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So the Sigma Nu house at Old Dominion University in Virginia apparently decided last weekend to reinforce the not-exactly-unjustified popular perception that fraternities are basically giant petri dishes for growing rape culture by hanging these lovely banners out for all incoming students to see.
People have already come out of the woodwork to defend the banners as “politically incorrect” humor, as Amanda Marcotte points out on Pandagon, and suggesting that they can’t possibly be referring to rape. She quotes one Washington Post commenter, who claims that while
the signs are crude and dumb … this repulsive habit of charging “rape culture” every time a male mentions sex with a female is even more crude, more dumb, and far more dangerous. There is absolutely nothing in the signs (at least not the ones in the photo above) that even implies non-consensual sex. These lunatics throw around “rape” the way Joe McCarthy flung around “communist” and with just as much concern for truth and justice as he did.
Marcotte, who has encountered more than her share of mansplainy MRA trolls over the years, points out the fundamental bad faith of this “argument.”
Just because the signs imply rather than overtly call for force does not mean they aren’t rape culture. This is how rape culture is, in fact, created: Through winks and nudges, rather than overt calls to force sex on women.
While the banners do not overtly say “rape” on them, the implication is easy enough to see, even for people pretending they don’t see it. …
If you think of consent as something that is freely given and enthusiastic, the coercive element of these signs, which portray women as basically fuckholes who have no say in how they’re used, is staring you right in the face. …
But, of course, that comment shows what rape apologists always do: They suddenly pretend they are aliens from another planet and only learned human language last week and therefore are incapable of picking up on humor, implication, non-verbal communication and nuanced language. They pretend to ascribe to a form of communication so literal that even the slightest bit of metaphor or implication, to hear them talk, sends them spinning into a state of confusion.
Sounds like more than a few MRAs and GamerGaters I’ve encountered in my day. Actually, it sounds like almost all of them.
Happily, the school administrators at Old Dominion University are having none of it, suspending the frat pending an investigation.
Over at Fox News’ Outnumbered show — the one with all the women on it — co-host Harris Faulkner resorted to the old “boys will be boys” argument, saying that
these guys are teenagers and in their twenties and they were probably drunk when they were writing the sign … they’re just having a good time.
Later in the show, after co-host Kennedy Montgomery jokingly suggested she would send her own daughters to a convent to keep them safe, Faulkner declared
I’m going to keep them home in the kitchen.
For anyone playing along at home, this is rape culture too.
I would find it hard to send any daughter to a school with an existing frat system at this point. Whatever merit they might have once had is long gone. While not precisely to blame for college rape, they do share a considerable portion of the responsibility for making it so hard to combat (due to their semi-official status on campus).
Urgh…
And “these guys are teenagers and in their twenties and they were probably drunk when they were writing the sign … they’re just having a good time.” – sure, this is probably true… but that doesn’t mean it’s not rape culture. I’m sure these boys are not wanna-be-rapists, I’m sure they didn’t think of rape when they wrote that sign, but just as racism is insidious and sometimes almost invisible to those making racist comments because it’s so deeply ingrained and “normalized”, so too is rape culture & sexism.
I can never understand the eagerness to excuse bad behavior instead of just learn from it. It should be possible to fuck up without ill intent and still have to learn from it. Just as one is expected to learn to do better if you do something maliciously.
Also, when is this “boys will be boys” sexist bullshit end? No one ever says “Oh, girls will be girls!” defending some shitty poor choices a women makes, giving her a free pass from any and all consequences, and making anyone criticizing her out to be an asshole.
Sorry if this makes no sense, I have a headache and my brain thinks may not be functioning correctly.
I suggest that if those young men “having a good time” is only possible by creating a hostile environment for women, maaaaaybe they shouldn’t be allowed to have a good time until they have learnt some basic human decency.
But who am I kidding.
“these guys are teenagers… they’re just having a good time”
Yes, and the freshmen girls are also teenagers, and are now terrified (along with their parents). Why does the first group’s sense of “humor” trump the second group’s sense of safety?
“these guys are teenagers and in their twenties and they were probably drunk when they were writing the sign … they’re just having a good time.”
Excuse me one second…
http://s1138.photobucket.com/user/The44thHour/media/TheFinger.gif.html
Well that didn’t go as planned, let’s try again.
http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/n527/The44thHour/TheFinger.gif
“They’re just having a good time.” I’m sure they are. Are the “freshman daughters?” You seem to be leaving that part of the equation out of things, person who said that.
The fact that the last banner essentially makes the whole set read like they’re addressed exclusively to the father/husband is a deeply creepy way of implying that women have no agency at all. I’m not sure why this particular bit of fuckheaded misogynistic assholery is affecting me so much, but the more I see that image, the worse the whole thing gets.
Five years ago, I would have assumed that the dumbshits responsible didn’t get the subtext they were putting out, but I don’t think I can believe that anymore. This whole thing is appalling and depressing in equal measure….
Perfect! It puts me in mind of every troll who’s ever posted, “Where in my comment did I say that?” These individuals do not want a conversation. They want to demand, command, lay down the law, hand down their “wisdom,” inspire awe, inspire fear–anything but communicate.
At least he didn’t say he himself would also keep them barefoot, and pregnant.
Gaebolga, that bothered me the most too. I saw ones like the ones above, and thought ew, gross, creepy. Bit the ones addressed specifically to dads to drop off their daughters and the moms too were on another level. It implies women are property of men and these boys think that’s “fun”.
@Tyra Lith
Seconded.
So disgusted by this. As @Gaebolga said, especially that last banner seems to imply no agency on our part–like we’re just “things” to be dropped off. That’s not fucking funny. Not even remotely so. It’s not even “politically incorrect” humor.
We’re not commodities to be given over to someone else. Any implication otherwise, whether “joking” or not, is rape culture. The only culture that would find this in anyway humorous is a rape culture. Res ipsa loquitur.
And hanging them up… and leaving them up on move-in day… and standing outside watching people drive by and look at the signs…
Yup, it’s surprising they aren’t blacked out from all that misogynist-creating swill they’ve been downing.
@Fnoicby
I’m not sure which interpretation is worse: the assholes thinking that women are property, or them wishing that women were property.
Gaebolga,
That’s how I look at it too. The drop off aspect makes it sound like the freshman women and their mothers are kidnap victims, trafficked people, and chattel. They aren’t inviting women to their house. They’re demanding women be brought to them.
Freemage,
I wouldn’t want my hypothetical sons going to these schools either. I wouldn’t want whatever I taught them about consent being undone by bad influence friends. People talk about protecting their daughters from rape, but I think the importance of teaching sons not to become a part of rape culture doesn’t get brought up enough. Parents worry about their daughters being raped but they should spend just as much time worrying about their son’s behavior.
Regarding the Fox news commentary, isn’t it funny how being drunk is an excuse when a man rapes someone or enables rape culture, but women get no such free pass for being drunk? In fact, it’s used to treat the victims like the criminal. Even though men ostensibly have higher tolerance for alcohol, we set the bar much lower when it comes to holding them responsible for drunk behavior.
Ugh. Even if it weren’t to imply forced sex in any way, it still contributes to rape culture. It sickens me that people still don’t get that “welcoming” new, young women (or any woman, really) to a university campus, or frankly anywhere, with signs making it clear that you primarily see them as sex objects is absolutely repugnant. Seeing women as objects for sexual “use”, rather than as individual human beings worthy of respect, is how we have the gender-based and sex-based discrimination and violence that we do, including a higher prevalence of sexual violence against women. THAT’S how it contributes to rape culture.
Oh, and guess what! An off-campus house, full of Ohio State University students, just did the same thing. Same white sheets with black spray paint, with the messages “Daughter Daycare 2.0” and “Dads, we’ll take it from here.” (nice bit of faux-paternalistic bullshit, right there. Are we sure it’s 2015?). Another house, same university, has “Our couch pulls out but we don’t” and “Plan-B is Plan-A”. Apparently these signs are quite common amongst students who are in a frat or have a frat-mentality, and even sororities have their own versions (although it would seem, at least for one OSU sorority, that it is more specifically an advertisement of what they’re willing to have done to them, with ““Can’t Come in Front Butt Ur Welcome in the Back” and “Freshman boys, our couches don’t pull out so we hope you do. P.S. Megan does butt stuff”). Gross.
For any of the school-sanctioned fraternities and sororities, these sorts of signs are just plain sexual harassment, and shouldn’t be allowed by any reasonable rules of conduct issued by any post-secondary institution. We already know that college/university students have sex and it’s a time in one’s life for being “wild”, but this sort of highly visible advertisement of sexual objectification of one’s fellow students is just plain crass.
Asking
living godscishet white boys to learn from their mistakes is reverse-racist cishetphobic misandry! Onlylesser beingswomen, PoC and LGBT+ people are expected to do that. (This is what way too many morons actually believe.)At this point, they’re doing it on purpose as a backlash against the recent spotlight on bigoted frats. Like a toddler kicking his sister because his mum said not to.
Also, the baby girl thing is incredibly creepy. They’re clearly salivating at the prospects of naive young women who don’t have honed bullshit detectors and street smarts yet to prey upon.
tov01, thank you for bringing that gif into my life.
Kat, that’s exactly it. Most apologists just want to shut down any conversation about trying to stop rape culture and will pull any dishonest trick to try and achieve it. Unfortunately, naive but otherwise good hearted people fall for their lies a fair bit and will pass them on.
“Boys will be boys!”
“Well wearing the wrong things and getting drunk attracts predators, she should have known that.”
“Maybe he is socially awkward and couldn’t read the signs. She should have said no more clearly.”
“I’m not victim-blaming! I’m just saying that if she’d been more careful maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Still not victim blaming.”
Gah; it seems like every comment here turns up another twisted little nugget of sickness. There’s just way too many layers of horrifying bullshit to this.
Anyone got some Grade-A brain bleach? With kittens?
But, but! Boys KNOW that rape is bad! You think all men are rapists or something? How very dare you! “Teach boys not to rape” is an insult! MISANDRY!
The part of those signs that most clearly demonstrates that the dudes see women as having no agency and no say in the matter when it comes to sex is that all the signs are addressed to the FATHER of the student, not the women themselves.
If the banners read “Ladies! Feel free to come and let loose with us during frosh week! We’ll show you a great time! 😉 “, it would still be inappropriate and, considering the general atmosphere that pervades frat parties, still potentially threatening, but at least it would be talking to the women like they’re people, instead of sex things that are paying from the care of their fathers into those of horny dudebros who won’t take no for an answer.
*moving, not paying. Wtf, autocorrect.
Guys like this are why my friends called me Search and Rescue in college.