Most sexual assault prevention campaigns tend to target women -- providing them with tips like "Don't have long hair" or "Don't stay out late" in an effort to keep women safe. Obviously, this type of advice is meant to be helpful and empowering, but often it crosses the line into preemptive victim blaming.
For example, does this sort of message make anyone feel better? Well, ladies, you were certainly asking for it when you decided not to arm yourself with a rape whistle. Really, what did you expect?
Instead of acting like sexual assault is an oh-well-inevitable part of life and is solely the woman's responsibility for preventing it, wouldn't it be better to use anti-rape ads to target men -- the people who are actually doing the assaulting?
Well, that's exactly what a new, graphic anti-rape campaign in Canada is doing ...
The Don't Be That Guy campaign is a series of print ads that use blunt language and disturbing images to educate young men that 1) sex without consent is sexual assault; and 2) a person who is drunk or passed out cannot give consent.
The ads were designed after a coalition of groups fighting sexual assault in Edmonton, Canada, discovered that alcohol was a factor in half of all sexual assault cases investigated by the police. They were also influenced by this alarming study out of the U.K. showing that a whopping 48 percent of men ages 18 to 25 -- that's almost half! -- did not consider it rape if the women was too drunk to know it was happening.
In one ad, a women is passed out on a couch and the caption reads: "Just because she isn’t saying no ... doesn’t mean she’s saying yes.” In another, a man is helping a woman to her car and the caption reads: "Just because you help her home ... doesn’t mean you get to help yourself."
Disturbing? Yes. Persuasive? Hopefully.
Although I'm frightened by the fact that behavior in these situations is learned and not instinctual, at the very least, these ads set a precedent for holding men -- not women -- accountable for the crimes that men commit.
What do you think of the new anti-rape campaign?
Image via Nigsby/Flickr
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Comments 13
I remember watching this horrible video in high school teaching girls how to not get raped, and wondering why they weren't telling the boys NOT to rape instead.
I seriously hope they start doing this in schools instead.
I wish we could do stuff like that here in the U.S. That just because a woman is dressed sexy, or she gets drunk, she changed her mind at the last minute, while mean, a man will not die from 'blue balls', or they can get some soap and go in the bathroom; its better then having use a 'soap on a rope". No is no, no matter what the language.
I don't like that it is targeted toward men, as if because men have penises they are all potential rapists. Plus it degrades men who have been raped, too. It's time we stop focusing on women as victims. We need to start looking at people who have been raped as survivors.
Thank you SlightlyPerfect and Zarko for making the same point that I've made many times myself with regard to this campaign. As a male rape survivor of a female rapist, I really feel compelled to correct some of the minimizing and gender based generalizations I've read here.
Allboys - men are not responsible for rape - RAPISTS are responsible for rape. See the difference? Good. With regard to what rape victims go through being added to the campaign, I'd support that. Wanna hear about my bad days - when I can't decide whether to scream, curl into a ball and cry or put my fist through the wall? Or does my penis mean I can only be a rapist, not a survivor?
Katy - boys don't need to be told not be rapists. RAPISTS need to be told not to be rapists. There is more than a subtle difference between the two concepts.
Carny Asada - it is probably worth pointing out to the woman who raped me that she did not have the right to do what she wanted either. Let's be careful not to make rape into man = rapist, woman = victim. Millions of men worldwide have the same PTSD, minimization and self-contempt that millions of female rape survivors deal with daily.