A successful anti-rape campaign yields an idiotic response from men's rights activists
. . .this whole not blaming victims and educating men regarding consent thing has not sat well with everybody. Men’s Rights Edmonton has countered with its own campaign, telling women, “Don’t Be That Girl.” Crudely ripping off the imagery of the original campaign, its posters, which have been cropping up in Edmonton, warn “Just because you regret a one night stand doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual,” “Just because you regret your life choices, doesn’t mean it’s rape” and “Women who drink are not responsible for their actions especially when sex is involved.” And they remind, “Lying about sexual assault = a crime.”
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It’s not that false accusations don’t happen, or that the havoc they wreak isn’t real. The problem is the idiotic defensive assumption that a campaign expressly created to educate men and women about consent merits a hateful, finger-pointing response. And it makes the classic presumption that getting drunk, hooking up and then crying rape is a standard chick operating procedure — an idea that is based, by the way, on no solid statistical evidence.
The “anti-feminism” Men’s Rights group has happily seized upon the attention its stunt has gained, obscenely comparing its cause to the death of Emmett Till. But the murder of Till was not about “rape hysteria” or “MALE human rights,” geniuses. And when you say, “Sexual violations, including rape, can be committed by anyone. While a majority of reported sexual assaults are committed by men, associating or claiming all men are potential rapists is analogous to claiming all minorities will commit theft,” I’m almost too bored by the spectacular, lazy stupidity on display here to comment. I’ll just say this – nobody thinks all men are potential rapists. Talking about rape isn’t the same as accusing anybody of rape. And when there’s a public awareness campaign to address the kind of thinking that leads to guys deciding that an unconscious female is fair game to sexually assault, a campaign that seems to have successfully reduced crime, that is a good thing. Tellingly, a member of the Men’s Rights group who identifies only as “Raz” told The Star this week, “This is something that has negatively impacted my family and my life and nobody is talking about."
There will always be those who pitch a fit whenever an issue that touches a nerve is confronted head on. They will get defensive whenever violence or sexual assault are addressed, leaping into the fray to shout, “Women abuse too! Women LIE!” Easy there, sports. There’s no vast man-hating conspiracy. That’s not what these campaigns are about. And if in your egomania and paranoia you’ve chosen to view them that way, that’s your problem. But don’t inflict it on others. Don’t paper the town with your tinfoil hat rhetoric about how false rape is as big a problem as real rape, or your theory that any reported sexual assault involving drugs or alcohol must be some feminist revisionism of a consensual act. Don’t put your crap on everybody else. Because it just makes you seem like the thing you seem to despise most – self-appointed victims.
THE REST:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/mens_rights_dopes_strike_again/
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