![Figure 1: Photo posted on Twitter by James Muir (https://twitter.com/ephraim_quin, accessed 16 September 2013) MRE's copycat campaign drew us in, politically and personally, though in different ways. Lise Gotell: As a spokeswoman for SAVE, my phone rang off the hook the day these posters went up. I did ten media interviews in the space of twenty-four hours. I felt it was important to respond to misrepresentations disseminated by MRE's poster by emphasizing that false accusations are very rare (Lisak, Gardinier, Nicksa et al. 2010). Instead, high prevalence rates, under-reporting, high police un-founding rates, and low conviction rates cause what researchers in the field call a justice gap (Tempkin and Krahe 2008). Survivors are still routinely blamed, stigmatized and disbelieved in the criminal justice system. It was not long before I realized that by engaging with MRE's message in the media, I had given this group a platform and painted a target on my own head. Following my public response to Don't be THAT Girl, MRE created a poster (Figure 2) and a blog post entitled 'Lise Gotell, Bigot Extrodunaire [sic]' (MRE 2013a). Through these widely circulated attacks, I experienced firsthand the intimidation and harassment that are common tactics used by MRAs in efforts to silence and discredit feminist scholars and activists (Blais and Dupuis-Deri 2012).](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lise-Gotell/publication/303816295/figure/fig1/AS:658192879058944@1533936819468/Photo-posted-on-Twitter-by-James-Muir-https-twittercom-ephraim-quin-accessed-16_Q320.jpg)
June 2016
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3,259 Reads
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171 Citations
International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy
This paper explores the role that men’s rights activism (MRA) is playing in a contemporary backlash to feminist anti-rape activism. We engage in a discourse analysis of popular MRA websites to reveal a set of interrelated claims, including: that sexual violence, like domestic violence, is a gender-neutral problem; that feminists are responsible for erasing men’s experiences of victimization; that false allegations are widespread; and that rape culture is a feminist-produced moral panic. We argue that sexual violence is emerging as a new focus of the men’s rights movement, competing with a longstanding emphasis on fathers’ rights. The subject of MRA activism has shifted and is becoming less familial and more sexual. MRAs appear to be using the issue of rape to mobilize young men and to exploit their anxieties about shifting consent standards and changing gender norms.