MREdmonton’s “Don’t be that girl” campaign

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Media spotlight has turned to Men’s Rights Edmonton for their poster campaign “Don’t be that girl.”

For anyone who doesn’t know “don’t be that girl” is a parody of “don’t be that guy.”

In one of the “don’t be that guy” posters, a man is seen escorting a drunk woman into a taxi. And we are told, don’t be that guy, you know, the guy who has sex with sloppy drunk people. These posters not only imply that all men will rape if given the chance… but we all know that men are sociopaths so that’s not particularly new to these groups and their message.

However the posters also imply that average men have to be told not to have sex with a woman who probably smells of her own urine, tastes of vomit and has all the vaginal muscle tone of a dead fish.

So these posters manage to go one further than the typical “men are evil rape-beasts.” They’re adding, men are blithering idiots.

Needless to say, many men find themselves less than amused by these posters and what these posters say.

Enter our intrepid men’s rights activists in Edmonton. They took the same image from the picture for the Edmonton “don’t be that guy” poster, added a tagline “just because you regret a one night stand, doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual. Lying about sexual assault is a crime.” And finished off with a gender reversed “don’t be that girl.”

Lets see what the feminist professor  Ms. Got-ell, who originated the “don’t be that guy” campaign in Edmonton has to say about Men’s Rights Edmonton’s “parody” poster:

“What they’ve done is they’ve taken four of the posters we created and they’ve manipulated them,” Gotell said reporting to the Edmonton Journal.

“These posters, I think, are quite troubling … What’s been done to transform an anti-sexual-assault campaign into a rape-apologist campaign is just deeply offensive.”

 

In my video “The Ugly Tropes”—link below–I detailed how we use rape hysteria to strip away the humanity of marginalized groups of men in order to justify acts of violence and genocide aganst them.

I’ll repeat, rape hysteria has been used throughout history to justify violence. Rape hysteria is demonizing a target group’s sexuality as violent, predatory and depraved.

In the past rape hysteria was specifically used to demonize black men, jewish men, Irish men, lower class men, in fact any socially marginalized group of men.

Now our social betters—like Ms. Gottell–have developed a rape campaign that targets black men, irish men, jewish men, muslim men, lower class men, in fact it targets all men.

We’re now targeting all men for campaign of demonization.

And this is somehow progress?

Of course the people behind these campaigns will never admit that false allegations are a problem in a climate of rape-hysteria, because that would remove a weapon from their arsenal.

The Klu Klux Klan certainly would never admit to possible false accusations in their public statements to the press about lynching sixty years ago. And I’m sure the press would dutifully report the KKK’s opinion on the matter–namely that the justice system was obviously biased against white rape victims and biased towards black men accused of rape and that false accusations never happen so why bother with a trial anyway. And the real reason why the KKK would never admit to the atrocities justified by their rape hysteria is because that would take away a powerful way of controlling and silencing black men.

The press’s logic in these issues is exactly the same today, because obviously the people(like the KKK) perpetuating rape hysteria are definitely the people to go to for an honest answer about the damage it does.

Just like then, the press still goes to the people perpetuating rape hysteria—-like Ms. Gotell–for information on how bad rape hysteria is and how often false accusations happen. Which is like asking a murderer how bad murder is.

Speaking of murder… The word rape-appologist can be used to kill, Ms. Gotell. And it’s well past time we recognize that words don’t kill men feminists and all other hate mongers throughout history do.

If you’re interested in a debate on the original posters and Men’s Rights Edmonton’s parody posters please join A Voice For Men News Director Robert O’Hara and the Men’s Rights Edmonton group for a special radio show being presented by A Voice for Men on our blogtalk channel. It’s tonight at 8 pm Central Standard Time. All relevant links in the low bar.

Oh, and Ms. Gottell, the originator of the “don’t be that guy” hatespeech?

She’s already declined to debate us.

What a surprise.

 

Links

AVfM’s Invitation to Feminists to Debate “Don’t be that Girl”

http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/avfm-radio/invite-to-feminists-come-debate-with-mens-rights-edmonton/

MREdmonton’s official statement:

http://www.mensrightsedmonton.com/official_statement/

AVfM’s statement:

Men’s Rights Edmonton under intense media spotlight after “Don’t Be That Girl” poster enrages feminists

Judgy Bitch:

http://judgybitch.com/2013/07/11/dont-be-that-guy-lets-talk-about-those-rape-posters/

Peirce Harlan from the Community of the Wrongly Accused:

http://www.cotwa.info/2013/07/memo-to-sexual-grievance-industry-about.html

My video “The Ugly Tropes”:

GWW on CTV:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.1361457

Edmonton Journal, “the KKK says rape hysteria ‘not important’, civil rights movement are ‘rape apologists’”:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Parody+anti+rape+posters+offensive+says+professor/8637809/story.html

 

Alison Tieman
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Alison Tieman

<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="3112 http://www.genderratic.com/?p=3098">20 comments</span>

  • You have got to push the actual studies finding high percentages of false claims out there in every statement you make. Just claiming that they do happen is to weak. If you put some actual numbers on it it is much more difficult for them to argue against and a lot of people will be surprised by the numbers and take them much more seriously.

    I left a comment on feministcritics referring to a Danish study that found a rate of 7,3% and about the 2% claim actually stemming not from and actual study but from a loose claim back in the seventies that found its way into peer reviewed articles that where then referred to and so became “science”.

  • I think a good strategy would actually be to make some posters with stats from some of the best studies and put those posters up in a few weeks time when this round of debate calms down to generate another round of attention.

  • If I had been the Men’s Right Edmonton, I would have made it about female on male rape, with a token female on female 6th poster (which would be the reverse of what they did with male on female and male on male), and cited CDC stats.

    At least there its equivalent, and they can’t claim you’re apologizing for rape, you’re just treating most women the way the posters treated most men (with contempt and stupidity). Equality.

  • @ Cicero

    In a century, 5000 lynchings occurred. That’s only 50 a year. I guess it wasn’t really a big problem!

  • @ Schala

    Unfortunately they likely did do something like that, it’s just that this one got noticed.

  • A follow up like Schalia suggests with the CDC numbers can gain enormous attention as well.

  • The compartmentalization and special pleading on the part of feminists is truly astounding. None of them will disagree that the first thousand times a group of men were demonized as rapists, it was hate speech and that innocent men were victims. It’s even more amazing to me that some feminists actually admit that some of the feminist progenitors of these campaigns, for example Andrea Dworkin, were anti-male bigots. Yet they still continue to use the same exact rhetoric.

    TyphonBlue, in addition to the instances you pointed out in the video, it’s worth also noting the way this gets used to demonize the enemy in every single war and has even been used to justify gendercide of men to this day. http://www.gendercide.org/ And just because men aren’t being flung from trees by literal white knights in hoods doesn’t mean that no one is getting killed over it in North America; they still are. So what I would really like to see is a poster that puts a real face on that, such as this guy http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9788265/Teenager-falsely-accused-of-rape-beaten-to-death-by-gang.html

    And like you said in the video, the most important part isn’t that false accusations happen, either. It’s the fact when no one believes that they do, it ends up being used to erode men’s constitutional rights and enact vigilante justice, such as what happened to this guy who was buried alive in Bolivia: http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/07/bolivian-man-buried-alive-in-grave-of-woman-hes-accused-of-raping-and-murdering/

    And to further dispel the myth that no woman would ever lie about rape because reporting it is such a hassle for the accuser, I would just say that this was probably even more of a hassle, but she did it anyway: http://www.wlky.com/news/local-news/indiana-news/woman-accused-of-killing-man-after-rape-fantasy-role-play-to-appear-in-court/-/9718538/20076478/-/8pe8fez/-/index.html

  • This showed up on my facebook feed. There was quite a bit of discussion about the double standard displayed in the relative levels of outrage expressed for the two poster campaigns. A couple people tried to make it about victim blaming/shaming, but the fellow who posted the link would have none of it. Alas, all was not well:

    “I think we can all agree that in actual cases of sexual assault, its the man who is guilty of assaulting a woman.”

    and

    “At the end of the day, this is a tough one because all we really know for sure is that men are the perpetrators far more often than women are, and theres likely a lot woman who don’t report sexual assault, or one’s that do, but falsely – so because of that, we can’t rely on the ‘stats’.” [typos original]

    went unchallenged. Since it was posted by a friend of a friend and only showed up in my feed because that mutual friend “liked” it, I couldn’t comment and set them straight. I imagine they’d have used scare quotes again when referring to the statistics I’d have provided anyway.

  • I never thought about it like that before, but you’re right, false accusations can be alot more than individual vindictiveness, they’re also a powerful tool of mass prejudice.

  • The Edmonton Journal also has this piece by what seems a more “old-school” feminist:

    http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Simons+True+sexual+equality+best+fight+rape+culture/8642769/story.html

    It’s actually quite reasonable until the last couple of paragraphs where she, after detailing the problems with the current feminist-inspired campaigns, says we need “more feminism”.

    P.S At least she corrects the ignorance that the professor seems to have about the Fair Use and copyright. That particular ignorance always pisses me off for some reason.

  • Adiabat,
    “That particular ignorance always pisses me off for some reason.”

    I knw what you mean. That’s not my particular screamer but I know what you mean. It pisses you off because whe someone makes a mistake like that, you relaize what an idiot you are talking to and how much more difficult the converstion has been all along and it’s horribly frustrating.

  • Not only do you realize that you’re dealing with a dope, but you realize that they are an autocratic asshole who views the law and those who enforce it as their personal henchmen. This lady is a wannabe Kim Jong-um.

  • ” but you realize that they are an autocratic asshole who views the law and those who enforce it as their personal henchmen. This lady is a wannabe Kim Jong-um.”

    This is an occupational hazard for Social Justice types. They have a very, very hard time acknowledging the humanity of all people.

  • I guess it should be noted that Edmonton is the same city where a group of 4 women accused a cabbie of sexually assault to save $13 on cab fare after having refused to put out their cigarettes in his cab. And that this became a well known event in the MRM community. It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to feminists that a “don’t be that guy” shame campaign in that city was likely going to be met a counter campaign.

  • Does anyone know why Feminists generally have such difficulty understanding the arguments saying that there are sensible measures someone can take to reduce their likelihood of becoming a victim?

    And why do they call this victim blaming when it obviously isn’t?

    Is it all just purely ideology? Man-hating? What?

    It just seems so simple to me.

  • So the other day I’m watching t.v. and I see a commercial about not texting while driving. The phrase they used was …

    “It can wait!”

    See the difference in that phrase vs “Men, stop raping!”

    It comes down to “don’t think of a black cat”. Humans are silly creatures and when you speak to them in the negative, they still hear the positive phrase, “think of a black cat”.

    So all these feminist campaigns that use negative phrasing of “don’t” this and “don’t” that is propaganda to get people fearful of men. The phrasing of these things is decided purposefully. It’s is my opinion that these feminists know exactly what they are doing.

  • “It’s is my opinion that these feminists know exactly what they are doing.”

    I agree; there’re just too many examples of “inaccurate” terms in feminist theory and advocacy for it to be accidental. The various connotations etc are completely intentional.

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