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Victim-blaming anti-drinking posters in the UK get edited

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service is facing a backlash for posters from an anti-drinking campaign called “Know Your Limits” that ran several years ago and still pepper college and hospital walls. A petition calling the posters “a blatant and appalling case of victim-blaming, putting the onus on the victim rather than the perpetrator” has gotten over 100,000 signatures. But since NHS insists there’s nothing they can do since the campaign is over, I’m liking this more direct approach taken by British blogger @neverjessie even more.

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The NHS posters are similar to those awful ads put out by The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board a few years ago. As Jos wrote then, “Getting drunk can be a bad idea for a whole host of reasons and that is a conversation to have. But the one that says getting drunk makes other people a danger to you? Not so much.” Maybe NHS can redeem themselves by launching a new campaign that tackles rape culture. We’ve seen more than a few great campaigns that do that in recent years, so they have some models to work from.

(h/t Vox)

Maya DusenberyMaya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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