There are some ideas that are so stupid that you wonder why the creator didn’t ask their mother, best mate, or a random woman in the pub/at the bus stop what they thought of this. No sane person could think this was anything but gross and idiotic.
Am I being remarkably dense here? I followed the link to the campaign website https://t.co/oZsYcPL17A and it sounds pretty sensible to me. The aim seems to be to remove the legal ambiguity over consent because under the current law the absence of a ‘no’ can be used in court to argue that there was no refusal and therefore consent was tacitly given.
From the webpage:
The current approach to consent means that the burden of proof is often on the victim, who must demonstrate that they did not give consent. If it cannot be proven that a woman said No – perhaps because, as is common in sexual assault, she froze – then it is often left to a jury to decide whether a defendant could reasonably have believed that she consented. This is a challenge because created as they are to represent a cross-section of society, juries also reflect people’s beliefs and biases, including those related to how society thinks women should behave. In fact, the UK Crown Prosecution Service has stated that proving the absence of consent (i.e. that someone said ‘No’) is usually the most difficult part of a rape prosecution, and it is the most common reason for a rape case to fail.
The campaign’s aim is to change the law so that only a clear, unqualified ‘yes’ will count as consent for legal purposes:
Affirmative consent must be an active, voluntary, informed, and mutual decision to engage in sexual activity. Consent can be given through clear words or actions through which a person has indicated permission to engage in sexual activity. Affirmative Consent should be clear and enthusiastic, rather than simply the absence of a “no”.
It’s the slogan. It’s a play on rape apologists’ favorite claim.
I’m probably showing my ignorance here, because I don’t think I’d ever heard of Charlotte Proudman before, but if you look at her Twitter profile or Facebook page or website, as such a strong advocate for survivors of domestic violence, she seems like the last person who would come up with such a horrible slogan. She probably deserves a mulligan on this (unless I’m missing something in her past), but, damn….
On the face of it yes, the slogan might be ill-advised but it is explained:
I’m Asking for It is intentionally provocative. We want to stop people in their tracks, get them thinking about how women are often treated by society and the courts – as if they were ‘asking for it’ – and then flip the narrative: Actually, she is asking for legal change.
I have reservations about the wording but can understand why they went with the slogan.
I see that, and it could work, but it reminds me of the Springsteen song “Born in the USA”. If you listen closely to the lyrics, you’ll realize that it was a scathing attack on the Vietnam war and the state of the country post-war, but who listens closely to the lyrics of a rock song? All most people heard was him screaming out the chorus, and they assumed it was a patriotic song, to the point where Reagan used it as a campaign song.
Maybe it would be better but a “yes” in such circumstances could also be used against a victim. “You said yes to sex but only at *this* point backed out of it in response to a specific sex act/vibe whatever? But you did say yes that time…” Add to that the tendency for some (I guess “bottoms”, mostly women in any case) to go non-verbal during the act, if you’ve signed the form, well it’s all consensual now, right? It’s a knotty problem.
In any case you can certainly say it’s a bad slogan but it doesn’t make the legal arguments bad. It’s just getting triggered (natural) by words, and words are not violence.
the slogan might be ill-advised but it is explained:
Explaining is loosing.
It’s hard enough for social campaigns of this type to gain traction without muddying the waters by trying to be edgy handsome kind of an attempt at humour. People who already agree will be repulsed (as many of us here have been), people who disagree will choose to laugh it off and turn it into a truism – ‘she really did ask for it’. The in-betweens will either be confused, fail to care, or laugh and shrug it off.
The phrase “asking for it” can never be rehabilitated. Any woman seeing a t-shirt with that slogan would instantly think about being subjected to sexual violence.
It’s super insensitive.
I can’t see the campaign getting anywhere with lawmakers, either. We can’t get rape prosecuted: how’s something like this going to be legislated?
Agreed about the slogan. As someone said on Twitter it’s like they hired David Brent to do the PR. As for the campaign aims, my gut feeling is that it’s just another attempt to solve a difficult problem with a simple formula, usually some piece of word magic (enabled, of course by the corporate managerial/PR/activist nexus). Now, of course I understand that speech acts are real but they only work when the speaker has some modicum of power and the problem here is always power relations and the raw fact that women tend to have less power in any given situation. And really, I shouldn’t need to point out to anyone here just how spectacularly well-meaning exercises in magical thinking can backfire.
There are some ideas that are so stupid that you wonder why the creator didn’t ask their mother, best mate, or a random woman in the pub/at the bus stop what they thought of this. No sane person could think this was anything but gross and idiotic.
So Charlotte Proudman boldly steps up.
Am I being remarkably dense here? I followed the link to the campaign website https://t.co/oZsYcPL17A and it sounds pretty sensible to me. The aim seems to be to remove the legal ambiguity over consent because under the current law the absence of a ‘no’ can be used in court to argue that there was no refusal and therefore consent was tacitly given.
From the webpage:
The campaign’s aim is to change the law so that only a clear, unqualified ‘yes’ will count as consent for legal purposes:
Please, what am I missing?
The campaign’s aims could be fine. The image is gross.
AoS,
It’s the slogan. It’s a play on rape apologists’ favorite claim.
I’m probably showing my ignorance here, because I don’t think I’d ever heard of Charlotte Proudman before, but if you look at her Twitter profile or Facebook page or website, as such a strong advocate for survivors of domestic violence, she seems like the last person who would come up with such a horrible slogan. She probably deserves a mulligan on this (unless I’m missing something in her past), but, damn….
On the face of it yes, the slogan might be ill-advised but it is explained:
I have reservations about the wording but can understand why they went with the slogan.
AoS,
I see that, and it could work, but it reminds me of the Springsteen song “Born in the USA”. If you listen closely to the lyrics, you’ll realize that it was a scathing attack on the Vietnam war and the state of the country post-war, but who listens closely to the lyrics of a rock song? All most people heard was him screaming out the chorus, and they assumed it was a patriotic song, to the point where Reagan used it as a campaign song.
Maybe it would be better but a “yes” in such circumstances could also be used against a victim. “You said yes to sex but only at *this* point backed out of it in response to a specific sex act/vibe whatever? But you did say yes that time…” Add to that the tendency for some (I guess “bottoms”, mostly women in any case) to go non-verbal during the act, if you’ve signed the form, well it’s all consensual now, right? It’s a knotty problem.
In any case you can certainly say it’s a bad slogan but it doesn’t make the legal arguments bad. It’s just getting triggered (natural) by words, and words are not violence.
Explaining is loosing.
It’s hard enough for social campaigns of this type to gain traction without muddying the waters by trying to be edgy handsome kind of an attempt at humour. People who already agree will be repulsed (as many of us here have been), people who disagree will choose to laugh it off and turn it into a truism – ‘she really did ask for it’. The in-betweens will either be confused, fail to care, or laugh and shrug it off.
The phrase “asking for it” can never be rehabilitated. Any woman seeing a t-shirt with that slogan would instantly think about being subjected to sexual violence.
It’s super insensitive.
I can’t see the campaign getting anywhere with lawmakers, either. We can’t get rape prosecuted: how’s something like this going to be legislated?
Agreed about the slogan. As someone said on Twitter it’s like they hired David Brent to do the PR. As for the campaign aims, my gut feeling is that it’s just another attempt to solve a difficult problem with a simple formula, usually some piece of word magic (enabled, of course by the corporate managerial/PR/activist nexus). Now, of course I understand that speech acts are real but they only work when the speaker has some modicum of power and the problem here is always power relations and the raw fact that women tend to have less power in any given situation. And really, I shouldn’t need to point out to anyone here just how spectacularly well-meaning exercises in magical thinking can backfire.
@12 – “David Brent” ha ha.
And Finchy Finch, David Brent’s horrible friend, would be saying hurr, hurr, she’s asking for it all right. Just ask me, mate.