The liquor control board for the state of Pennsylvania recently started an anti-drinking (or anti-excessive drinking) PSA campaign called Control Tonight. Good idea in theory.
In practice? Not so much.
Their message fails in half of their posters. So much so, that one ended up getting pulled entirely. Three show completely understandable, and appropriate messages. Two show how excessive consumption can lead to sickness, and death via alcohol poisoning. One shows a man getting arrested because drinking leads to aggression, fights, and assault charges.
All three are true, and their messages convey that friends need to look out for these warning signs, and help prevent these dangers. Getting sick is an inevitability with drinking too much alcohol. Fighting is a crime that the posters are blaming on the criminal. Good points. Good execution.
Now the next three, in order of offensiveness (starting with the most innocuous):
"He's too wasted to realize [the condom] broke" Really, what was he going to do if he did realize it? A broken condom is a problem if you're sober or drunk. This is completely irrelevant to drinking. The poster would be much better off had they said he was too wasted to use one at all. That's a big oops. This poster, as is, puts blame on alcohol where no blame is needed.
"She's never cheated on her boyfriend. Until now" Many problems. One is that this is the poster where they chose to use the minority couple. When blacks are often stereotyped and portrayed as hypersexualized, using them as the cheating woman and preying man is...in poor taste. And that's what the picture shows. A drunk girl hanging on a guy who has his hand gripping her leg. He doesn't appear drunk, or happy, or really as anything but creepy. Which means he's taking advantage of her. None of this is the alcohol's fault. She shouldn't be cheating on her boyfriend, and he shouldn't be preying on drunk girls. What am I being warned against? Creepy guys, or infidelity?
"She didn't want to do it, but she couldn't say no" Of course, this is the one that was pulled. Where does one begin? The picture: a pair of legs with her underwear around her ankles lying on a bathroom tiled floor (the same floor with the broken condom actually). Actually, when I first saw the a, I thought it was a vodka ad...(which was even more appalling). But that's how sexualized it is. It isn't inherently disturbing. It's attractive. That's problem number 1.
Number 2 is the caption. Drinking leads to bad decisions. Like going home with someone you don't know very well. The problem is date rape tends to happen with two people who DO know each other well. Not the stranger you met at the bar (although him too). It's the guy you've been on a couple of dates with. It's your friend, it's your boyfriend. And getting drunk and/or making a bad decision isn't really why someone gets raped. It's why someone rapes. And the focus needs to be adjusted to that.
Number 3 is that of course, it's victim blaming. Don't drink too much, or you might get raped. Don't go home with someone, he might rape you. If you pass out, you can't say no to sex. Oddly enough, being drunk IS saying no. In all 50 states. Alcohol does not make you responsible for any crime committed against you. In fact, nothing does. Whether its robbery, assault, or rape, the only person or thing responsible is the person doing it. Sure, keeping your wits about you certainly helps to increase your safety from all of these possibilities. But I don't want to hear someone telling me I should stay sober, lest I get raped. Or robbed. Or assaulted. I want to see more preventative measures be taken against the perpetrator. Not the victim.
Number 4 is the trigger factor. One third of all rape victims experience PTSD after the attack. This number is the same whether the victim sees herself as having been raped or not. So now you have between 20-25% of women as rape victims, and 1/3 of them as having, or having had, PTSD. That means that 8% of women can be triggered by this poster. Even having no personal history of such attacks, I was brought to tears by the image alone. Shock factor goes a little overboard here.
They eventually pulled the poster, after such outrage ensued, leading an almost equal number of people to vilify us who found it offensive. I think one person said it perfectly:
Katelyn Cummings
How effective do you think this messaging is? Your scare tactics have continued to fail, and even if they work, I imagine it is only to make people feel shitty about themselves after the fact. Imagine a women gets raped only to have this kind of messaging telling her that she should have had a little less to drink. I think it's irresponsible and insensitive.
(bolding mine)
Telling people to be careful is not victim blaming. Telling someone to be a responsible drinker is not victim blaming. But plastering a woman's legs in a post rape, sexual pose, and saying "doesn't that suck? you shouldn't have gotten drunk" is a problematic campaign.
And I'm glad it's gone.
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