire universe, there is none left
@ maistrechat
Wouldn’t driving a Prius identify you as one of those dangerous subversive hippy types? I’d have thought that would make someone even more of a police target.
[I had the wonderful experience once of pulling up in my Land Rover next to a Prius driving friend who’d got stuck in the snow and asking “Do you need a tow?” 🙂 ]
YES! Who cares if they’re approaching this from the wrong angle? They’re actually giving advice that, if followed, would likely decrease the chance of them raping someone. Alleluia!
Please, MRAshats, avoid women as much as possible, and don’t have sex!
Although I can’t help thinking that all that (secretly?) recorded audio/video evidence would later be used for vindictive blackmail purposes. These MRA types are well-known for their abusive mindsets, after all.
What does everyone thing of somthing like this? When does the myth of rape culture end? http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/05/man-was-jailed-for-29-years/
Kirby, that would be B-don.
Re: The post, I kept wanting to snark them on the folly and/or chastise them on the evil of secret recordings*, but actually, none of the quotes our host pulled explicitly advocate *secret* recordings. Maybe they imagine men visibly setting up the camera when the time comes, explaining it’s a safety measure, and checking for signs of “reservation.”
I mean, that would probably make it *very difficult* to get laid, but at least it’s a vaguely ethical way to combat an irrational fear? (Or would be if any of these fuckers were legitimately afraid)
Meanwhile, recording sex covertly should really be prosecuted as rape-by-fraud, even if it’s not currently.
*of sex; one recommended secret recordings of general interactions
@Pandapool – You win the Internet for that ADORABLE seal of approval! So cute!
Y’know what? All of these sound like wonderful ideas. Let me just expand a little on one:
Do not talk to or interact with any human woman at all. Seriously, just stay away from us, you giant crybaby creepasses. If it’s this goddamn much of a strain not to rape anyone, you’re best off with your fleshlights and sexbots or what the fuck ever.
I’m not sure I like that particular phrasing–I feel that should be reserved for deception about your identity, generally (gods, do I wish Revenge of the Nerds ended with the ‘hero’ being hauled off in cuffs on that very charge–might’ve saved us a generation of geek dudes who think that being ‘good at sex’ is a valid defense against rape charges). I do, however, agree that such conduct should be prosecuted under some charge.
This reminds me of a time, waaaayyyyy back, when I was at a campus pub, and there was this one dude there whom everybody knew to be a notorious misodge. He’d written letters to a campus paper whining that women were “abominable”, then backtracked to say that what he meant by that was “not male”.
Anyway: There he was, at the pub, spreadeagled over a beanbag chair, legs akimbo, swigging beer from a pitcher. Because a regular mug just wasn’t big enough for his manly paws. And NO woman wanted anything to do with him. His whole attitude just reeked of Ain’t Worth Bothering With.
“Abominable”. Yuh-huh.
They’d be less likely to have accusations thrown at them if they didn’t throw temper tantrums the second someone said the phrase “enthusiastic consent”
Funny that
MRAs: “you know what would be a good idea? making sex tapes without the other person’s consent”
Part of wonders if MRAs were also considering using these “videos” as blackmail.
I’m hoping MRAs stay far away from women on college campuses. No woman needs to deal with misogynistic douchebags harassing them for sexual favors.
Freemage,
Would you be willing to take a stab at working out how you’d prefer to handle it? Evidentally some places charge things like that as “sexual exploitation.” Rape-by-deception (probably a better name than rape-by-fraud, since fraud is already a fairly precise legal term) seems to be understood very strictly in the US, but more loosely in some other places. Israel, for instance, used it for any deception about identity, not just impersonation a partner, but, for instance, lying about being a doctor. I wouldn’t argue if you said that that should be a lesser charge, but the point is that it’s not unprecedented to use rape by deception as something more general than rape by impersonation.
Personally, if I were writing the law, I would write something like “sexual conduct may be prosecuted as rape if one partner’s consent was obtained by deception about factors directly material to the nature, safety, or consequences of the sexual acts themselves, including but not limited to covert recording, covert presence of observers, covert removal of a condom, false promise of payment, or knowingly false statements about infection or fertility.”
“When does the myth of rape culture end?”
I don’t know, Marcus…when will angry antifeminists realize that they’re not the ones who get to define what the term “rape culture” actually means because they didn’t coin it?
I love how in order to not be falsely accused of a crime, they suggest committing an *actual* crime and filming sexual encounters without partners’ knowledge.
“videorecord all your activities, even sex acts, using bodycam*
Have these guys ever read 1984 or heard of how Richard Nixon was wiretapping his enemies? For all their talk about how feminists are running a police state, MRAs sure like thinking about wanting a police state.
“When does the myth of rape culture end?”
When MRAs take off their tinfoil hats.
Break the law to avoid being accused of breaking the law.
Maybe in rural red America? But in most urban places, a Prius driver is a milquetoast middle class white dude on his way to the Apple Store. People might sneer at them (as your “delightful” anecdote illustrated) but cops generally don’t harass them.
@marcus downly: “What does everyone thing of somthing like this? When does the myth of rape culture end? http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/05/man-was-jailed-for-29-years/”
So, let’s get this straight. The article you linked to is about a rape that was ACTUALLY COMMITTED by a committed serial rapist who confessed to committing it. His long-overdue confession finally exonerated the innocent man who, in a tragic miscarriage of justice, had been wrongly convicted for the crime because of his close physical resemblance to the ACTUAL RAPIST WHO COMMITTED THE RAPE.
And in your view, this instance of an actual rape committed by an actual rapist should somehow be considered evidence that rape culture is a “myth”?!?
On the contrary, it’s just one more of the innumerable instances of actual rape confirming the fact that rape is indeed a serious problem in our society.
Mind you, I totally sympathize with the plight of the innocent man who was wrongfully and unjustly convicted of a rape he didn’t commit. Maybe if the criminal justice system started taking the crime of rape more seriously and investigating it more scrupulously, we’d have more convictions of actual rapists and consequently a lower risk of innocent people being punished.
Also the concept of “rape culture” and the term wasn’t exactly around in 1986, so it’s really not something you can blame a false conviction on.
Feminists will NOT stand in the way of anyone trying to exonerate those falsely convicted of rape because in most cases, they’re suffering while the real rapist got away and probably continues raping. THINK, for Chrissake.
Oh, I suppose it ends when men finally stop thinking that it’s okay to force themselves on someone who doesn’t want sex…that’s when. Because, y’know, men thinking it’s okay is shockingly commonplace. And that kind of thinking on their part is most certainly a myth.
Oh wait…you mean you think rape culture itself is a myth? Nuh-uh, ain’t playin’ your game, kid. And in fact, just you THINKING it’s a “myth”…is rape culture, too. Your blinkered mindset is part and parcel of the problem.
Rape culture ends when you stop calling it a myth and actually do something concrete to stop all the raping, me boyo.
And no, you don’t get off the hook for not believing in it.