Practically Feminist: being realistic in the face of hometown MRAs

Over the last several months I have read a lot of articles, blog posts, and assorted commentary on rapeculture, SlutWalk, consent, “new” feminism, MRAs… you name it.  I’ve read commentary from the left, right, and center, male and female.  But so far most of the commentary I’ve read has been kept at an arm’s length.  Recently though, award-winning rape-prevention posters (the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign) have been “parodied” and posted locally, bringing the conversation roaring home to E-town.  Some of the slogans on the posters posted by the Edmonton MRA include:

• “Just because you regret a one night stand, doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual.”
• “Just because she’s easy doesn’t mean she shouldn’t fear false criminal accusations.”
• “Just because you regret it doesn’t mean it was rape.”

image found at: Leaderpost.com

The MRA ascertains that they do want rapists convicted, but they also want those who reported false crimes punished as well.  They want to take it away from being a “gender issue”.

OK, let’s start there.  The estimated number of rapes (per the CDC) are 300K- 1.3 million… a YEAR.  Estimated percentage of victims that are male: 3%.  Number of reported rapes that college students assume are fake: 50%.  Percentage of claims that are actually false: somewhere between 2-8%.  This last statistic does not take into account the fact that police expect that 50% of rapes will never be reported.

The fact is that the men in this MRA, and the people that think like them (because many women are willing to side with them as well) are annoyed.  They get annoyed by words like feminist, and consent, and rape, and slut walk.  They are tired of being “the bad guy”.  And so, tired and annoyed, they want to do something about it.  But what they are NOT is empathetic.  They don’t have the compassion necessary to process that a person’s RAPE outweighs their discomfort on the subject.  That their squeamishness pales in comparison to the staggering statistics regarding sexual abuse.  That it’s the sad truth that for the most part, 97% in fact, the victims of rape are women.  This IS a gender issue.  It’s not a competition that women are happy to be winning!  In regards to the idea of false accusations: Karen Smith, the executive director of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton told the CBC “It just doesn’t happen. Nobody would report sexual assault needlessly because it is a gruelling process to go through.”

After the posters started showing up around town, shortly before the scheduled Slut Walk, the response across social media was immediate.  It’s possible that I’ve just become extremely selective in my online relationships, but I have yet to see a single post in favor of the message, seemingly pro-rape, that the posters imply.  I wasn’t surprised.  The posters are a pretty pathetic attempt to play on an already popular and effective campaign.  To be effective they wouldn’t have just needed to be strong in their own right (which they weren’t) but they needed to be able to show how the original messages were wrong (which they didn’t).  That’s just extremely poor marketing and shows a complete disconnect on the part of the MRAs.  After doing a bit of fundraising over the last year I’ve become more aware of the costs associated with marketing and I’ve gotta say: That was a big fat waste of money.

So the MRAs look foolish, that’s not really up for debate.  What is are the reactions to the posters from the supporters of the originals.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll focus in on Journal writer Paula Simons and the organizers of the Edmonton Slut Walk.  The bit in her piece that seems to have really struck a chord centers around this idea, “Yet no matter your gender, if you’re too impaired to take care of yourself, the odds someone will hurt you or take advantage of you certainly go up. To render yourself powerless, trusting to the general decency of those around you, is foolhardy.” (You can read the whole thing here.)

The reaction to this statement will give you an idea of the arguments I’ve been reading non-stop for the last year (and that have been going on for YEARS before that.)  The organizers of Slut Walk responded with an open letter to Simons in which they fought back at that idea, stating: “This is victim-blaming. The act of sexual violence is an action committed by one person, against another person. You ignore what you must have heard as a feminist writing about rape—the victim bears no responsibility over the crime perpetrated against them. Safety tips such as ‘don’t drink so much’ have been provided to teenagers for years. The perverse reality of safety tips, such as the belief that by drinking you are putting yourself in harm’s way, is based on an antiquated notion of rape as something done by a boogeyman lurking in the bushes to rape you.”  (The letter in it's entirety can be found here.)

Here’s where it gets sticky.  I DO believe that Simons is doing a fair bit of “victim blaming”, and that is inherently wrong.  No matter how you dress, no matter how you dance, how many drinks you accept, or how you “tease”, NO ONE deserves to be assaulted.  I feel EXACTLY the same way about a man being beaten.  No matter how much buddy drinks.  No matter if he dances with your girl.  Or bumps into you on the way out the door.  Even if he lips you off like a total dink.  Still, there’s no excuse on your part to incite violence.  A victim is a victim, regardless of circumstance.

That said, we do not live in a Utopian bubble.  We live in a world where assault, sexual and otherwise, is very much a reality.  It’s estimated that between 1 in 7 and 1 in 5 women in Canada WILL be raped.  That is our reality and to ignore it is both dangerous and stupid.  It IS.  Teaching women to be able to protect themselves, and enlisting men to be “white knights” might not be the feminist ideal, but until those rape stats start to drop, it is a PRACTICAL one.  

To teach young women to "protect themselves" does not have to mean "don't wear that", either.  If you'll notice, BOTH campaigns focus significantly less on what's she's wearing than previous campaigns may have.  Part of that is that what a rapist considers "leading him on" can vary wildly.  As a student in all almost all-male program at NAIT I had a charming classmate that he had a "right" to stare at my tits because I was "dressed like that".  I was wearing a form-fitting tshirt with NO cleavage, right up to the neck, and track pants.  But through his eyes I qualified as a slut and was "asking for it".  But here's the thing, I was sober, I was surrounded by friends, I was able to walk away because I was able to have at least SOME control over the situation.  My OUTFIT had nothing to do with it, not really.  Had I been intoxicated, isolated, etc. the situation could have been devastatingly different.  Teaching women to avoid THOSE situations where they paint a target on their backs CAN protect them.  Getting wasted isn't actually a right, it's a privilege, and it's one that rapists take advantage of all the time.  Pretending that that isn't the case is foolhardy.

Here's the thing: aiming campaigns at men, trying to PREVENT rape, trying educate young men about what rape really is, and where the lines really are, is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to do.  That blaming a victim for their assault is WRONG is ABSOLUTELY true.  But the idea that educating young men, and avoiding victim blaming is enough is NOT TRUE.  Women are still being raped.  They still need to know how to defend themselves.  They still need to know what makes them an “ideal” target.  And both men and women ALSO need a LOT of education when it comes to self-control, especially under the effects of drugs or alcohol.  There ARE consequences to ignoring those dangers, whether we like it or not, and just because we can all agree that those consequences are terrible and wrong, does NOT mean that a young woman or man will not have to face them.