By now, likely everyone in the Manosphere has heard about the attention MRAEdmonton garnered when they countered the “Don’t Be That Guy” rape posters with their own “Don’t Be That Girl” ones.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/09/dont-be-that-girl-posters_n_3570282.html#slide=1826360
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Rape+apologist+parodies+That+posters+Edmonton/8638284/story.html
Personally, I love the posters, but what I want to talk about today is the original campaign, designed to teach men not to commit sexual assault.
On the surface, the original posters appear innocuous enough. No, obviously, you should not be having sex with a woman so drunk she is passed out face down on the couch with her ass in the air.
No, you should not even think of having sex with a woman who is staggering around the men’s bathroom.
No, you should not be taking off your pants to fuck a chick passed out cold with an empty beer glass at her side and several more stacked on the bedside table.
Obviously, helping a drunk woman home does not entitle you to sex.
And in what is going to come as SHOCKING news to everyone, if someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, you should not have sex with them.
I’ll give you a while to process that information, because I’m sure that until this clever campaign came along, you were all busy screwing comatose girls at parties and gleefully hailing cabs so you could help ladies home and then rape them.
Tsk tsk.
Bad boys.
I think I have found a way to illustrate just how offensive these campaigns are, and what the real intention behind them happens to be.
Look at this: the bike theft capital of the world is none other than Toronto, Canada.
http://dirtydawgs.livejournal.com/28898.html
Most of the stolen bikes are never recovered, with the bulk of bikes going to China and Jamaica. Jamaica has quite a few black folks, no? So it must be black folks stealing the bikes, right? That right there is what you call LOGIC. Stolen bikes go to Jamaica, Jamaica has a lot of black people, black people must be thieves! Men like to have sex with women, sex with a woman against her will is rape, men must be rapists!
Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it.
Let’s say the Toronto Police decide to tackle this epidemic of bike thievery by creating a poster campaign: Don’t Be That Black Guy.
Just because you can pick the lock doesn’t mean you’re allowed to steal the bike. Don’t Be That Black Guy.
Just because she left her bike outside the coffee shop for five minutes doesn’t mean you can steal it. Don’t Be That Black Guy.
Just because it’s easy to jump the fence into the backyard doesn’t mean you can steal that bike. Don’t Be That Black Guy.
And hey, why stop there? There are so many crimes we could address by vilifying an entire group of people!
Just because you found a wallet doesn’t mean you get to take all the cash before you return it. Don’t Be That Jewish Guy.
Just because you own both a pressure cooker and some ball bearings doesn’t mean you can build a bomb and kill people with it. Don’t Be That Muslim Guy.
Just because you found a stray cat doesn’t mean you can kill it and add it to the menu. Don’t Be That Chinese Guy.
Just because you have allergy pills with pseudoephedrine and some hydrogen chloride lying around doesn’t mean you should cook a batch of crystal meth. Don’t be that Latino Guy.
I could go on, but surely it’s clear that posters asking men not to be that guy, you know the rapist guy, will be just as effective as posters asking black guys not to be thieves. And why are these posters not effective?
MOST MEN AREN’T RAPISTS
MOST BLACK MEN AREN’T THIEVES
MOST CHINESE MEN DON’T EAT CATS
MOST LATINO MEN ARE NOT DRUG DEALERS
MOST MUSLIMS DON’T BUILD BOMBS
And the ones that DO? They don’t give a fuck about your stupid posters. They’re risking their lives and freedom and their livelihoods. A police officer with a gun might stop them. Some jackass poster won’t.
What the posters accomplish is to teach men they are natural-born rapists. And to teach women to fear and mistrust men. To hate them.
All men.
It’s a hate campaign. There is no other word for it.
Does this look familiar?
Posters played a key role in convincing the German population that Jews were evil, scary, bad, some “thing” you should hate. And we know how that turned out, don’t we? Don’t Be That Guy is hate speech, pure and simple. And the more voices that call it out for what it is, the sooner we can expose the real aims of women’s groups that promote these campaigns.
They’re the new Nazis.
Sound harsh? Just too much to swallow? Think comparing rape campaigns to anti-Semitic propaganda is a false comparison? You might want to think again. Silence is what makes these campaigns possible. You may have other things to say about these posters, but say them you must.
Don’t be that guy.
Lots of love,
JB
CORRECTIONS:
In news that will come as no surprise to my critics, everything you read on this as a first draft. I might go back and correct typos, but I have never gone back and done a re-write on any post. This post has three major errors that I want to correct, with the caveat that the errors were the result of my first draft goes up policy.
1. A commenter who calls himself Black Yoda at AVfM has quite rightly pointed out that I have left out one major group in my play on racial stereotypes: white guys. Allow me to correct that casually racist oversight:
Just because you have a five iron doesn’t make the park your green.
Don’t Be That White Guy
2. My list of what people AREN’T has omitted the statement that MOST JEWISH GUYS AREN’T OBSESSED WITH MONEY.
3. My comparison of the posters to Nazism has a glaring error in that I referred to the Nazi era posters as “Jewish propaganda”. The correct words would either be “anti-Jewish” or “Nazi”.
Thanks for keeping me on my toes, readers! Don’t hesitate to call me out on blatant oversights or errors.
JB
