‘Don’t Be That Guy’ plans new posters, encourages reporting sex assault
By Shaamini Yogaretnam
EDMONTON — The locally created “Don’t Be That Guy” poster campaign is set to be refreshed just in time for the Edmonton Police Service’s renewed push to target sexual assault.
One of three posters in the "Don't Be That Guy" campaign that urges men aged 18-24 to rethink what sexual consent looks like when drugs and alcohol are involved. Photograph supplied.
The “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign, aimed at convincing men aged 18 to 24 that just because a woman is intoxicated doesn’t mean you can take advantage of her, was launched in 2010 by the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton in collaboration with Edmonton Police Service and a host of other partners jointly called Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton.
The posters showed pictures of a woman passed out on a couch or being “helped” into a car. The message was clear – the absence of a “no” did not mean a “yes” when alcohol or drugs were involved.
“If she’s too drunk, if she’s too intoxicated to give voluntary consent, then she’s too drunk to have sex,” said Karen Smith, executive director of SACE.
The same set of collaborators are in the process of adding more posters to the campaign. Smith had been trying to get others to recognize the alarming trend of increased alcohol- and drug-facilitated sexual assault. Cities worldwide have now identified the trend and are using Edmonton’s campaign as a way to fight it.
It’s been two years since the debut of the campaign and Smith is excited about adding to the line of three posters that target perpetrators of sexual assault instead of potential victims.
“It’s the only way to stop this,” Smith said.
“Don’t be that guy” 2.0
The second rollout of the campaign aims to educate bystanders, and includes more diversity in the types of victims and perpetrators shown.
In addition to thinking up new slogans that will be true to the campaign’s original intent, Smith and her partners will need to look for artwork that will speak to young revelers at the bar and students taking the LRT home. The posters need to simultaneously make someone think twice and be part of a larger conversation about the nature of consent.
Smith credits the blunt artwork with the campaign’s success.
“Almost any young person can identify with those scenes.”
The images are based on what police and paramedics see on a typical weekend on Whyte Avenue: heavily intoxicated women being steered into compromising positions by less drunk men.
Building the first campaign took nearly 18 months from start to finish. Smith expects the same will be true of her second attempt and would be surprised if anything was ready before the end of the year.
The second wave of the campaign comes at an appropriate time for Edmonton. Police Chief Rod Knecht announced recently that alcohol- and drug-facilitated sexual assault was up 12 per cent in 2011 from 2010. Of the 209 reported sexual assaults last year, 123 had to do with alcohol.
Does that mean “Don’t Be That Guy” doesn’t work? Smith thinks that there is good news in the numbers. In Canada, only one in 10 sexual assaults are actually reported to police. If more sexual assaults are reported, it’s a positive indication, she said.
“The fact that there are more reported sexual assaults, I think that is a success,” Smith said. “People are coming forward and saying ‘This did happen to me, it was wrong, I know it was wrong.’ ”
Poster to poster, city to city
“Don’t Be That Guy” has been used by several cities across North America, Europe and even Australia.
“It’s literally gone all over the world,” Smith said. “They’ve even translated it, not only into other languages, but other dialects of English.”
Unlike other campaigns that have a cost tied to importing them, DBTG gives the campaign away.
“We don’t charge anybody anything for it,” Smith said. “All we ask is that we be acknowledged.”
Shifting the blame
The campaign is a marked change from previous messages.
“Always go out in a buddy system, always have somebody look after your drink if you go to the washroom, make sure you wear modest clothing, if you’re at home make sure your doors and windows are locked – we had all of these rules for women, don’t drink too much, don’t do this, don’t do that,” said Smith.
Such rules have been harmful to survivors of sexual assault, Smith said.
“So what would happen is a young women hears these rules on how she is supposed to protect herself, and lo and behold she is sexually assaulted. And then she has this list of rules she goes over in her head, and she thinks ‘Oh, my skirt was too short,’ or ‘Oh, I drank too much,’ and so she blames herself for this.”
Making women anticipate that they could always be in danger of sexual assault wasn’t getting to the real issue of prevention.
“What we wanted to do is shift that blame from the victim to where it really belongs – onto the perpetrator.”
