Let’s put brakes on offensive bumper stickers

Clever or not, they were tacit support for rape-culture, writes Susan Scott.

It was all set to be a happy celebration. It was a Saturday night and I was off to a party in honour of a friend who was marking the 10th anniversary of his successful kidney transplant. Then, the mood collapsed completely as I was overtaken by a speeding Dodge Ram truck.

Emblazoned across its back window, clear for all to read, was the slogan: Dodge the Father. Ram the Daughter.

It was the third time I had seen a similar vehicle with the same offensive words, which I’m sure someone, somewhere, thought were pretty clever.

Clever or not, it is crude and could be viewed by some as an invitation for non-consensual assault.

The wording implies that the person who devised the slogan knew at some level that what he (I would hate to think the author was a she) was urging was wrong, otherwise, he would not have said, “dodge the father,” the implied protector of the woman.

He was urging something that, even he knew, had to be done in secret, something not permissible, something wrong.

It is particularly painful that the implications seem to be that the real crimes are not assaulting a woman, but getting caught, and/or not being able to avoid an older man.

Fed up, I called the Calgary Police Service to see if anything could be done about it. No, they said, there is no law against that slogan, as disgusting as it is. The slogan’s not urging anything against a minority group.

We may not be a minority, I replied, but we are a reasonably well-defined group. Try substituting a racial group or a group from the LGBTQ community and see how it sounds.

While sympathetic, the police representative said that argument didn’t wash. Besides, said the spokesperson, it’s not inciting violence.

Well, my vagina tells me in no uncertain terms that being rammed is a violent, non-consensual sexual act. In fact, it hurts me as a woman, as a human being, every time I read that slogan, and other women and many men are also enraged and hurt by it. We feel dehumanized and violated.

In my work, I have come across far too many women who have been raped and sexually abused and who are afraid to contact the police or to tell anyone in authority.

I hope the Me-Too movement will enable more women to speak out. However, as long as we give tacit permission to rape-culture by allowing such slogans as this out in public, we are not addressing the root of the problem. We need to prevent rape and to make it clear to all men, young and old, from all backgrounds, that it’s not OK to force sex on an unwilling woman.

Driving around with those words writ so large and loud, for all to see, sends multiple messages to multiple recipients that can be divided along gender lines into two basic categories. It tells women that we are not safe wherever we are; it tells men: go ahead, do it, bro, be a Real Guy; just don’t get caught. And tucked away, is also a sad message directed at older men, that as a father, your virility is waning.

I’m not sure who manufactures these slogans, or who buys them, but I can only hope that the makers and the purchasers truly see the error of their ways and come to understand what they are perpetrating, but I’m not sure that’s on the cards anytime soon.

I do have one beacon of hope. A friend was driving her 16-year-old son to an engagement when they, too, were overtaken by such a vehicle.

The teenager was aghast and after a minute said that he could only conclude the driver of the Ram was equipped with a very diminutive sexual organ and needed to compensate for his deficiency. Hallelujah! One young man gets it.