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.
Shhh…you guize! Don’t let the MRAdjacent jerks read that you approve of most of this advice. They are against feminists/women, so you gotta use reverse psychology on them.
*cough cough* Oh no dudes! Don’t follow this advice. It will totally thwart devious feminazis’ plan to file false rape charges!!!eleventy!!!!! /sarcasm
And that’s how you spot the misogynist. Anything that causes him to reflect upon what a woman may think or want is a terrible imposition against his “rights”. And heaven forfend that he heed even the smallest of one-syllable words she may say. His “rights” all boil down to him being the boss of her, and her having nothing to say about it. Under those circumstances, rape is not just a grey area, it’s the whole of the area.
Look at that – turns out the best defense against rape isn’t controlling what women do, but making rape more costly for rapists than their victims. Who’d have thunk it?
I read a book once* in which the author ran the statistics and concluded that harshness of punishment or chance of conviction if brought to court didn’t deter crime: what acted as a deterrent was the total probability of conviction, which is mostly driven by the arrest rate and proportion of arrests which go to trial.
If one in a hundred rapists get arrested and are punished with something horrible (permanent banishment to Roosh Island, say), that doesn’t dissuade the others. The author theorised that this is because the same innate sense of superiority which leads rapists to rape also leads them to believe that they’re going to be in the percentage that didn’t get caught.
On the other hand, if arrest and conviction are almost guaranteed, then this has a very real impact on anyone planning rape, even if the consequences are fairly minor (having to take counselling from Elam, say). If those consequences happen often enough that they are seen as an inevitable part of the act, then it stops being a power and dominance fantasy and so stops being appealing to rapists.
The idea has not, to the best of my knowledge, been experimentally verified. Certainly it is difficult to see how one could do so: increasing arrest and conviction rates from sub-10% to above 90% in order to carry out the experiment would be a Herculean undertaking in its own right; and as always in social issues there are ethical issues around having a control group. In principle it is falsifiable, though, which warms my heart.
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* More Sex is Safer Sex, by Stephen E. Landsburg.
“Stay at home, alone, every day and night.”
Like these cobags have a choice in the matter?
“videorecord all your activities, even sex acts, using bodycam”
In your case, it’s probably more like a Handycam.
One issue around sentencing is, how many potential offenders actually know that the sentence for any particular crime is?
Recidivists (who have been caught a lot) might know, but someone who hasn’t been through the system probably wouldn’t.
There’s an oft repeated experiment where members of the public are given the facts of a case. They are then asked to say what sentence they think was imposed and what sentence they would have imposed. Almost invariably they underestimate the actual sentence and they themselves suggest a sentence less than the one that was imposed.
Of course our MRA friends’ rhetoric suggests that a woman only has to say a guy looked at her and he’ll be hauled off to Devil’s Island; I’m never sure whether they actually believe their own bile though.
Maybe. I mean, they do seem to believe that if a woman can’t remember the colour of the carpet during a rape that happened ten years ago then she’s a liar who should be jailed for life for perjury.
@Alice: no, I meant exactly what I said. I’m not just referring to this particular post here, but including all of the content I’ve read from these people, including the guys who say that as soon as sexbot technology gets better and male pregnancy is developed, they will eradicate all women on the planet.
Most of the “rights” they lament losing are not actually rights at all, but were privileges that resulted from women’s lack of rights.
So, I’m curious: why is the specter of the false rape accusation so overblown? No but really, why? I really am curious.
It seems to me exceedingly rare. And (as I said in a comment on another post) it doesn’t have the terrible consequences most men seem to think it does. Most rape reports do not lead to arrests, particularly of the “acquaintance rape” he-said she-said variety that these men seem most afraid of (precisely because it is hard to prove such cases, so the DA will often decline to press charges). And even if it DOES go to trial, considering the burden of proof, it is exceedingly unlikely a wishy-washy false rape accusation with no evidence will lead to a conviction. I remember reading that most false rape convictions are due to mistaken identity in stranger rape cases (with DNA lately exonerating a lot of these men; DNA science should help cut down on these unfortunate incidents). However, this kind of tragic mistake is really different than a woman purposefully, maliciously accusing an innocent man. And considering the blame-the-victim society we live in, college boys accused of rape, though they might be reviled by the local feminist group, will likely have all their buddies backing them up, and are unlikely to even be suspended from school (in some cases even when school boards have found them guilty!). So what gives?
It seems to me, as some others have said on here, that what it comes down to is that such men don’t want to have to follow an affirmative-consent model (which they ridiculously seem to think is about having to ask for a clear “yes” at every stage of lovemaking! ha ha ha!). They don’t want to have to think, “hmmm, well, maybe I shouldn’t pick up that falling-down-drunk stranger at the bar and take her home and bang her,” or, “maybe I shouldn’t wear down her ‘no’s’ by pressing her relentlessly,” or, “maybe there IS something wrong if she doesn’t say no but just looks scared or vacant and doesn’t seem to enjoy it or participate at all and just lies there gazing at the ceiling and/or crying. I mean, why should I have to stop and ask if something’s wrong?”
So basically it seems to me that guys worked up over the fear of “false rape accusations” are rape apologists. Am I right in thinking this?
Because if I am, it’s actually really scary that this has become such a script in American society. I mean so much so that even in the news false rape accusations are painted as epidemic (they’re not) and as much, much worse than real rape cases (they’re SO not). I mean, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised…this is the same news media that will say it’s such a “shame” that “upstanding” young men with “bright futures” like the Steubenville rapists will now have their lives ruined by prison sentences, without any mention of the victim or what her life is going to be like after her violation and subsequent vilification in the press (let’s hope the support from feminist groups and conviction of her attackers remain first and foremost in her mind)…but jeez. How awful to think the media is full of rape apology too…
I’d agree with this. I’m also of the opinion that many of them would be rapists except for their fear of what would happen to them if they were convicted. This is why this fear lurks as large as it does in their minds.
It’s socially unacceptable to straight up advocate for rape. So they have to play the dog whistle game and indicate their pro rape stance by hand wringing over false accusations, victim blaming, or saying we should “wait for the evidence” when there’s already a ton of evidence of guilt.
It’s like when racist politicians talk about “welfare queens” or “thugs” or “the inner city.”
So what’s particularly creepy here is that some of this is good advice concerning HOW TO NOT RAPE, not how to avoid FALSE accusations. For example, “If a woman shows even the most minimal sign of reservation with you during intimacy, walk away immediately.” Sure, walking away completely is an overreaction, but stopping what you’re doing if a partner expresses any reservation (indeed, in the absence of active, enthusiastic consent) is a must for not raping people.
This is an important point: not all of these guys are cynically manipulating social norms to get away with what they know is rape; some of them really don’t understand what the problems is and do actually think that real accusations are false becasue THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND BASIC CONSENT.