I‘ve written before about what I called The MRA Meme That Would Not Die — that is, the notion that teaching men not to rape is like teaching drivers not to run people over. That it is, in other words, a silly and pointless exercise.
MRAs apparently think this is a devastating argument, and I’ve seen it return again and again, with slight variations, in memes floating around on Facebook and Twitter. Like this one:
What MRAs somehow seem to have forgotten is that we DO in fact teach drivers not to run people over.
That’s what drivers’ ed is for. And that’s why we make wannabe drivers pass a driving test before giving them their licence. If you run over even one pedestrian during such a test, much less plow into a crowd of people waiting for a bus, you will fail this test.
That kind of makes sense to me. As does teaching men not to rape. (Which also works, by the way.)
Well, now I’ve found a new variation on the Meme That Would Not Die, focusing not on drivers but on the cars themselves:
Sorry to ruin your memes again, MRAs, but WE DO THIS ALREADY TOO. Well, not so much teach them as program them to not hit people. That’s what collision avoidance systems are all about.
If you want to know more, Toyota has prepared a helpful video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAeEnLr3WYk
Meanwhile, assorted carmakers — and Google — are working on self-driving cars; Business Insider estimates there will be ten million of them on the road by 2020, each of every one of them programmed not to hit people.
Except this one, of course:
MRA LOGIC:
Men have as much free will as cars.
@ Tulse Because women are sluts who have the temerity to walk down streets…or something!
Thing is, the main issue involved with avoiding car accidents is simple physics (momentum, conservation of energy, etc). By making this analogy, these MRA geniuses are claiming that men’s behavior works the same way, and that, you know, sentient choice has no bearing on it. Men raping women is just an automatic physical process like gravity acting on a dropped object, and the only way to avoid it is to get out of its way. Describing men in the worst possible terms and then defending them for it is just par for the course for these guys.
MRAs do understand that cars have brakes and steering wheels, right? And that, when driving, people are supposed to try to avoid running down pedestrians? Rather tha, you know, choosing to keep right on driving over anyone unfortunate enough to be in the street at the time?
@Catgalaxy:
But… i thought women are houses with unlocked doors.
I guess my ladybrain can’t grasp the mrape-logic(TM) behind all of this 🙁
Wait. What’s Mr Bean shaving his tongue in front of a pair of undies have to do with either rape culture or cars?
Hello.
Next in MRA logic :
– why learning to shoot ? It is your duty not to stand in front of my gun !
– why learning to not be violent ? Just learn to be ultra submissive to me !
– why learning to be tolerant ? First learn to tolerate my intolerance !
It is without a end. They can pretty find a meme for anything they are accused of. I suppose reverse accusation is way easier than introspection…
Have a nice week-end.
@SFHC: I asked myself the same question, but I guess making a lick of sense is misandry. As was recently discussed on another post, freedom and self-improvement is *all* about lifting weights, nothing else. 😛
I’ve actually seen posters pointing out that the majority of people who die in car crashes are pedestrians. The poster read something like “watch where you’re going”, “remember to slow down”, etc… So basically, a campaing LITERALLY reminding people to be safe on the roads, so yes, we DO teach people not to run over pedestrians
Brit Mamotheers may remember the ads with the spooky ghost girl “If you hit me at 30mph I’ll die…”
Highly effective
*shudders at memory*
ETA: I suppose actually the message wasn’t so much don’t run people over but rather, drive slower so you’ll cause less damage if you do; but the point stands
More and more I’m convinced that no MRA should be allowed to have a driver’s licence.
Yes I’ve read the news about angry drivers ripping those posters up and starting their own “Don’t be that pedestrian” campaign.
Oh, wait, I might be thinking about another group of people.
I am troubled by the framing of the issue as an accident. That rape is something that just happens instead of an assault.
The pedestrian getting hit could be the result of either the pedestrian or driver or both being inattentive, misjudging speed and distance, or whatever.
Rape is not just some person “falling” into or “misjudging” personal space.
But in addition to some “ha ha gotcha, femtard!” bs and recasting women as responsible for sexual assault, these memes also allow these douchemonkeys to imagine violence on women in the form of vehicular assault.
(And of course, in addition to failing to note that all kinds of women are raped, these memes fail to take into consideration that men can be victims of rape or that women can be assailants…)
A better rape analogy would be driving a car on the sidewalk. It doesn’t belong there, it’s putting people in danger by its own driver’s fault alone. Pedestrians jumping out of the way is a more or less effective way to control the damage, but the solution is to arrest that asshole and make it clear that driving on the sidewalk won’t be tolerated.
MRA driving:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2138/2261635102_10da548f53.jpg
“So, you know the ‘Don’t teach pedestrians when to cross the street, teach drivers not to hit people’ meme we’ve been meming?”
“Yeah, that one’s great!”
“Well, feminists have been twisting it. Putting the focus on the driver, instead of on the pedestrian where it belongs. Saying that we do teach drivers not to hit people, in drivers’ ed.”
“Completely leaving aside the fact that we also teach pedestrians when to cross the street, I assume?”
“Yeah. But they’re twisting the fact that drivers’ ed exists into the idea that men need to be taught not to rape. Maybe we can tweak the meme?”
“We’d need something that drives home how ridiculous it is that feminists push back against the idea of educating people about how to avoid becoming victims, and how insulting it is to expect to prevent malicious attacks by educating normal people.”
“Maybe we could take the driver out of the picture, to put the focus of the meme where we want it to be: on the responsibility of the pedestrian to not put themselves in harm’s way.”
“Yeah! If there’s no driver, just a car, then the accident is 100% the victim’s fault. There are certainly no unfortunate implications in comparing a rapist to a car without a driver, which is therefore not capable of preventing itself from harming other people, and morally, legally, and ethically incapable of wrongdoing!”
In Ireland at least, pedestrians have the right of way – if a driver hits one, they’re responsible. So yeah, analogy fail.
I have seen that OP meme before, but it only just occurred to me to wonder why it’s staged out in the countryside. I’d gently chide the pedestrian for jaywalking but under the current context that gets too close to She Was Asking For It for my comfort.
So I was wondering about that pretty hard, and then I hit the picture of Mr. Bean shaving the underside of his tongue in front of some pants and I had a whole new set of questions.
It’s weird to think that there may come a time when the notion of a “driver” is obsolete. I can easily imagine that once self-drive technology becomes workable, insurance premiums are going to be very high for anyone who still wants to use mammalian reflexes and a monkeybrain to guide their tonne of metal. I could even see that being regarded as negligence if one is in a situation where an accident happens that would have been averted by self-drive.
The MRAs would probably be very sad: not only are they not legally allowed to rape people, but they wouldn’t be allowed to run people over either. Misandry!
Would you just love to see their driving records?
I cross the street all the time. Like, multiple times a day. And it’s in a busy downtown with lots of traffic. I have yet to be hit by a car, because mysteriously all the drivers are not that keen to have a collision, and we work together to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Additionally, I also drive, and I am sometimes that driver who doesn’t want to have a collision with a pedestrian in the road. If I see someone in the road (yes, even outside a crosswalk) it is simplicity to just slow down a bit to give the person time to get out of the roadway before I get there.
This is not going to come as any kind of massive revelation to anyone here, but it seems like MRAs are completely unaware of how actual people interact on roadways.
Additionally, it is an extremely modern idea that roads are made for cars. Roads were always made for pedestrians. The notion that only cars and other motor vehicles belong on roads was pushed onto American society by the auto industry (this is well-documented, not a conspiracy theory) because they wanted people to be able to drive fast, and thereby make cars both very utilitarian and enjoyable to own. This spread along with car culture to other countries. Those “backwards” countries where the roads are narrow and choked with people and sometimes also animals, and cars can barely get by … that is the normal, natural condition of a road. It is 153.5% the drivers’ responsibility to ensure that nobody dies on those roads, and that extends to on all other roads.
Therefore, if you carry this analogy with rape out to its termination, you will have to conclude that sex free of the threat of rape is the normal, natural condition, and that expecting people to evade rapists is a modern problem that goes counter to our evolved state.
Here’s my not so subtle response to this:
http://depressedfeminist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/anti-feminist-dissonance-3-fun-with.html
Regrettably I still can’t figure out how to transplant the image direct to this thread. When I clicked link, it posted blank.
Okay, let’s roll with this analogy and pretend that it’s not on its face a pile of complete nonsense. If the driver/car = men, and a car hitting a pedestrian = rape, then what the hell is “walking into traffic” supposed to represent? What conscious choice can a woman make to virtually eliminate the chance of being raped? “Don’t exist in the same space as men?”
Also, where does consensual sex fit in? Is that getting a ride in a car? But we’ve already learned that women are busses, so couldn’t they just give themselves a ride??
@PoM
I learned about that in one of my design classes. It’s actually kind of fascinating how many aspects of our lives are influenced by the infrastructure we live in. One book specifically delved into this topic, explaining how the speed limit in suburban neighborhoods results in people becoming more isolated.
@PoM
I also read about that! The auto manufacturers would even write press releases about collisions with pedestrians to frame the pedestrian as at fault. The term “jay” was used to refer to ignorant or inexperienced people, so they termed pedestrians on the road as “jay walkers”; people who didn’t understand proper road conduct. This makes the MRA’s usage of the car/pedestrian analogy even more hilarious; the parallels in victim blaming are so strong that it’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence.
My favorite of these kind of memes is the one that uses an image of a group of children being helped across a street by a crossing guard. It’s literally a picture of a person telling drivers not to hit pedestrians.