Features Editor, Opinion Columnist
“Just because you regret it doesn’t mean it was rape. No one else is responsible for your decisions. Don’t be THAT girl.” This cautionary statement is outlined in black and red text below a photo of a young woman clad in a lacy tank top, sitting on the edge of a bed, staring contemplatively out the window with what can only be interpreted as a look of remorse on her face.
Created by the men’s rights group A Voice For Men, the advertisement and several like it are undoubtedly a response to a campaign orchestrated by Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS), a Canadian organization responsible for the “Don’t Be THAT Guy” ads.
The BWSS advertisements feature scenarios most likely familiar to many of us as college students—a night out drinking with friends, needing a little help getting home, even passing out on the couch—yet with a sinister, but unfortunately realistic, twist: “Just because you help her home doesn’t mean you get to help yourself,” and “Just because she isn’t saying no doesn’t mean she’s saying yes. Don’t be THAT guy.”
BWSS is sending men a call to action to prevent “alcohol facilitated sexual assault,” whereas A Voice For Men is calling on women to stop falsely reporting rape, to cease crying wolf when they “regret it.”
The concept of the men’s rights movement is quite new to me, and I admit that it sounded like a joke at first. Mindlessly clicking away on Facebook a few days ago, I fell down the rabbit hole and emerged in a strange and scary place where a growing group of men are crying out against “feminist governance,” “rape hysteria” and a societal-wide epidemic of institutionalized misandry (the hatred of men by women), according to A Voice For Men.
What kind of voices are speaking loudest on A Voice For Men? Voices who call the recent, justified and long- overdue investigations into widespread rape allegations in the armed forces “a crusade against a sexual assault epidemic that does not exist.”
A sexual assault epidemic that does not exist? The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) has been contracted by the Department of Defense to create a helpline designated specifically for members of the military who wish to report sexual assault. Every two seconds, according to RAINN statistics, another American—male or female—becomes the victim of sexual assault.
A misguided response to feminism, the men’s rights movement seeks to end discrimination against men who feel they have been attacked for too long by feminists and pigeonholed as potential rapists. The fact remains that many men are potential rapists, just as many men (and women) are potential child abusers, just as every person on this planet has the capacity to kill.
Men’s rights activists seem to enjoy pulling the “but-you-wanted-gender-equality” card, and the “Don’t Be THAT Girl” ads are their idea of leveling the playing field, placing as equal blame on victims of sexual assault as they would their perpetrators.
Yes, false allegations of rape do occur and can be extremely damaging, but they are also quite rare in comparison to the actual incidences of sexual assault. Three percent, to be precise — the same percentage of other types of crimes that are falsely reported, according to an FBI factsheet.
In 2014, women are still somehow responsible for establishing the necessary burden of proof to verify they were indeed sexually assaulted. Though A Voice For Men claims it is likewise seeking to protect its constituents, who happen to be only men, its cause is not furthering anything. Instead, it seeks to revert to a time when the complaints of sexual assult victims, who happen to be mostly women, went unspoken, unheard and unseen.
cblackme@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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