The Good, the Bad and the Heteronormative
I'm not much of an activist. I don't go to meetings. I write to my congresspersons, but infrequently. I give just a wee bit of money to planned parenthood (let's face it, I have just a wee bit of money, really). I do try to talk about things political when I can, and I of course bitch/blog about stuff, which I don't think counts for nothing. These things are important. But I have a lot of respect for those people who go one step further, and for those people who go many, many steps further. Sometimes, in trying to piece my life together into something I consider valuable, I definitely let slide what I consider to be part of my larger obligations to the world.

Which is why, when I see a group of people being activists, but doing things in a way that I think is somehow subject to constructive criticism, I always have mixed feelings. Perhaps if I were out in the world doing this stuff more, I would better understand the reasons activists make their decisions, especially the ones with which I disagree. This sort of benefit-of-the-doubt attitude fueled my discussion about the recent NARAL campaign aimed at women of color (but, critics noted, really only aimed a few groups of woc)--there may indeed be reasons, good reasons--even moral reasons--behind the decisions.

And yet, when I first saw the ads created by the Men Can Stop Rape campaign, I had mixed feelings, and then I had mixed feelings as to whether or not to address those mixed feelings.
On the face of it, who could have a problem with a group of people calling themselves Men Can Stop Rape. Seems to me to be a good idea, perhaps even a necessary idea if one really wants to affect how many people (mostly women, but not all women) are raped. As part of their statement of who they are, they note:

MCSR is an outgrowth of D.C. Men Against Rape, a volunteer profeminist collective founded in 1987 by a handful of men seeking to raise their own and the community's consciousness about men's violence against women. In 1997, MCSR incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the goal of carrying forward and expanding on its original mission to increase men's involvement in efforts to end men's violence.

What the heck could be wrong with that?

Well, this is what could be wrong with it: The best intentions are sometimes not enough. Here are some samples of their newest campaign (click on the picture to get a slightly larger version):



My reactions to these ads are complex (perhaps one of the goals of the ads?). The first thing that pops into my head is, "Why do we have to focus on 'strength'?" Why is it that the entire campaign ("Promoting Strength Without Violence") is based on getting men to listen/learn via zeroing in on a perceived masculine trait? I get the whole idea that 'men like to feel strong' and therefore we might expand/change the definition of strength to have more to do with respecting others, with listening (and with, hey! not raping). But I just feel very deeply that it might be better to attack the very notion of why men feel like they need to be strong. If 'strength' wasn't perceived as a masculine trait, then appealing to men by talking about strength wouldn't be an issue--it would simply be an expansion/change in what 'strong' means. But because the conception of strength is tied to masculinity, the ads make a certain kind of sense, if they are trying to appeal to men. But why not just question the very notion that 'being strong' is what men are all about?

Or, perhaps, some sort of 'We are both strong' sort of thing going on would be more appealing to me. The whole idea for me is that men thinking they have to be strong is one of the causes of violence against women--so why use the concept of strength in order to change minds?

The second basic problem is an even more instrinsic problem: If we're targeting men in the ads because we think that men need to take responsibility for rape culture, then we need to focus on what men can do to change that culture: But do we have to do it by reinforcing some of the very gender stereotypes that help create rape culture? What I have in mind here is reinforcing the idea that Men Ask for Sex and then women can say yes or no. All three of the above ads are basically saying, "I asked for sex, but was ok with it when she said no." How about one that points out that she can ask for sex and the guy can then say yes or no? Why begin from the point of reinforcing gender sterotypes that help create the very problem one is trying to avoid?

I do get why: It's something like baby steps. First we get men to recognize that they ought to listen when women say no; then we can get them to realize that women can want sex, too! And then we can get them to recognize that they, as men, can say no...etc. But I have an intuition (unprovable!) that this is the wrong way to go about it, because you'll never get to step two this way--step one will not succeed because it is embracing too many of the causes of the problem (i.e. embracing rape culture by embracing gender stereotypes about who wants sex).

And then, there's the hetero stuff--why are all of these ads aimed at hetero men? Perhaps a conscious decision, picking a target group--but then I'd want to ask: "Why only target that group?" A pessimistic guess would be: Gay men have no place in a campaign about 'Strength'. But again, I'm unsure of the motives.

There are also some weird racial undertones here--though I understand with three posters you couldn't represent all of the combinations of coupledom that can happen racially, the 'white couple' look a little too brother-sister for me.

And yet, there is one of the posters that seems more along the lines of what I would have hoped for:"When I wasn't sure...I asked." That seems like the sentiment in a nutshell that I would want to get across.
Filed under:Feminism