Don’t be that hypocrite

In November 2010 a Canadian organisation called ‘Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton‘ (SAVE) devised an ‘educational’ poster campaign. They called it “Don’t be that guy“. True to the feminist narrative, and despite statistical evidence to the contrary, it ignores male victims and female perpetrators of sexual assault and domestic violence.

By way of background, in this post I note that a large proportion of the perpetrators of sexual assault are women and girls, whilst elsewhere I talk about the issue of false rape allegations. In this post I discuss the incidence of paedophilia and underage sex by females. Here, in this post, I note that the initiators of domestic violence are about 50/50 male and female. And finally, in this post I highlight the increasing extent of violence by women and girls.

Thus there can be no question that it would have been equally valid (or invalid) to run a parallel “Don’t be that girl” campaign – which SAVE did not do. Perhaps there was a funding constraint … or maybe it was an ideological one. Anyway, in recognition of this anomaly, an organisation called ‘Mens Rights Edmonton’ (MRE) launched their very own “Don’t be that girl” poster campaign.

Clearly targeting male perpetrators is seen by many as not merely appropriate, but as ‘striking a righteous blow against <insert feminist term of your choice here>’. But turn the spotlight onto female perpetrators and oh dear, suddenly that same approach is – you guessed it – HATEFUL and SEXIST.

Thus the feminist response was along these lines …

Caitlin McGuire ‏@eastcoastkto

You know there are assholes everywhere, but these women-shaming men’s right posters make me question who put them up in Halifax?

Caitlin McGuire ‏@eastcoastkto

@BryonyHouse Never thought you would be. It just sucked seeing your name being used for hate.

Nope, that’s right, it doesn’t matter if the statistics back it up. It doesn’t matter if sending out a message to ALL likely perpetrators might be more productive in terms of, you know, actually protecting innocent victims. No, no, no, the important thing here is that due respect is shown to women, and particularly feminist women, at all times.

Reading the various feminist responses to the MRE poster campaign it’s quite clear that they just don’t ‘get it’. They saw the MRE posters merely as a “parody” of their campaign, and one that had no purpose other than to antagonise. Some feminists even went so far as to suggest that the MRE campaign advocated rape.

The fact that the MRE campaign was based on a truthful premise and in a way dovetailed with feminists’ own efforts, didn’t enter into their thought processes. So deeply has the ‘women good/men bad/MRA worse!’ mantra permeated into their psyche that they have lost all sense of perspective or reason.

Unless of course the SAVE view was that a different type of approach might be more effective for female perpetrators. In which case the obvious question is what form this approach should take, and when can we expect to see it rolled out?

Ideally of course we would be targeting that small minority of individuals who are perpetrators, not huge slabs of the population comprising mainly innocent people. Have a look at the article linked below to see how the ‘don’t be that guy’ concept might be applied to other groups in society, e.g. ‘don’t be that negro’.

http://www.genderratic.com/p/3098/dont-be-that-girl/

As I’m typing this I’m recalling something said in the February 2014 letter by RAINN to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault:

“In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming “rape culture” for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple
fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.

While that may seem an obvious point, it has tended to get lost in recent debates. This has led to an inclination to focus on particular segments of the student population (e.g., athletes), particular aspects of campus culture (e.g., the Greek system), or traits that are common in many millions of law-abiding Americans (e.g., “masculinity”), rather than on the subpopulation at fault: those who choose to commit rape. This trend has the paradoxical effect of making it harder to stop sexual violence, since it removes the focus from the individual at fault, and seemingly mitigates personal responsibility for his or her own actions.”

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