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A while back, a campaign was begun to reduce sexual assault in the Alberta (CA) area. One of the most prominent things to come about was a series of posters titled "Don't be that guy". The posters often shows "no no"s that men should not do, to remind the men who see them that rape is wrong (examples below).

Recently in Edmonton (where this all was primarily taking place) a new series of posters, coming from another group, has appeared. This series is titled "Don't be that girl" (images below). Unlike their sister posters, these combat two topics at once 1) to discourage false rape allegations (notable from the poster on the right which states lying about sexual assault is = a crime) and 2) to criticize the original series' efficiency and approach of dispelling sexual assault (the picture on the left, labeled, double standards)

The reaction of the group that sent out the original posters, S.A.V.E. (Sexual Assault Victims of Edmonton), was that the parody posters pushed for rape apology, and also dismiss the idea of any possible false reports of rape or sexual assault (more correctly, the figures are so small to them, they are virtually zero.) SAVE members are rumored to be meeting this week to discuss the parody posters.

The identity of the parody posters was also discovered as MRE.com (Mensrightsendmonton). CBC (basically, Canadian BBC) asked to speak with its members about the poster, but were redirected to a Ms. Karen Straghan who was interviewed as a spokesperson for MRE.

The MREs defense is that the "Don't be that guy" posters do not target sexual predators, but men as a group. To paraphrase Ms. Straghan "These posters don't target the vast majority of men who commit rape. They target average men, who, wouldn't commit rape because they know it's wrong. These rapists who commit this crime know it is wrong, and don't care that it hurts other people, or even get off to the fact that it does."

So I ask all of you. What do you think? What do you think of the original posters, and the new parody ones? Do you think either is effective, or as each group claims about each others campaign, detrimental?

Oh, and, on my lack of foresight, could a forum mod please preface the title with NSFW or [Controversial] (I think that you guys can change titles, right? o.o). I would be very grateful :)

Edit: Thank you, whoever you are, anonymous guardian angel forum mod :D

Twas me, but RM is still the better mod and deserves your praise Hey! I said edit the title, not my posts! Although I don't see how this is NSFW or why we need warning that it is controversial, I'll use both labels to be on the safe side. Other mods are free to edit the topic if we only need one.

@on topic

Hmmm….I'll need to think on this one.

I think MRE is correct that the initial posters possibly show a misunderstanding of how rape occurs.

Rapists aren't ordinary guys who are confused about what "consent" is. They are not about to read these posters and think "Well dip me in chocolate and roll me in nuts! That time I dragged a girl into an alley really WAS rape! Gosh darn!". No, they know they are rapists. They know they are that guy. They probably don't care.

Likewise ordinary guys should already be pretty aware of these signs and don't need to be lectured as if any one of them are potential criminals.

On the flipside

There probably are some perverted guys who might actually commit the things the posters are portraying. They just aren't ordinary guys.

It's impossible for me to say that the things implied in the original posters do not happen

Maybe they would see those posters and decide they shouldn't be another statistic in the problem. Who knows.

And arguing "Well women should take responsibility as well!" is a very dangerous argument to make. It may be partially accurate in some context but mostly a fallacy. I'll let Verbose explain that one

I saw those on /b/ a while back

Here are some other add campaigns that teach taking your own responsibility

Personally, I find the notion that us men need to be reminded that rape is wrong quite offensive (okay, not really "offensive", more like mildly annoyed). This strange idea that tumblr feminists have that men are all ravenous lust machines that must insert our dick into the nearest orifice every twelve hours or we'll become testosterone laced raging monsters is as laughable as it is wrong. Every man knows it's every twenty-four hours.

I would take it a step further in saying that the posters don't only paint all men as possible rapists, but does a disservice to women for lying that "yes, this is what a rapist is like."

A study from Lisak and Miller estimated that about 6% of men commit rape (speculation is thrown in that this may possibly be under reported, but more studies would be needed to tell by how much--if it is.) Of the 120 individuals who admitted to committing rape (out of 1,882 participates, making it about 6%), 74 admitted to being repeat offenders. In the end, 4% of the men (those 74) were responsible for some 400 rape cases. The other 44 (2%) admitted to being only one time offenders.

So, even among rapists, the majority of them are repeat offenders. And they also covered other physical abuse such as kicking, choking, etc. Turns out these same repeat offenders were responsible for 25% of the admitted violence. 4%, responsible for 25% of the violence.

Further evidence in the link I provided is suggested in a study by Stephanie McWhorter who surveyed US navy agents. Although her report showed a significantly larger percentage of rapists out of men (13%)
it also showed that some 70% of these rapists were responsible for the multiple rape crimes (avg. 6.4 cases per repeat rapist, L&Ms study showed each repeat offender committed about 5.8 rapes.)

The reason it disservices women is because it gives a rapist an excuse, since, all it apparently takes is a simple case of the forget-mes for a man to commit rape, and all it takes to correct that problem is tell him it is bad ("I promise, it won't ever happen again" Where have we heard that before?). A better poster would be to inform women, not try to guilt men who would be virtually never likely to commit rape (i.e. "If he did it once, and said it won't happen again, chances are, he's lying to you. 70% of rapists and sexual assaulters are repeat offenders. Get out of there." etc.) Or atleast inform them that it takes more than saying "Swiper no swiping" to convince a rapist not to rape (i.e. mental correction, therapy, etc.).

These posters address the problem as a "masculine problem", that is, it attaches behaviors of psychopathy, egotism, and other mental disorder to all men and present it as something every man is very capable of, we just have to remind them not to. To mimic xTSGx, it paints men as all ticking 'rape bombs' that will go off if we only forget to push the reset every hour (or 12, or whatever)

Edit: @BSOD, I wanted both labels just as a precaution. Rape obviously is a touchy and grisly subject, and the posters now draw a somewhat polarized debate. So, just to be safe :)

>_"just as a *percussion*"_
>Can't edit
>mfw grammar nazi in me wants to die right now

I fixed your typo. Sieg heil.

And I've seen these PSAs in BC as well. Something that Dave Chapelle once said always stuck with me in situations like this. I don't remember it exactly, but this was the gist of it:

So imagine I'm walking down the street wearing a cop uniform. I mean, y'all know it'd be me, Dave Chapelle, wearing a cop uniform, but imagine no one else does. So this woman comes up to me and says "That nigga stole my purse (sic)," and I tell her "Sorry, I'm not a real cop." […]
Point is, don't wear the uniform if it ain't your job.

His point was that you're free to dress like a slut, but you have to be intelligent about it and be aware that there might be consequences for wearing a salacious outfit at a party where people are going to be getting plastered. It's all about making intelligent choices.

My other big issue with the "it's-always-the-man's-fault" argument is this: if you (a woman) plan to go to a party and get absolutely hammered, you have to realize that there are risks involved. Your self-control will be lowered. You might drunkenly consent when sober-you would never do so. And while some may argue that women should have the right to make that choice, I posit that, while that's true, that does not give them carte blanche for any actions they may take while drunk. You have to take some responsibility for your choices, especially the one you made to drink in the first place, and you have to accept that there will be consequences for doing so. I think that's something that…escapes many people.

Okay, I've got at least two things to say, and hopefully I'll keep them sorted out.

I think there is a perception, be it true or not, that the sorts of things outlined in the posters are in the realm of what's termed "date rape". The idea (which is never made very clear in popular culture) is that a man spends time and money on a woman expecting to get sex out of the deal, and eventually decides he's put in enough that he deserves it. So he's going to get consensual sex if he can, and will take non-consensual sex if he can't. These posters are pointing out that non-consensual sex is, by definition, rape. For however men there are out there that have this idea that certain actions mean they've earned sex, or that "she was asking for it" when she wasn't, these posters are supposedly educating them. I'm not highly convinced that such men stand to be educated, however, but…

There is another aspect here, that of "Just because you regret…" There was a case back when I was in college (I don't recall where it happened; it wasn't my college) in which a young woman had been at a party, went back to a guy's dorm room, got naked, and had sex with him. Before the actual act, the guy had asked her, "Do you want me to use a condom?" She shook her head "No." but had apparently meant, "No, I've changed my mind about the whole sex thing entirely." She never said a word to him after they got back to his room, but the next day, she went to campus police and charged him with rape. The person writing the article I had been reading was a woman and a feminist, and she said the case should be dropped, as unfortunate as the misunderstanding had been for the "victim".

All of this comes together to make the problem of the difficulty of determining what consent is. I had a couple friends freshman year who had ended up alone in her bedroom, and she told me that he hadn't raped her, but had come on to her much more strongly than she wanted, and was angry that she had to clarify that she was uninterested. I found out later that they had been engaging in oral sex; I would have thought that was a sure sign of consent as well! Is consent always clear-cut? Do we all know where the line is? I think the answer is unfortunately "no".

BSOD wrote:

Rapists aren’t ordinary guys who are confused about what “consent” is. They are not about to read these posters and think “Well dip me in chocolate and roll me in nuts! That time I dragged a girl into an alley really WAS rape! Gosh darn!”. No, they know they are rapists. They know they are that guy. They probably don’t care.

This is very true, it's not like most rape occurs from a misunderstanding at a party. "Oh, you said no to sex? Gosh, I'm sorry, I could have sworn I heard you say yes"

And while the posters do seem rather chastising of men as a whole, I think they do still make a good point about what counts as consensual sex. That doesn't mean I think posters like these are necessary, though, because most guys already know what counts and doesn't count as consensual sex, and those that will take advantage of the situation will not care if some poster told him "don't be that guy" because he's probably already been that guy for quite a while now. I don't think the posters themselves are all that bad, and I think they are rather harmless as a whole, but they pretend that guys need to be told these "no no"s as if guys didn't already know taking advantage of a drunk chick is not cool. They are quite unnecessary and ineffective in stopping the problem at hand, in my opinion.

Moving on to the response posters. You guys have been pointing out that the "don't be that guy" posters are chastising to men as a whole, but what about how these response posters are being as chastising towards women, if not more so in some cases? I'm not bothered by the fact that these posters are "rape apologist" posters (I really don't think they are in most cases) I'm bothered by the fact that these response posters act like women are drunk bimbos that cry wolf after they've had sex with someone while they were drunk. I especially do not appreciate the posters that get sarcastic with me, because that just insults my intelligence and talks down to me even more than the original posters did to men. You know what would have been a great response poster series for MRE to use? The examples that Derpy posted that keep women aware or what their limit is, safe alcohol consumption, and how to protect themselves from sticky situations. It seemed like the MRE was more focused on attacking SAVE for their poster series rather than actually spreading awareness.

I wish these posters would stop acting like only women get raped in situations like this, too. I long for the day when rape is a gender neutral issue, and not considered something that only happens to women and children.

@crimson

Speaking as someone who was once taken advantage of while drunk, I agree.

@Brucker
Legally speaking, consent is the agreement or refusal to cooperate. It doesn't account for persona convictions after, or even during (so long as they still agree), sex. Let me put it this way. If you receive a pay check, the government claims a portion of it in tax. Now, we may not like to pay the tax, we might even regret having to pay it, but we still do it (or face the mighty political overlords wrath, grahhh). Also, I'm implying women owe men sex, like workers owe a tax, but just that consent and personal feelings are not dependent on one another.
Though you do raise the question of "How many sexual assault/rape cases are due to miscommunication?" Something that might need looking into, cuz, I honestly can't say.

@Crimson
I pointed how the original are a disservice to women, and not how the parodies are because it's a given they were meant to be rather snippy--to be critical. But try to keep in mind, they build off what was already put forward (i.e. the original that uses that image of the drunk girl already implies what the parody pointed out). I also think part of their goal was to oppose SAVE. Now, that could be because of disagreement in policy, or to gain some sort of publicity (which, they've achieved, if that was the goal.), not sure which. Perhaps both?

As Crimson pointed out, it should be noted that the "Don't be that guy" campaign seems to be oblivious to the idea of male victims (outside of gay men, which, you'll se in a moment), or female perpetrators. Below is one of the posters for a gay couple, with the subtext "It's not sex… when he changes his mind". Now, I can't remember what the source was, but lesbian couples are actually more likely to sexually assault and domestically abuse their spouses than gay couples are. Which, the fact they can touch on gay sexual assault, but not lesbian, further makes me feel they are ascribing this as strictly a issue of masculinity, and not psychopathy.

Kyntak wrote:

Also, I’m implying women owe men sex, like workers owe a tax, but just that consent and personal feelings are not dependent on one another.

Was there supposed to be a "not" somewhere in that sentence? I'm completely bewildered as to what you're trying to say here, and adding a "not" somewhere in this sentence would help, but only a little.

Brucker – Meme Crossing wrote:

Was there supposed to be a “not” somewhere in that sentence? I’m completely bewildered as to what you’re trying to say here, and adding a “not” somewhere in this sentence would help, but only a little.

Oh, yes x.x a 'not' was supposed to exist there. omg, terrible place to forget one.

I was trying to illustrate that consent has nothing to do with whether or not you like doing something. We do things we don't like, even loathe, all the time.
Consent is merely the agreement or refusal of cooperation (in regards to sex). Lets say for example, someone is in a relationship, and their partner says they want to have sex for the first time with them. This person feels they aren't ready, but are too concerned it will turn their partner away from them (they do not want to) but go along with it anyways. Subsequently, if, as a result, the person had a horrible experience, and regrets it, consent was never in question, since they did willingly cooperate (i.e. they weren't forced or coerced, they simply decided not to say what they felt. That part should be clarified.)
On a rudimentary level, agency is not dependent on feeling, and agency is what we examine when we ask if consent was present or not. If that makes sense.

Okay, I follow you. Agreed. We indeed do things we don't like all the time, even (maybe almost especially) when it comes to sex. I've both had sex with someone I didn't really want and turned away from an opportunity of sex with someone I did want; consent and desire are separate issues.

so from the gist of this conversation, I get that….
these adds don't apply to me cuz I'm better than that and feminazis on FB and Tumblr are trolls. Yep sounds about right.

/thread