“Just because you regret a one night stand, doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual.”
Wow. Go to hell.
These are the posters that have been popping up around the University of Alberta Campus in Edmonton. A bullshit mimicry of Battered Women’s Support Services “Don’t Be That Guy” project.
You may have seen the original brilliant campaign, which asserts that men should end their role in rape by not exploiting or taking advantage of someone who’s intoxicated. I’m pretty sure it’s Canadian based (just Google-confirmed, and Edmonton is definitely in Canada) but I’ve seen whispers of it in my dashboard before.
This campaign. It’s pretty great, really gets the teach-men-not-to-rape thing across.
The “Don’t Be That Girl” posters, however, gently condemn women who dare to leave the domestic sphere and make themselves prey to men because they…you know…want to have a good time with friends and safely enjoy the social aspects of young adulthood. AND, more importantly, it reminds them that “lying about sexual assault = a crime.”
YEAH, ABOUT THAT.
I’m not great with statistics, math, counting, telling time…pretty much anything to do with numbers, so instead I’m just going to pull up this graph from The Enliven Project, with information taken from Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey and FBI reports, respectively.
YUP. False accusations happen, the same way that getting struck by lightening happens. And not for anything, but I’m preeeeetty sure that there’s a much bigger problem at hand. You know, with rapists not going to jail, people being afraid of even reporting rape, and the fact that rape happens in the first place.
And the culprits? Mens Rights Edmonton, an anti-feminist, Mens Rights Activist (insert laugh track here) group.
So somewhere out there, another bunch of Budweiser-chugging, Tucker Max-worshipping 19-year-old dickheads are trying to derail the progress of a truly clever, benign effort to decrease victim-blaming and sexual assault.
(At this point I’m so angry I spill my coffee all over the table. I take my re-heated manicotti lunch and throw it against the wall. My dad runs in and asks, “What’s happening?” and I scream to the heavens, “FEMINIST JOURNALISM!”)
Like I don’t mean to profile, I know misogyny comes in all shapes and sizes, and I don’t WANT to play dirty. So I’m SORRY, gentlemen. Hope this doesn’t get your fedoras in a twist.
Ahem. Anyway.
Just another reminder that rape-culture and male-entitlement are ever-present. I could go on, but I already wasted one lunch today. So feel free to take my lead and vomit your own disgust into our comment section.
Original Article via cbc.ca.
Images via theviolencestopshere.ca, theenlivenproject.com, and cbc.ca.
