"Pop Quiz" Posters Spread Awareness

Author: Elizabeth Brookbank

I too am offended and disgusted by the "pop quiz" posters put up all over campus that Kevin King '02 made the subject of his "gender bashing" editorial last week. In fact, the first time I saw that poster it made me sick to my stomach. I was physically ill at the thought of a woman having to go through the horrible things described on that poster. Were the comments made by the two DJs "less incendiary," as King put it in his article, than the statements on this poster? Well, yes, if that means that the poster was more shocking, more vulgar than the "jokes" made on the radio show. But am I having déjà vu here? Did King actually read the article that Nahal and I wrote? The specific reason we found the comments made by the two DJs to be so damaging is precisely the fact that they were put forth in such a "non-threatening," "comical" manner. It is exactly that attitude towards these crimes that normalizes them so that when a woman is the victim of such a crime and wants to get people to pay attention to her, she has to go to such lengths to do it.

King's argument that the poster "implied that all men at Middlebury are rapists" and made "blanket negative assumptions about males" is weak at best. It falls apart by simply reading the actual words on the poster instead of going off of what he obviously wanted to see. It states quite clearly that "some men" have the mentality to commit the crime described. This is a fact that cannot be disputed. Women are raped everyday. Some men do this. Some men rape women, but obviously not all men.

The poster then goes on to directly refer to the one man who perpetrated the acts described at the beginning. The posters made no attempt to state that all men raped women or that all men at Middlebury raped women. It was saying that some men do and that one man did.

King proclaimed in his article that "the fight to end rape … [should] be between attackers and non-attackers." He is absolutely right. I would like to thank him for making that clear. I couldn't have put it better myself. And whether or not he wants to admit it, this is what is going on.

I can't imagine anything that should unify us all more than the universal disgust that one should feel at the fact that this crime was committed against a human being on our campus. The fight that has been heating up in the last few weeks on the pages of this newspaper and on the campus at large is one between those who commit these crimes and those who stand against it, those who normalize these crimes by their speech and actions and those who are attempting to reverse that normalization. Nahal and I were speaking directly to those people who had clearly contributed to this normalization and imploring those who might be caught up in such harmful discourse in the future to simply think before they speak. We made no generalizations about whom those people would be; we admitted that we were fully aware of the pervasiveness of such speech in our culture, we were not dividing the campus into females versus males.

The "pop quiz" poster was speaking to those of our community who would think that the horrific actions described on it were acceptable. More specifically it was speaking directly to the one man who actually perpetrated the crime. It made no generalizations, as King took it upon himself to do, rather it asked a question: What would you do? Put yourself in the very situation it was describing. What would you do? If you wouldn't do any of the disgusting things described, then the poster was not talking about you. The poster was not attacking "self-respecting men," since I would think and hope that we can all agree that the man who committed that crime is anything but. King was mistaken in thinking that all men would share his assumptions. I have talked to many self-respecting men who were also offended by the poster, but they were offended as members of the human race, offended that these crimes were taking place in their own back yards, so to speak. They were not offended as men, they knew that the poster was not directing its anger towards them; they had no need to go on the defensive, they knew that they were not being attacked.

One can only take from any given situation what they bring to it. So I would ask who it is that is driving a wedge between males and females. Is it those who see these issues as crimes that should be looked at through the lens of humanity trying to better itself, or those who see these issues as nothing more than the rhetoric of gender bashing and who seem to lose their cool whenever their insecurities are confronted by those of "the feminist persuasion?" If such ones are genuine in their cry for unity, if they would truly like to move beyond the archaic notion that issues such as rape automatically denote "men vs. women," then I think I speak for all of us of "the feminist persuasion" when I say that any practical suggestions they may have to achieve such unity would be welcome. In short: put your money where your mouth is.

Instead of simply degrading and attacking those who are trying to make a change, why not try and help? Or is it just more fun to keep the stereotypes in place and play war against those whose "persuasions" make you uncomfortable? If this is the case than I think you would be wise to keep in mind who you are trying to convince and what you are trying to achieve by waging such a war under the guise of someone who wants unity so badly.