Women's Issues

Lying, spinning or bending the truth, exaggerating. I don't think that's much better. And why do that when you can just state it as it is? Then you have a factual argument that holds up much better.

If I ignored you, it was probably for a good reason.

edited 1st Apr '14 5:32:54 AM by AnotherDuck

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So why don't you tell us what message you think the campaign was trying to get across?

Was it encouraging women to report rape?

I recall asking you this before.

edited 1st Apr '14 5:11:23 AM by KingZeal

I think it is more that both campaigns reflect the respective interpretations of what constitutes sexual assault/rape and try to build consciousness towards them.

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

Don't Be That Girl is building consciousness towards rape how?

edited 1st Apr '14 5:27:44 AM by KingZeal

I hate to agree with Zeal but he's right, the Don't Be that Girl campaign does nothing to help victims of rape or discourage rape, it is aimed purely at the phantom foe of false rape allegations (which is a phantom for due to how little it happens, I'm not saying that it doesn't happen) and does serious collateral damage with how it discourages the reporting of rape.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

DBT Girl campaign aims to lower false rape accusations (it would be better to have male versions too, but that just be with my view of "Work on both sides") and attitude of "I regret, so I shall just claim rape and thus be free of responsibility".

If you insist that DBT Girl campaing sends such negative message, then the interpretation of DBT Guy campaign promotes that men are incapable of control, that rape is natural reaction for them and that women can't rape and men can't be raped, is equally valid.

I wonder if you are ready to accept such interpretation? Or will you insist that person claiming such is intentionally misinterpreting the campaign to suit their needs?

Oh yet more false equivalence and strawmanning.

First of all, Don't Be Thart Guy doesn't accuse "all" men of jack or that men are "incapable" of jack. The entire point of it is to say that you can choose not to be that sort of person. That is literally the entire point, down to the name.

Don't Be That Girl, however, is specifically asking girls to reconsider reporting a rape. The idea of "Just because you regret it doesn't mean it was rape" has the unfortunate ripple effect of not just reaching the "false accusers" (who, once again, are tiny in comparison to those that don't report actual assault), but ALSO reaching the girls who actually were assaulted. It doesn't discriminate between the two. You can't reach one with that campaign without reaching the other.

edited 1st Apr '14 5:50:48 AM by KingZeal

I think both campaigns have their own unfortunate implications , but I have to agree with them about the blaming the victim thing, mandemo. To elaborate, DBTG implies that only men rape people, when in reality sexual harrasment by women is undereported , which I believe is a glaring problem .

edited 1st Apr '14 5:48:31 AM by Xopher001

Not exactly. See, outside of feminist theory, the understanding of what constitutes rape and how vile the respective acts are, isn't as clear cut for most people as one would think. Available definitions range from forcible penetration of women exclusively to the more funny ones with everything in between.

In the original Mary Koss study for example a large part of the participants wasn't able to classify their respective cases as definitely rape. And the source that Iaculus gave earlier states that a large part of the unreported cases were considered by the victims to be unimportant or a personal matter, instead of a vile act in need of police intervention.

If I had to extemporize a reason for this from a feminist perspective, I would probably go with a similar approach to the one marxists used to explain why a large part of the proletariat failed to feel unbearably oppressed by their capitalist overlords, and hypothesize that the prevalent rape culture has normalized acts that - from a feminist perspective - are vile and shocking violations deserving utter condemnation to minor events not worth making a fuss over in peoples heads, and thereby built a false consciousness. People may just fail to recognize that they have violated or have been violated.

Don't be that guy attempts to shift this consciousness, mainly by convincing the guys that what many (men and women) apparently didn't consider a condemnable violation beforehand, is actually one, in an effort to protect the ones that actually suffered from said violation, and that they have a responsibility to avoid those situations.

Don't be that girl tries to shift it back.

edited 1st Apr '14 6:36:46 AM by blauregen

All I know is, my gut says maybe.

An important thing to remember about ad campaigns is that they work best when they're narrowly-targeted and operating off pre-existing cultural touchstones. 'Don't Be That Guy' has its zing and impact because it's a pre-existing phrase adapted for the campaign - a meme about dumb, awkward behaviour that, through its familiarity, creates a whole host of associations in the viewer's mind that reinforce the campaign's message. 'Don't be that Person' is less familiar and less catchy and thus less impactful. As for why the Canadian police were particularly focusing on male behaviour, well, I wrote a post about that - long story short, sexual abuse in Canada is overwhelmingly a male-perpetrated problem, even taking into account reportage stats (8% of men and 8% of women victimised by sexual assault report their abuse - in other words, the stats aren't distorted by less men coming forward).

A campaign aimed at female rapists might indeed be a good idea, but the dynamics of advertising suggest that you probably want to make that a separate campaign rather than diluting the strong message of Don't Be That Guy. Don't be that Girl would actually have been a pretty good one if the Men's Rights Edmonton creeplords hadn't got there first.

It's worth remembering that Don't Be That Guy was sponsored by several Canadian police forces. So it's not just a feminist movement to redefine rape, but a government public-awareness campaign about existing policy. Don't Be That Girl actually got into trouble over that when they appropriated the logos of the organisations backing the original campaign without asking.

edited 1st Apr '14 6:18:00 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Your saying that women don't rape people?

@Zeal

Hey look, it's classic "You dare to disagree? You are straw manning!"

@Xopher

I assume with victim blaming you refer to DBT Girl campaign, which has been accused of doing that and not DBT Guy campaign.

Yeah, both campaigns can be constructed to have unfortunate implications, which is why I would like to have them not be "Don't be that girl/guy" and rather have them be "Don't be that asshole". I rather send the message to all, rather than pretend that one side is innocent victim suffering from brutes/manipulators.

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edited 1st Apr '14 6:19:16 AM by Mandemo

What I'm trying to say is people often assume that women don't or can't rape people, but that's really not the case , and assuming that indirectly hurts victims who have been sexually assaulted by women. The basis for this assumption also has many unfortunate implications

When interpreting any message, context is key. Context is important because messages don't exist in a vacuum, nor are they divorced from the opinions and actions of those making them. If it was just the posters alone, I'd be prepared to give DBT Girl some benefit of the doubt as crass but not malevolent. If it comes from MRAs, then I won't. It's quite simple: the actions of self-proclaimed "Men's Rights Activists" do not lead me to a charitable conclusion. DBT Girl is not a stand-alone, it's part of a pattern of intimidation and attempts at silencing that have been directed at women by MRAs; look at Register-Her or anything Paul Elam has ever said.

edited 1st Apr '14 6:25:05 AM by Achaemenid

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Your saying that women don't rape people?

They do, but not nearly to the same extent (they're responsible for 3% of sexual assault cases in Canada, even taking reportage rates into account), which is why Don't Be That Guy targeted men, and why it resulted in such a huge reduction in rapes and sexual assaults despite only targeting men (ten per cent in six months after a decade-long rise, just by sticking a few posters on walls). Like I said, a campaign targeted at women rapists would probably also be a good idea, but the nature of advertising (people respond to specific campaigns based around cultural touchstones) means that you'd want another narrow, separate run rather than a broadening of Don't Be That Guy, and DBT Guy got the big government bucks poured into it because governments are blunt instruments that like to go after the big problems that can result in crowd-pleasing big-number reductions by being dealt with.

edited 1st Apr '14 6:26:52 AM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

Mandemo: Except you ARE strawmanning. You are equating the two movements despite the fact that they come from different contexts and with entirely different messages. Just because they have the same name, and both are about rape, does not mean they are equal, the same, or can be compared to with similar descriptions.

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If you strawman, I'm going to call it out. Simple as that.

The DBT Girl campaign, even if it would have been made with the best intentions to solve the problem of false rape accusations, it is doing so by inflicting much more damage to actual rape victims. Since a) getting raped is worse than being falsely accused and b) rape is much more common, it can be safely said that this campaign does much more harm than good. The don't be that guy campaign on the other, while not being perfect, helps a lot while harming no one.

The DBT Guy campaign is calling for men to exercise control, says nothing about nature and does actually include male victims. So the only valid point I can find here is that the DBT Guy campaign implies that women don't rape, which I agree is a problem, I'd say we should run an anti-rape campaign aimed at female perpetrators, perhaps we could call it Don't be that Girl?

While I agree that this is Zeal's classic response and that's it's tiresome (it's why I don't normally engage with discussion with him when he gets involved), you are making a false equivalence, an anti false-rape-accusation campaign is not equivalent to an anti-rape campaign, rape and false-rape-accusation are not the same thing, I don't get why it's so hard for you to get that the equivalent of a women being raped isn't a man being falsely accused of raping someone, the equivalent is a man being raped, to act otherwise is massively harmful for men's rights as it carries the very strong implication that rape is only every carried out by men.

I'm curious, what other governments run/back such campaigns? I know that the UK Home Office run adds every so often, though they are far from as good.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Well, Scotland has the This Is Not An Invitation To Rape Me campaign. It's run by Rape Crisis Scotland, which is funded directly by the Scottish government. We Can Stop It, meanwhile, is run by the Scottish constabulary, and probably serves as the most direct UK counterpart to the 'Don't Be That Guy' campaign.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Please do not insinuate that I say anything that doesn't have a point.

If you have a problem with what I say, I'd appreciate it called into question.

I've got a response typed up but I feel that if I post it we're going to drift into the territory of discussing a person and not their points, could I send my response via PM? Either way, whenever I have a problem with something you say I do call you on it, at least when I'm engaging with you.

I should probably also point out that I'm actually agreeing with you in this conversation, don't worry, it's weird for me to.

Both of those look very good, though once again I just wish there were MRA mirrors of them that dealt with rapes carried out by women, instead of the sham campaign we get that seem more focused on hurting women that helping men.

edited 1st Apr '14 7:38:25 AM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

This is the biggest problem with the MRA movement, really. It's reactionary, trying to fight back against feminist victories rather than improving the lot of the people it represents. It treats gender rights as a tug-of-war, where women are an enemy that must be destroyed.

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The first one is debatable, and it depends entirely on the case. You could lose your job for it, for instance, and have trouble getting a new one. But arguing which one is worse on a general basis isn't better than oppression olympics. I don't think there is more to it than that both of them suck for whoever it affects.

The second is a little bit off the mark. Saying one problem isn't important because another is more common is also Appeal to Worse Problems. And in this case, what's relevant isn't the prevalence of rape, but the lack of prevalence for reporting it to the police. That's where the harm is done.

I think what it basically boils down to is how many perpetrators you're willing to let go to ensure as few innocents as possible are judged guilty.

I kinda wonder how they measure false reports anyway. I mean, when this topic came up before there was an account of a police officer who barely saw any false reports. Which is kind of irrelevant, since false reports that are noticed aren't a problem. The problem is what they don't notice. And how do you measure that?

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We can't measure "false" reports, exactly. We can measure dismissed reports and exonerated convicts, but that's about it. Even cases where a girl drops the charges or says she made it up has to be examined with a magnifying glass because both of those are also symptoms of under-reporting.

Also, I'd like you to explain your conclusions a bit here. I agree with the part about Appeal to Worse Problems, but not the part where you say that "it sucks for both and that's all there is to it". Because as you also said, it's a net-loss/net-gain question, which means we HAVE to compare and contrast which one harms more victims. By all means, avoid an Appeal to Worse Problems and avoid dismissing the problem of false accusation, but if we have to choose between two imperfect solutions, then the one that harms the least people is the only sane one to choose.

edited 1st Apr '14 8:39:26 AM by KingZeal