More Advocacy Fail

[Trigger warning.]

Copyranter just tipped me to an anti-rape campaign in Britain which features an image of a disembodied woman's lower torso, clad only in panties, with the text: "Have sex with someone who hasn't said yes to it, and the next place you enter could be prison." The image, which I'm not going to post in-page, is viewable here.

Noting that the campaign, which started as ads in lad mags in 2007, has now graduated to posters hanging in public men's restrooms in the UK, Copyranter says: "Call me confused, but showing a half-naked woman in a rape awareness ad being viewed by plastered horny pissing men is just bloody stupid, right?" Right.

Where do I begin with the failfulness? A key part of the rape culture is the dehumanization of women, so featuring a faceless, disembodied, woman's lower torso in an anti-rape campaign is utterly counterproductive—which is to say nothing of the titillation of showing a near-naked faceless, disembodied, woman's lower torso.

And the text. Oh, Maude, the text! Euphemizing rape as "having sex" in an anti-rape campaign is positively absurd. There's no such thing as "having sex with someone who hasn't said yes." The appropriate way to convey this idea without reinforcing narratives of the rape culture is something like: "Sexual activity without consent is illegal" or "Sexual activity without consent is rape."

While I'm certainly not against the idea of noting that going to prison can (should) be the consequence of raping another person, I am decidedly unthrilled with its being communicated as "the next place you enter could be prison," with the victim's body being obliquely invoked as the first "place you enter." Suffice it to say, I don't share the opinion that an anti-rape campaign is the best place for cheeky wordplay, no less cheeky wordplay that reduce a rape victim's body to an inanimate "place" (more dehumanization) that can be equated to prison.

And, really: With an abysmal 6.5% conviction rate, are there any British rapists who are going to be deterred by the threat of prison? Somehow I doubt it. Which means we can "ineffective" to the heaping garbage pile of fail.

What we're left with, then, is an ostensible anti-rape campaign whose only success is more deeply entrenching tools and language of the rape culture. Huzzah.

[Previously in Advocacy Fail: On Exploitation, and Anti-Exploitation Messaging; Calling Cut on Domestic Violence.]