"BEAT WOMEN"

Message on sign:

BEAT

WOMEN

CALLING ON MEN TO OUTDO (BEAT)

WOMEN IN CULTIVATING AND 

EXPRESSING THE BEAUTY AND THE

WISDOM OF THE ETERNAL FEMININE

March 30, 2011

Within five minutes of the sign going up, two UW campus police officers rode by on bicycles and read the sign. 

Responses:

- no woman expressed offense to me, though I saw what appeared to be angry looks on the faces of more than a few

- one girl who was not offended thanks to having read the fine print said that, maybe sadly, a sign reading "BEAT MEN" would not be as offensive as "BEAT WOMEN", but a sign "BEAT CHILDREN" would be even more offensive

- one girl came up and told me her boyfriend asked her to tell me he loves my blog; she then dictated the text of today's sign to him over the phone

- one woman said it was prima facie absurd to think that someone would compose a blatant call to beat women, put it on a sign and stand next to it

- one guy called the sign offensive 

- one guy said that he "got" the sign but that it was a horrible word choice

- one guy did not understand if the sign was supposed to be funny; he did not understand the play on words of the text 

- one guy said it is ironic that women would be offended by the sign since it is in fact calling on men to become more like them

- two guys posed by the sign giving the thumbs up sign while their girlfriends took pictures of them

- one girl thought the sign was a call for people to be more "feminist". Do people today not know the difference between feminism and femininity?

Will had the idea of going out onto the Quad with a clipboard and collecting signatures on a petition to have me and my signs removed from campus. We decided that would prejudice judgment on the sign and contradict one of the purposes of the messages on the sign, so we decided Will would survey passersby on their opinions about the sign. One girl's sarcastic comment was: "Well, that's a gentleman." Another girl said: "He must have a God complex." Another girl said she walked through the Quad two or three times a day and had never seen me or my signs before because she always looks down.

Postscript

Here is a demotivator with the text: "I LOVE BEATING WOMEN...TO THE DOOR SO I CAN HOLD IT OPEN FOR THEM."

Other signs on the Quad: about 20 signs of the American Cancer Society were up with different messages on each side, e.g. "Parents who smoke can be role models by quitting."

For a complete transcript of discussions with people about this sign (or at least as complete as memory would allow), see here, March 30.