I found this juxtaposition particularly interesting in light of my letter about "real" wo/men, Americans, etc., which underlined how asserting authenticity is frequently used to challenge or maintain privilege:
Jess explains that the poster was put up at a bus stop at the University of Western Ontario, later found partially destroyed in order to convey a very different idea indeed.
Not infrequently, we have gentlemen, ahem, visit our threads to question the existence of the rape culture. The truth is, if it didn't exist, people wouldn't mangle posters in a desperate bid to maintain the privilege of widely-condoned rape and reinforce its deep associations with traditionally-defined masculinity.
The two posters, and their disparate messages, also reinforce the point I was making with last week's post: There are men who stop rape. There are men who rape. They are all real men.
And their real victims can't tell the difference by looking at them.
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