Selling a bicycle race with a sexual assault joke

The Guardian's Suze Clemitson reports that an infamous sexual assault on the podium of the cycling event in 2013 has been parodied in a poster for the E3 Harelbeke race in Flanders.

The poster, apparently, reads “Who squeezes them in Harelbeke?” Har, har, har.

Meanwhile, assault victim Maja Leye, a "flower girl" who was groped by a man named Peter Sagan as she planted a traditional kiss on the cheek of Tour of Flanders winner Fabian Cancellara, says she was "frozen to the spot” in shock, and struggled not to react to avoid further embarrassment.

The problem with the poster, obviously, is that it communicates that unwanted sexual touching is a joke, and shouldn't be taken very seriously.

Ms. Clemitson reserves her most potent ire for the unknown agency behind the creative: "They’re like a bunch of little boys giggling at a glimpse of boob or arse, virtually masturbating over the idea of their campaigns going viral."

Well, here's your international attention, guys: You're assholes.

Vancouver Transit Police apologize for victim-blaming ad

Another day, another ad campaign accused of blaming sexual assault victims. But this one has a positive lesson in it.

According to CBC, Vancouver Transit Police have agreed to remove this ad from Skytrain, following public complaints.

Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan stated that the victim-blaming was entirely unintentional, but added, "we see where they are coming from."

I work on campaigns like this, too, so I can see how this happened. The Copywriter was trying to use a clever turn of phrase, but didn't consider the unintended triggering of the word "shame" in the context. Neither did the client.

To their credit, however, Vancouver Transit Police have responded in a way that should be a teachable moment to other authorities creating campaigns that address the issue of sexual assault, either directly or indirectly.

First, they apologized with an acknowledgement that the wording could cause unintended harm. Then, they committed to removing the ads and replacing them with "new posters with wording approved by an advisory council that includes representatives from women's support groups."

Understand, apologize, fix the problem and show how you'll avoid it in the future. Is that so hard?

Another campaign tells young women "don't get raped"

Image via Ads of The World

You just have to shake your head. No matter how often people speak out against well-meaning social marketing campaigns that unintentionally (or not) normalize rape culture, people keep making them.

This one comes from Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire, produced in-house by the creative team of Stuart Kerray and Dave Follon. The Council told The Mail they hoped their campaign "will reduce crime and shock revellers into thinking twice about how much they drink."

Writing in her Wordpress blog, Karen Ingala Smith saw it differently. I'll let her take it from here:

Though the poster doesn’t explicitly mention rape,  the lines “when you drink too much you lose control and put yourself at risk” together with an image of a dishevelled young woman in a short dress, make clear that the risk is that of sexual violence. The article was picked up widely re-reported including in The Independent and Daily Mail and eventually discussed in a piece by Sarah Vine under the title “Sorry sisters, but girls who get blind drunk ARE risking rape” in which she stated her  refusal to join “the chorus of feminist disapproval” and argued that women need to take responsibility for their own safety, going on to mention “one or two nasty brushes” that made her realise how important it was to not willingly put herself in the path of danger and “stupidly” becoming a victim. 

The concept of a victim of violence ‘willingly and stupidly putting themselves in the path of danger’ is judgemental victim blaming.  Whether though an act of choosing  or not choosing to do something, a victim of sexual violence is never responsible for what is done to them. Rapists and abusers are the only ones responsible for rape and abuse. 

Rapists and abusers use excuses to justify their actions,  to discredit their victims and to shift responsibility for their choices away from themselves and on to their victims.  They use exactly the kind of excuses encapsulated in the Calderdale poster and Vine’s piece, in short: “She didn’t take care. “ or “She was asking for it.”

Is she reading too much into it? Let's look at how the same campaign advertises to male bingers:

Via Ads of The World

Via Ads of The World

Same playful concept, but no hint of sexual consequences. Instead, the ads talk about the danger of hurting yourself and others. Women as victims, men as aggressors. You've seen it all before.

The council’s Cabinet member for economy and environment, Coun Barry Collins, told the Yorkshire Post (in a classic non-apology) that the images "were not intended to cause offence."

We have used images of both men and women to raise awareness of the impacts on anyone of taking drugs and drinking too much. The aim of the campaign is to expose as many people as possible to timely advice to enjoy a safe night out.

He said the same images were used 
last year, with no complaints until now.

So perhaps some progress has been made?

Real nurses fight MTV over sexy nurse reality show

Via MTV

Home of Jersey Shore and Teen Mom, MTV is not exactly known for respectful or dignified portrayals of people in their reality TV shows. This time, however, they may have picked on the wrong cliché.



"Scrubbing In" follows a group of nurses on and off the clock:

What do you get when you mix the drama of "The Hills" with the partying of "Jersey Shore," and then put everyone in Crocs? That would be "Scrubbing In," MTV's newest docu-drama series that follows young nurses who temporarily uproot themselves to tend to the sick in different parts of the country. In this case, the destination is Orange County, and while the weather is picture-perfect, the emotional climate will call for many an umbrella.

As the trailer shows, the climate calls for a few condoms as well.

From MTV's point of view, I can see how this seems like reality TV gold. Attractive nurses who work hard and play hard, living communally. Who wouldn't want to watch that?!?

Nurses, that's who. The president of the Ontario Nurses' Association, Linda Haslam-Stroud, wrote an open letter to MTV (who also broadcast in Canada):

“It is insulting and simply unacceptable to those of us who use our skills every day to provide quality patient care. The nurses portrayed in the show [are presented] as sexual objects, exploit negative stereotypes and diminish the fact that we are knowledgeable health care professionals who make the difference between life and death for patients every day.”

The ONA has thrown its considerable support behind an online petition and Facebook group, launched in the United States, to cancel the show.

ONA has been successful before in fighting the sexual objectification of their profession. Organized action against Cadbury-Schweppes led to the premature demise of this Dentyn Ice campaign:



A full season of TV production, however, is a much bigger dragon to slay. But it's worth a shot.

The problem with the objectification of nurses is more than a sociological one. In Canada, one third of all nurses report being assaulted by a patient. A Florida survey in 2008 had almost three-quarters of nurses reporting an on-the-job assault.

Assault by patients takes many forms, from verbal and emotional to physical and sexual, but in all cases the portrayal of women in the profession as hypersexualized party girls is hardly helpful in creating a safe environment for them as they care for people in close quarters. They work in constant fear of being stalked by patients.

Nurses really deserve better than the reality show treatment. Everyone does. But considering the profitability of sleaze these days, is there any real chance of changing corporate TV minds?

Via Change.org

This could be the worst Facebook ad of all time

DIY Facebook ads have long been problematic. Cheap to buy (you only pay for the clicks) and easy to create, they lend themselves to the worst sorts of hucksters.

But even worse is the practice of stealing photos for Facebook ads. It not only hurts the credibility and privacy of people who find themselves appearing to endorse random and often inappropriate things. In some cases it can be downright cruel:

According to the CBC, this Facebook ad is for a German internet dating site. (I blocked out the URL. Please don't give them traffic or PR!)

If you don't recognize the face in the ad, that's Rehtaeh Parsons, a Canadian teen who committed suicide last April after being raped at a party while too intoxicated to consent, and experiencing extreme online sexual harassment and abuse when photos of the crime were circulated among her peers.

Whether the company used the photo accidentally or on purpose is unknown. The web site the ad directs to is no longer online.

After outrage over the ad, first spotted by a Facebook user in Toronto, caused outrage, Facebook pulled the ad:

"This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image and using it in their ad campaign," a spokesperson from Facebook wrote in a statement, calling this a gross violation of their advertising policies. "We apologize for any harm this has caused."

For once, an organization famous for being so afraid of women's bodies that it even censors the word "breast" in an a non-sexual context is doing the right kind of censorship.

2013: The Year of The Bystander

Via North Dakota Council on Abused Women's Services

We're hearing the term more and more, and especially in context of rape and sexual harassment.

Via Osocio

"Bystander" is the target audience for an increasing number of social marketing campaigns that attempt to change people's sense of responsibility for friends, neighbours, and even strangers.

I've been working on bystander-focussed campaigns for years, on topics such as elder abuse,  drunk driving and rider harassment on public transit. But I think this year is going to be all about what bystanders can do to stop sexual assault.

It shouldn't be any surprise. In several recent (and very disturbing) high-profile sexual abuse cases, bystanders acceptance and participation made otherwise ordinary people complicit in horrible crimes.

In Steubenville, Ohio, a young woman was sexually abused by members of a celebrated local high school football team. Classmates documented, shared, and joked about the incident. They even threatened the victim for daring to seek justice.

In Coal Harbour, Nova Scotia, another young woman was photographed having public sex while too drunk to consent (otherwise known as rape). The picture and the story were spread around the small town, and she was targeted on social media. Rehtaeh Parsons killed herself.

In Port Coquitlam, B.C., yet another young woman moved to a new school to try to escape the infamy of a topless picture she had shared with a stranger when she was in Grade 7. Schoolmates harassed her constantly about that, her depression, and a failed suicide attempt. After making a video cry for help that went viral, Amanda Todd also killed herself.

In Pitt Meadows, B.C., a young woman was gang-raped in the middle of a rave. Partygoers not only failed to intervene, they took photos and videos with their smartphones to share online.

Heard enough? One more.

In Saratoga, California, a young woman passed out at a party. She woke up to find she had been raped by up to three classmates, who had bragged of their assault by writing on her body with a Sharpie and taking and sharing pictures of the rape. Audrie Pott killed herself.

There are more. What they have in common is that these are not the actions of some individual predator acting in secret. They are a product of a culture in which rape is acceptable, under certain circumstances, and one person's humiliation is everyone else's entertainment.

It occurs to me that what's missing is empathy. Bystander empathy. But how do we increase that?

There is a role for social marketing here. And it's not just telling people not to "cyberbully" peers at risk. Instead, the greater social network needs to be connected more meaningfully to the lives and feelings of others. While the Internet is really great at turning people into harassers and trolls, it can also broaden their circle of empathy if they let it.

Via Osocio

A good example of this is the Draw The Line campaign, which I recently profiled on Osocio. It treats rape culture as a spectrum, starting with the apathetic acceptance of "distant" cases of assault and sexism in the media, and working closer to the audience's innermost circle:

The message is simple: It is all part of the same problem, and you are responsible for stopping it.

This year, will you be a bystander who makes a difference? Or will you be an accomplice?

You can start by evaluating your online behaviour.

Author Geoff Livingston, in his marketing blog, puts it like this:

So what can bystanders do? Well, they have several different options to choose from: 

1. Observe but refrain from getting involved
2. Publicly support the attacker
3. Privately support the attacker
4. Publicly support the target or victim
5. Privately support the target or victim
6. Become participants that attempt to deescalate the situation 

The vast majority of bystanders decide not to participate, and the reasons for doing so can range from feeling they don’t care enough about the problem to speak up, thinking their individual voice won’t steer the situation in a different direction, or wanting to avoid the risk of becoming a target themselves if they lend their support to either side. 

Bystanders who decide to publicly support one side or the other carry the risk, as noted, that they’ll become possible targets of furious opponents. However, by taking a stand they also have the opportunity to publicly speak out against unfair or untruthful statements and behavior. The challenge is to do so in a fact-based, rational and persuasive way, without getting sucked into the blind emotional intensity frequently seen in online exchanges and without taking cheap shots at the other side or trying to incite others into an online frenzy.

Be nice out there.

Rape culture attacks famed anti-rape campaign

Sexual Assault Voices Edmonton (SAVE) has earned lots of attention and praise for creating a hard-hitting campaign against sexual assault that puts the blame on rapists, not their victims.

So of course some internet dickwads decided to "parody" it with the victim-blaming message that continues to be the status quo:

I saw this screencapped on the STFU, Conservatives Tumblr, screencapped from some "joke" Facebook page. The call-to-action is A Voice For Men, an anti-feminism site that claims men are being victimized by campaigns like SAVE's.

The discussion about consent still has a long way to go.

Times of India responds to sexual violence with "definition of a man"

Less than half, in my opinion. But good on the Times of India for taking a stand.

ourmobileworld.org says that these ads are currently running 1/4 page in the paper, which has the largest circulation of an English-language newspaper in the world.

The macho approach against sexism seems a little old fashioned, but anything to speak out against horrors like this.

H/T Cosmo